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Episode: 974
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Title: HPR0974: NELF: FreeNAS
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0974/hpr0974.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-08 05:55:41
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---
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song.
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Please welcome Drew Levine.
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And just for the record, for those of you that got that great Norton anti-virus screen
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shot, typically the only time I boot into Windows is when I need to take a screenshot
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for documentation, and typically every time I boot into Windows it gets me swearing.
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So I'll turn up swearing during the talk, we'll see how it goes.
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So I'm here to talk today about FreeNAS, now I'll be introducing the new design version,
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which is 8, if I get someone to forward slides.
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Just have a bit of an outline when I'll be talking about today.
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So I'm going to introduce FreeNAS 8, what it is, what you can do with it, what the features
|
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are.
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A large component and the feature set of FreeNAS 8 is the ZFS file system, and a lot of
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people are new to ZFS, so I'll just serve you a brief overview of what you get with ZFS.
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Talk about what's new in 8 too, anybody who's used FreeNAS before, because it has been
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around for a couple of years is probably more familiar with 7, so we'll talk about some
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of the changes between 7 and 8.
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Then we'll get into a configuration workflow, so if I have this nice graphical interface,
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how do I actually set up my storage system, what can I do with it?
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Well then talk about get involved with the community, because it is an open source project
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and additional resources, we have lots of resources.
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So for those of you that have never heard of FreeNAS before, you don't know what it is,
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it is an open source NAS, so network attached storage, it is based on an embedded
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version of FreeBSD, called NanoBSD, it's released under a two clause BSD license.
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In addition to FreeNAS, you can also purchase hardware that FreeNAS runs on, as well as
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support packages, and that whole bundle is called TrueNAS, so TrueNAS is still the open
|
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source FreeNAS, but you get hardware and support with it, for those running it in an enterprise
|
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environment.
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So when we look at FreeNAS, FreeNAS started about seven or eight years ago, there was
|
||||
a guy in France, he took an embedded version of FreeBSD, it was actually monowall, and
|
||||
he turned it into a network storage appliance and released it, and a large community actually
|
||||
grew around it, because there was all kinds of cool stuff that you could do, and you could
|
||||
basically take any piece of hardware and turn it into a storage appliance.
|
||||
About two years ago, the main developer decided he didn't have time to work on a project
|
||||
anymore, and there was sort of a big discussion, what do we do going forward?
|
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One of the other developers says, well, what I'll do is I'll forget, we'll release it
|
||||
under GPL, and it'll be based on devian instead of FreeBSD, and there are people that didn't
|
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like that, they liked that it was a BSD license, and wanted to see it remain on FreeBSD.
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So there was sort of discussion, where do we go from here?
|
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And one of the reasons that discussion took place is when the original FreeNAS was developed,
|
||||
it was basically developer scratching an itch, and he just took a whole bunch of software
|
||||
and bundled it together.
|
||||
So it wasn't really designed from the ground up to be a Sam, and over time, it became
|
||||
very hard to be able to manage all these pieces of software.
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||||
So the guy who decided to fork it as a GPL started the Open Media Vault project, so OpenMV.org,
|
||||
and he designed it one way.
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Another group of people said, well, let's keep under BSD license, let's take an embedded
|
||||
version of FreeBSD, and then we'll make a design as well, and we'll design it
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from the ground up to be a storage appliance.
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Obviously it takes a lot of time to design something from scratch, so it took about two
|
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years to get an initial release, and that happened last May.
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||||
And what they did to differentiate is FreeNAS was at 0.7 when they did the split, so they
|
||||
created a new branch called 8, and that will be the new design branch.
|
||||
The initial release was last May, and the most current release is 804, so still the
|
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80 branch, and that happened on leap day of this year.
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804 was actually just a bug fixed release, and it's going to be the last one in the 80 line.
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||||
When we look at what they did with the design, 80, so that zero was designed to just be
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||||
the coronas itself, and the next release will be 82, and this one will allow you to install
|
||||
whatever software you want on your storage appliance, so it's going to be the differentiation
|
||||
between those two branches.
