Hello,
I am a newbie when it comes to both FreeNAS and ZFS. During the last few weeks I read hundreds of threads and thousands of individual posts. I've also looked at a large number of third-party pages with information that is frequently out of date or incomplete. I believe that I could have saved a lot of time had there been a User Guide reflective of the snippet of info I will post below.
Obviously, there are a many sharper knives in the drawer (community) compared to me; and that may include those few members with the highest post counts who successfully shutdown an otherwise potentially productive thread with a specious or otherwise vacuous reply within the first hour of the original post. Those good people should show more restraint and not do that. :)
Aside from the rock star personalities, one issue I see in the FreeNAS community is the notion of what is a Reference document compared to a User Guide document. There was a period in modern computer history when documentation existed in two general formats: a Reference and a User Guide. Today, with the exception of examples such as man pages, which is reference material, a lot of documentation is a combination of the two styles, unfortunately.
One clear indicator that the document you may be reading is a reference document is when it is organized according to features. The TOC reveals this. The FreeNAS doc at doc.freenas.org is reference material and apparently, based on the content of this help forum, not an effective User Guide. The experts point to this document as everything you would ever need to know to accomplish your FreeNAS goals. That doc did not work for me as a User Guide as much as it helped me as Product Reference.
After literally giving up on the aforementioned FreeNAS Reference, I just decided to try some stuff. 30 minutes later I have a solution that seems ok. I am sharing what I did because I want to know, sooner than later, if it has some inherent flaws or problems with use cases other than mine. I do not have time to perform all the tests necessary to give me (and you) total confidence. But this seems to work for me, so far.
In addition to datasets such as /Media or /Archive that we often want, I wanted one dataset (or share) that was like a home directory that I could use as either a remote working directory, or an archive of my home directory that I could update with rsync, or simply copy files to it, directly.
Does this work for other FreeNAS users, in some situations?
I will modify the above instructions based on inadvertent omission, lack of clarity, and/or forum feedback.
*** Please spare this thread from the editorial sniping from a handful of forum members. All I ask is, "Be nice."
Cheers!
:D
I am a newbie when it comes to both FreeNAS and ZFS. During the last few weeks I read hundreds of threads and thousands of individual posts. I've also looked at a large number of third-party pages with information that is frequently out of date or incomplete. I believe that I could have saved a lot of time had there been a User Guide reflective of the snippet of info I will post below.
Obviously, there are a many sharper knives in the drawer (community) compared to me; and that may include those few members with the highest post counts who successfully shutdown an otherwise potentially productive thread with a specious or otherwise vacuous reply within the first hour of the original post. Those good people should show more restraint and not do that. :)
Aside from the rock star personalities, one issue I see in the FreeNAS community is the notion of what is a Reference document compared to a User Guide document. There was a period in modern computer history when documentation existed in two general formats: a Reference and a User Guide. Today, with the exception of examples such as man pages, which is reference material, a lot of documentation is a combination of the two styles, unfortunately.
One clear indicator that the document you may be reading is a reference document is when it is organized according to features. The TOC reveals this. The FreeNAS doc at doc.freenas.org is reference material and apparently, based on the content of this help forum, not an effective User Guide. The experts point to this document as everything you would ever need to know to accomplish your FreeNAS goals. That doc did not work for me as a User Guide as much as it helped me as Product Reference.
After literally giving up on the aforementioned FreeNAS Reference, I just decided to try some stuff. 30 minutes later I have a solution that seems ok. I am sharing what I did because I want to know, sooner than later, if it has some inherent flaws or problems with use cases other than mine. I do not have time to perform all the tests necessary to give me (and you) total confidence. But this seems to work for me, so far.
In addition to datasets such as /Media or /Archive that we often want, I wanted one dataset (or share) that was like a home directory that I could use as either a remote working directory, or an archive of my home directory that I could update with rsync, or simply copy files to it, directly.
- Create a Unix dataset for Home under your pool. (/mnt/pool/Home)
- For each User, create a Windows dataset under Home. (/mnt/pool/Home/username)
- Via the Add User GUI, create a User for each user with default settings and browse to set Home Directory to dataset created in step 2.
- Change permissions on newly created dataset such that Owner (user) and Owner (group) are set to the username you created on FreeNAS server in step 3.
- Create Windows Share named Home for the dataset created in step 1. Make sure to check the checkbox "Use as home share".
- Enjoy your share from Apple OS X and Windows, both.
Does this work for other FreeNAS users, in some situations?
I will modify the above instructions based on inadvertent omission, lack of clarity, and/or forum feedback.
*** Please spare this thread from the editorial sniping from a handful of forum members. All I ask is, "Be nice."
Cheers!
:D
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