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||||
82 is currently in beta, and we are looking for beta testers, and we're hoping to have
|
||||
a release in about three to four weeks.
|
||||
Nobody who's used 7 before probably hates FreeNAS 8, because it's basically totally redesigned
|
||||
from the ground up, and some of the things you're going to notice right away, number one,
|
||||
is the hardware requirements.
|
||||
So almost the slogan for FreeNAS 7 was, take any piece of hardware, dig it out of your
|
||||
basement, get it out of your friend's garage, and you can turn that into a storage appliance,
|
||||
so very lightweight on the hardware.
|
||||
With FreeNAS 8, a lot of the features are tied into ZFS, and if you're familiar with
|
||||
ZFS, probably an alias for is RAM.
|
||||
ZFS is a very RAM hungry, and you need a lot of RAM to get the functionality that you
|
||||
want and to get good performance.
|
||||
So with 8, the hardware requirements have gone up, you can still install on low end hardware,
|
||||
but you're going to want to stick with UFS, because it won't crawl on it, and some of
|
||||
the features won't be available, because some are built into ZFS.
|
||||
The other thing that a lot of people notice is because it's designed to be a sand, you
|
||||
want to keep your operating system separate from your storage.
|
||||
So in FreeNAS 7, you could take a partition of a disk and install the OS on it.
|
||||
FreeNAS 8 will not allow you to do that.
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||||
If you do, you just basically sacrifice that whole disk.
|
||||
So it's designed to go on USB thumb drive, so the OS is separate.
|
||||
Or if you have flash, you can also install on flash.
|
||||
It will let you put it on a hard drive, but if you do, you can't put anything else
|
||||
on that hard drive.
|
||||
So basically if it's figuring two gigs, you just wasted that hard drive.
|
||||
So it's designed to go on USB.
|
||||
Anybody who's used to using the administrative interface in 7 will really have to spend
|
||||
time learning how to do 8, because it's totally different.
|
||||
So everything that you're used to doing is now done someplace else.
|
||||
So like any change in a user interface, it always takes time to get used to.
|
||||
Some people say they like 8 better once they get used to it, and some people still like
|
||||
7 better.
|
||||
That also means this was a bigger problem a year ago when FreeNAS 8 was new.
|
||||
All the information out there on the web was for FreeNAS 7.
|
||||
So if you're following a how-to, it didn't work on 8.
|
||||
Fortunately, we now have a year's worth of documentation for 8, so documentation is
|
||||
no longer an issue on how to do things.
|
||||
And one of the things that the FreeNAS 7 community found out is what exactly is Quarantinez
|
||||
and what isn't add-on, because up to this point until 8.2 is out, anything that was an
|
||||
add-on was just not available.
|
||||
So a lot of features that people were used to were in FreeNAS 8 as of yet.
|
||||
So let's take a look at some of these features.
|
||||
So we're based on FreeBSD, so that means you're going to get the Unix file system, UFS.
|
||||
ZFS has also been built into FreeBSD, and it's been production-ready, probably for
|
||||
last four years, because the BSD license is not incompatible with the Suncutta license.
|
||||
So ZFS is built in.
|
||||
When you are feeding disk to FreeNAS, you have a couple of choices.
|
||||
So if you already have hardware-rate with disks, it will recognize the rate, as long as
|
||||
FreeBSD recognizes your controller.
|
||||
If you have existing UFS RAID 0, 1 or 5, it will import that in.
|
||||
And if you have an existing ZFS pool or RAID C, 1 or RAID C2, it will also recognize those.
|
||||
If you have no rate at all, you just have a single disk.
|
||||
It will recognize anything formatted with UFS, DOS, NTFS, or EXT 2 or 3.
|
||||
And if you have brand new disks, you can put them in any form of RAID, either hardware,
|
||||
UFS or ZFS.
|
||||
Once you have your disks, FreeNAS is recognizing them, you get to choose how do I want to
|
||||
actually share this data over the network.
|
||||
And to be an open source, we support the open source protocols, so there is not a talk,
|
||||
NFS and CFS or Windows.
|
||||
You can also decide to do FTP, secure FTP access, SSH and I SCSI.
|
||||
It's not documented yet, because I haven't gotten there yet.
|
||||
But 8.2 also supports WebDap, because of the built-in web server.
|
||||
When you're looking at how do you get users on the FreeNAS, how to control your permissions,
|
||||
you can either manually create them.
|
||||
But if you have an existing open LDAP or active directory already set up, it will import
|
||||
those users in for you.
|
||||
One of the things that we get with ZFS is we can get snapshots and you can replicate
|
||||
those in the system to another system with ZFS using our SYNC and SSH.
|
||||
And you can actually automate that, so it just happens on the background.
|
||||
We'll be talking a little bit about snapshots and scrubs.
|
||||
These you can schedule for ZFS.
|
||||
Into the administration, there's front-ends to make crime jobs, so you don't have to remember
|
||||
where to put all your asterisks to get your time set up.
|
||||
FreeBSD uses something known as CETLs, where you can tune the system, so you tune a live
|
||||
kernel.
|
||||
So there is a GUI interface for that.
|
||||
And in FreeBSD, if you want a loaded driver that's not automatically loaded, you use loader.cop.
|
||||
And there's front-end GUI for that as well.
|
||||
You can load additional drivers and modules.
|
||||
The GUI gives you graphs, so you can look at your CPU usage, your bandwidth, network
|
||||
bandwidth.
|
||||
If your disks recognize SMART, you can schedule the SMART test and get the results mail
|
||||
to you.
|
||||
There is an automated alert system that will let you know, for example, if CFS finds a problem
|
||||
in your pool, let you know that if one of your drives is starting to go with a lot, you
|
||||
know that.
|
||||
And also, UPS support as well.
|
||||
So many other features we have, you can configure link aggregation and failover.
|
||||
There is VLAN support that only understands tagging, but if you have that on your switch,
|
||||
there's also DDNS, SNMP and TFTP support.
|
||||
So if you're saving, say, your Cisco images, you can automatically have them sent and
|
||||
received from the FreeNAS server.
|
||||
There's a bunch of services that are available in FreeNAS, none of which are started by default.
|
||||
So there is a control panel where you can go and start services and see which services
|
||||
are started on that system.
|
||||
And one of the things that we've worked really hard for as we are designing this is to
|
||||
make sure it's very well documented.
|
||||
So there is a user guide.
|
||||
There's been a lot of releases since May and every release has its own user guide.
|
||||
Because it's a new design, things are changing from version to version, so you want to make
|
||||
sure that your screenshots and instructions match the version that you're using.
|
||||
So we publish docs when the version is released and we have them available in various formats.
|
||||
So if it has time machine backups, it's very easy to set up in FreeNAS, shadow copies
|
||||
just work if they automatically configure themselves.
|
||||
One of the reasons why the OS itself lives on a USB stick is it makes it very easy to
|
||||
backup and restore.
|
||||
So you can backup both the OS and the config itself.
|
||||
And usually I tell people, backup, you're config, you definitely want that.
|
||||
But the OS itself is throw away, just grab another stick, burn it, and it will recognize
|
||||
your disk.
|
||||
You import your config.
|
||||
So the OS itself doesn't really matter.
|
||||
FreeNAS 8, you always access through web browser.
|
||||
One of the coolest things is I'm a command line person myself is there's now a web shell
|
||||
that works through the web browser where you can go in under the hood and run whatever
|
||||
commands you want.
|
||||
That's my favorite thing to do.
|
||||
Okay so I'll talk a little bit about CFS.
|
||||
So CFS was originally designed by Sun, which unfortunately is now owned by Oracle.
|
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It is a 128-bit file system, so very large storage capacity.
|
||||
And it was actually designed to be self-healing.
|
||||
And probably the best way to describe CFS is it's not really a file system, it's not really
|
||||
a logical volume manager, it's sort of a combination of both.
|
||||
So with CFS, it doesn't care what your underlying hardware is.
|
||||
It will just look at any storage you give it and it will manage it for you.
|
||||
And it has built into it routines that will let you know if there's problems anywhere
|
||||
on those disks.
|
||||
It was also designed to address hardware rate issues.
|
||||
So hardware rate isn't perfect.
|
||||
And one of the things with hardware rates, you had something called a right hole.
|
||||
And with CFS, you don't get that.
|
||||
So if you read even the Wikipedia article on rate, it will describe the right hole and
|
||||
how that's a problem.
|
||||
One of the things you can do with CFS is something called infinite snapshots.
|
||||
So if you wanted to, you could take a snapshot every minute and you have a point in time
|
||||
back up of the system at that point in time.
|
||||
The nice thing about snapshots, it's one of the difference between UFS and CFS snapshots
|
||||
is the only space the snapshot takes up is what has changed since the last snapshot.
|
||||
So you can actually have millions of snapshots not taking up very much space.
|
||||
And with Frenez because you can automate replication, once you have your snapshot schedule,
|
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you can send them to another system.
|
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So if you ever have to restore data, it's very easy to get to.
|
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Snapshots themselves are read only, but you can create something that's called a clone
|
||||
where you basically have a read right version of the file system at that point in time.
|
||||
So that's one way you can do a restore.
|
||||
And you can roll back to any snapshot.
|
||||
CFS, they recommend that you don't use hardware raid with it because CFS likes to control
|
||||
the disks itself.
|
||||
And it has something known as RAID Zs, which are various types of raid similar to different
|
||||
types of hardware raid.
|
||||
So for example, a RAID Z1 is basically the equivalent to a RAID 5, a hardware RAID 5.
|
||||
And with RAID Z1, you can lose one disk and you don't lose any data.
|
||||
RAID Z2, you can lose 2 disks and it doesn't matter where those disks are.
|
||||
So there's not limitations on what controller those 2 disks are.
|
||||
RAID Z3, you can lose up to 3 disks.
|
||||
One of the things you have to remember when you're setting up RAID Z and in our documentation,
|
||||
we have links to the ZFS best recommended practices to tell you how to best feed at your
|
||||
disk.
|
||||
You have to be careful how many disks you put in what's known as a BDEF because if you
|
||||
end up losing a disk, you have to do something called resilvering.
|
||||
And resilvering is fairly CPU intensive and it does take time.
|
||||
So if you had something like 40 disks, you wouldn't make a VDA of a 40 disks because
|
||||
if you had to resilver that, it would take forever.
|
||||
Instead, you would do like 5 disks and you'd make a bunch of VDeps and strike them together.
|
||||
So it's much easier on resilvering.
|
||||
When it comes to ZFS, it has versions and the versions change as features are added.
|
||||
So version 15 was what's right now in FreeNAS 8, so in the 8-0 series as well as the
|
||||
8-2.
|
||||
Sorry, almost as soon as 8-2 is out, 8-3 will be close behind it because we're waiting
|
||||
for FreeBSD to release 8-3 and they're currently in their release candidate stage.
|
||||
One of the big advantages that will come with 8-3 is we get a bump up in the ZFS version.
|
||||
We go up to 28.
|
||||
And the two big things that come in version 28 that are missing in 15 is RAID-C-3, so
|
||||
you can lose up to 3 disks.
|
||||
So also something called DDUplication, which is very useful in some environments and a
|
||||
waste of CPU and others.
|
||||
So if you, for example, are storing a lot of virtual images, you have a lot of duplicate
|
||||
data.
|
||||
DDUplication in the file system will consolidate that and get rid of the duplications.
|
||||
If you don't have a lot of duplicate data, you're wasting CPU, I do indeed duplication.
|
||||
Version 30 is the interesting one, that's one that has encryption, and that's the one
|
||||
that Oracle has not open sourced, and it's the one that nobody's holding their breath
|
||||
for Oracle open sourced.
|
||||
So in FreeBSD, because encryption is a big deal, they're probably going to end up writing
|
||||
their own way of doing encryption, rather than waiting for Oracle.
|
||||
Right now they're writing something called CFSD, which is a CFSD, and CFS outside of the
|
||||
Slarris commercial version was really lousy at monitoring.
|
||||
So it was really lousy at telling you when a disk was going bad, it wouldn't alert you
|
||||
of that.
|
||||
You'd sort of figure it out over time.
|
||||
So what they're doing is they're building a Damon that will let you know as soon as the
|
||||
file system knows, and they'll probably put encryption into that.
|
||||
But that's still in the design phase.
|
||||
Okay.
|
||||
So what's new in 8-2?
|
||||
8-2 is the one that's currently in beta's due out in a couple of weeks.
|
||||
The big thing that everybody's been waiting for is to plug in architecture.
|
||||
So right now with FreeNAS, you can set up your sharing, your disks, your good to go.
|
||||
If you want to do something like multimedia, so transmission, plug-in XMBC, any of those
|
||||
things, a lot of people are doing really funky things.
|
||||
They want to have a print server on it.
|
||||
If you want to have an open VPN server on it, right now you can't do that unless you're
|
||||
really good at free BSD, want to drop down the command line and do it from scratch.
|
||||
The plug-in architecture is pretty cool.
|
||||
It's 8-2 will be the first time it's out, so we're certainly going to find out every
|
||||
bug that's in the design that will get sorted over time.
|
||||
So what happens is we use something called the PBI format.
|
||||
So if you're familiar with FreeBSD, they have something called ports and packages that
|
||||
allows you to compile them yourself or to have a pre-compiled binary all from the command
|
||||
line.
|
||||
The desktop version of FreeBSD is called PCBSD and what it did was it created a wrapper
|
||||
program that took those command line installation routines and put it into a GUI, allowing you
|
||||
to use a GUI to install and uninstall things.
|
||||
FreeNAS is taking that PBI format and they've taken it one step further to integrate it
|
||||
into the web browser configuration utility.
|
||||
So basically there's an XML form that when you create the PBI creates all the fields
|
||||
for the configuration for that.
|
||||
And we're starting to get documentation on how to make those.
|
||||
So basically you download a PBI, you go into FreeNAS under plugins, you tell it where
|
||||
the download of PBI is, it installs it, and right into GUI it adds a configuration screen
|
||||
for that.
|
||||
And I'll have a picture of that screen.
|
||||
The documentation we're working on actively, so it will improve in time for release.
|
||||
So it's showing you how to install, make your own plugins.
|
||||
And right now built into 8.2, there is DLMA, D-A-P, and Torrent support.
|
||||
And those you're able to do from the GUI.
|
||||
The other thing that 8.2 added, which is more for high-end environments, if you have
|
||||
hardware that's capable of multi-path, it automatically sees it and it will show you
|
||||
that hardware.
|
||||
OK, so there's a picture.
|
||||
Those screens are going to change, because we're trying to figure out where's the best place
|
||||
to put this in the GUI.
|
||||
So right now this one has installed Firefly, so you'll see down at the bottom it says Firefly.
|
||||
In this screen I've clicked on Edit, and it's basically giving me a GUI front end to
|
||||
MT-DAPD.com.
|
||||
So anything that's available in that config file is now available, either drop down or
|
||||
type in in the Freenas GUI.
|
||||
Once you go and configure it the way you want, you click on Start, it starts, you type
|
||||
in the IP address of your Freenas system, and you get your Firefly web admin interface
|
||||
just as if you've installed Firefly.
|
||||
So that's how the plugin system is going to work.
|
||||
OK.
|
||||
So those are the features, we'll do a quick bit on the Configuration workflow.
|
||||
So this is mostly for the benefit, especially people coming from 7, like where do I go
|
||||
to get things set up, basically these are the six steps you want to do.
|
||||
So the first time you access the web browser is just going to let you in, so you obviously
|
||||
want to set an administrative username and password.
|
||||
You're then going to go in and let Freenas know about your disk, so you're going to set
|
||||
it up how you want your volume set up.
|
||||
You then need to deal with permissions, so how are you going to get your users and groups
|
||||
in there?
|
||||
Are you going to be importing them from Active Directory or LDAP, are you going to make
|
||||
them manually?
|
||||
You'll then decide upon what type of share to make and configure it.
|
||||
You'll start the service associated with that share, and then you test the configuration
|
||||
and make sure everything's working the way you want them.
|
||||
So set in the administrative credentials, so there is in the left there is an account,
|
||||
the admin account, you just go in and change the administrative user, I'm going to give
|
||||
it, don't keep the default of admin, give it a name, and then you can also change the
|
||||
password at the same time.
|
||||
So that's step one.
|
||||
Step two, you're going to have to figure out how to create your volumes.
|
||||
Do you have a couple of choices?
|
||||
If you already have UFS rate or ZFS pool just imported in, it'll see it and recognize
|
||||
it.
|
||||
If you have one disk already formatted with one of those file systems, you just import
|
||||
that in.
|
||||
Otherwise you go and create a UFS or ZFS volume, and the next screen will show you that,
|
||||
yeah, that one.
|
||||
So in this particular system it has four disks, going to create a volume called data.
|
||||
The stuff that you see at the bottom will change depending upon how many disks you have
|
||||
available.
|
||||
So obviously if you only have two disks, you can only set up a mirror or a stripe.
|
||||
As you add more disks, you can have different types of rate.
|
||||
If you're dealing with ZFS, you can also dedicate disks to be for your log or for your
|
||||
cache.
|
||||
And the documentation explains when that is a good thing to do.
|
||||
One of the things we can do is ZFS is once you've created what's known as the pool, you
|
||||
fed it all your disks, you can create things called data sets.
|
||||
And the advantage of a data set is it's basically like its own volume.
|
||||
So you can assign that data set to a user or to a group.
|
||||
So they'll have their own storage area.
|
||||
You can set quotas on data sets, you can set compression on them.
|
||||
So there's a couple of things you can do with those.
|
||||
Once your disks are set up, you're going to have to decide how you're going to be dealing
|
||||
with your users and groups.
|
||||
So as I mentioned before, those are your three choices.
|
||||
And then you get into how am I going to actually share data.
|
||||
So I now have disks.
|
||||
I want to get data back and forth.
|
||||
And what we recommend is you pick one style of sharing and only configure one.
|
||||
Because the last thing you want to do is to have Windows users looking at Apple's shares,
|
||||
saying, what are these weird looking filenames?
|
||||
I should delete those.
|
||||
You don't want that happening.
|
||||
And also, say if you're dealing with NFS that has no clue what users are, it only looks
|
||||
at network addresses, you're going to have a lot of confused users if you make some
|
||||
Mac shares.
|
||||
So you pick one that works for clients in your network.
|
||||
So if you're supporting a Mac network, go with an Apple Talk share.
|
||||
SIFS is actually good for any OS.
|
||||
The problem is, is SAMBA is only, it's limited.
|
||||
It's not multi-threaded.
|
||||
So you may find your CPU bogging down or slow things down.
|
||||
NFS also works with any other type of client.
|
||||
The problem is, is in Windows, if it's not a enterprise edition, you don't have a built
|
||||
in NFS client, though there are things that you can download.
|
||||
Typically, you pick one of those three.
|
||||
Depending upon the users in your network, see if you have people that are comfortable
|
||||
with SSH, just create an SSH one, everything's encrypted.
|
||||
If you have people who like to go through browser and look at an FTP site and get stuff,
|
||||
you can also set up FTP, SFTP.
|
||||
And if you need access to raw disk, you can use ice guzzet.
|
||||
When you're configuring the share, only go for one type.
|
||||
The part that confuses people is, when you're creating the share, you deal with permissions,
|
||||
but the permissions go on the volume or the data set.
|
||||
So that's one of the reasons why CFS data sets are so nice if you need to partition data.
|
||||
So if you're not just having anonymous access to your data, you want home directories
|
||||
that sort of stuff.
|
||||
Data sets are wonderful.
|
||||
And permissions can be set on a per volume or a per data set basis.
|
||||
Once you've set those up, this is the control panel for starting services.
|
||||
So everything is off by default.
|
||||
If you've configured, for example, FTP, don't forget to turn it on for else nothing's
|
||||
going to be happening.
|
||||
If you're working with CFS, you also have to turn on active directory if you're working
|
||||
in an active directory environment or LDAP.
|
||||
You'll want to test your configurations.
|
||||
You want to make sure people who are supposed to have access to the data actually do and
|
||||
people who don't know.
|
||||
And we have a couple of things to make it easy when you're troubleshooting.
|
||||
So there is something called enable console logging.
|
||||
It's one of the check boxes you can check.
|
||||
And as you're starting a service, it will tail our log messages.
|
||||
So if a service isn't starting for some reason, you can watch it go by and see what the problem
|
||||
is.
|
||||
One of the nice things now that we have webshell is just open up webshell and you can go
|
||||
in, you can read all of our log messages or you can read your Apache log file or whatever.
|
||||
It is an open source project.
|
||||
We are always interested in participation.
|
||||
And FreeNAS has always had a very active user community.
|
||||
One of the best things you can do is report bugs.
|
||||
So we do have a track bug reporting system.
|
||||
It's support.freeNAS.org.
|
||||
It's always nice to work out bugs before something is released.
|
||||
So we always have a beta and a release candidate cycle where we do want to hear feedback from
|
||||
people if something is broken or doesn't look right.
|
||||
The documentation as it is now covers all of the possible configuration options.
|
||||
So what screen you go to is going to look like when you get there, what you can type
|
||||
in.
|
||||
But it's not so much on the how to's, how do I go in and set up my media server, for example.
|
||||
So we're always looking for real world recipes on what a person can do with their FreeNAS
|
||||
system.
|
||||
There are forums in IRC and there's always people looking for help there.
|
||||
And we always want to know how people are using their FreeNAS systems and what they like
|
||||
about it and what they'd like to see improved.
|
||||
So definitely let us know if you blog about it or write a review.
|
||||
A bunch of resources.
|
||||
The last URL will be the URL to the slides.
|
||||
You don't have to madly write things down.
|
||||
So obviously we have a website, there's forums, the bug tracker, links to the user guide.
|
||||
So you can download every version.
|
||||
You can also see what's coming in the next version.
|
||||
There is an IRC channel and there's also a bunch of links we have instructional videos.
|
||||
There's mailing lists and professional support is available if you need it.
|
||||
And I think the last link is how to contact me and the URL to the slides.
|
||||
And we've got about 10 minutes for questions.
|
||||
Yes.
|
||||
So the question is how do you address backups?
|
||||
So built into it if you're using ZFS, you can set up for application between systems.
|
||||
One of the requested PBI's that we have is for Bacula.
|
||||
So you can set up your own backup system.
|
||||
So we expect a lot of the first PBI's will be backup solutions.
|
||||
Now, and it also depends upon the data.
|
||||
So for example, shadow copies work, if you're in a Windows environment,
|
||||
and the time machine works if you're in a Mac OS environment.
|
||||
There's a question over here.
|
||||
Yep.
|
||||
The command show is a full 3SD environment.
|
||||
Two answers to that.
|
||||
So in the shell itself, it is NanoBSD, which is a stripped down environment.
|
||||
Now the shell is pretty good.
|
||||
It defaults in the bash.
|
||||
You can also do TCSH.
|
||||
So you're going to have things like history, command line completion.
|
||||
Because it's an embedded version, there's no man pages, but all of the man pages are online.
|
||||
And when you're reading through the documentation, they're all hyperlinked to bring you right
|
||||
to the man page.
|
||||
When we are dealing with the plugins, part of the plugin architecture is because free
|
||||
nas itself fits on a 2GIG USB stick, you're not installing a lot of software there.
|
||||
So instead, when you create a plugin, you're creating something called a plugin jail,
|
||||
which is a free BSD jail, which is basically another free BSD, complete operating system
|
||||
accessible through free nas.
|
||||
That's actually where you're installing software.
|
||||
And once you, from web shell, you can access that jail and you have a full free BSD system.
|
||||
So man pages, you can do the ports thing if you want.
|
||||
If you're used to using free BSD, you can do anything you usually do.
|
||||
Yep.
|
||||
So when you set up your plugins, jail, it will ask you which volume you want to put it
|
||||
on.
|
||||
Correct.
|
||||
But at this time, it only supports CFS, and we recommend that you create a data set specifically
|
||||
for the jail.
|
||||
That way it's separate from the rest of your storage.
|
||||
Yes.
|
||||
So what are the CPM and ZFS?
|
||||
Do you want to run ZFS?
|
||||
So ZFS does something called pre-caching, and that speaks things up, and ZFS needs four
|
||||
gigs of usable RAM to pre-cache.
|
||||
So if you have four gigs installed, you don't have four gigs of usable RAM because you
|
||||
still have your OS, you got applications, that sort of stuff.
|
||||
And which means you're basically installing at least eight gigs.
|
||||
And depending upon your needs, that may still be slow.
|
||||
And it really depends what you're using the free nas system for.
|
||||
So we have lots of users that are just using it at home.
|
||||
They just want to serve their movies or whatever to the family.
|
||||
And they can tune ZFS to do it in a gig or so of RAM.
|
||||
And they're not worried about squeezing performance out of it.
|
||||
Now if you're using that little RAM, don't do a scrub, and don't do deduplication, because
|
||||
you will actually, you'll panic the box.
|
||||
It's just not enough RAM to do it.
|
||||
Now if you're looking at setting up a small network, say for a small office, it really
|
||||
depends upon how heavily that storage box is being used, and how you're sharing.
|
||||
So for example, and we have a lot of people running it say an ESXi, and that in itself
|
||||
has some RAM requirements.
|
||||
And what we'll use you to tell people if you really need to squeeze a lot of performance
|
||||
out of your RAM, you probably should either be using iSCSI or using NFS.
|
||||
So a lot of people will just change their share type and they'll see a performance boost.
|
||||
Now ZFS, because of the CIS CTL system, there's literally probably 60 ZFS CTLs that you
|
||||
can use to perform your system, but typically it's cheaper and easier to add more RAM.
|
||||
Okay, one more.
|
||||
You mean the GUI?
|
||||
It seems like what you have is something that's been used to save a lot of time.
|
||||
Correct.
|
||||
Yep.
|
||||
Now it runs fine in a virtual environment, so you can certainly install it that way.
|
||||
Yeah.
|
||||
Okay, thanks everyone.
|
||||
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.
|
||||
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
|
||||
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
|
||||
If you ever considered recording a podcast, then visit our website to find out how easy
|
||||
it really is.
|
||||
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the Digital Dog Pound and the Infonomicon Computer
|
||||
Club.
|
||||
HPR is funded by the binary revolution at binrev.com.
|
||||
All binrev projects are proud to sponsor by lunar pages.
|
||||
From shared hosting to custom private clouds, go to lunarpages.com for all your hosting
|
||||
needs.
|
||||
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a creative comments, attribution,
|
||||
share a like, free.or license.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user