How do I get portsnap on FreeNAS 8.0.4 ?

[cyberjock]

Yeah. I've realized recently that those N40L servers are NOT powerhouses like I had thought. So you actually may see a performance hit upgrading based on the other thread you linked before. But you definitely won't know until you try. But you are DEFINITELY taking a performance hit using only 4GB of RAM. The caching is different if you have less than exactly 4096MB of RAM available, which usually means you have to have more than 5GB of RAM.

In fact, if you upgrade to 8GB and upgrade to 8.3 they might offset each other.

 

[joeschmuck]

As for building your own, maybe this link will help.
http://onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2000/03/17/linuxapps.html

In a nut shell it tells you that the linux.ko is part of the FreeBSD distribution and all you really need to do it enable it. Since I doubt FreeNAS comes with that ko file, you might be able to load FreeBSD 8.2 into a VM, copy the linux.ko file over, and enable it. I say FreeBSD 8.2 because that is what 8.0.4 was built on.

Then you need to install the runtime libraries which should be easy enough.

 

[stoooo]

As for building your own, maybe this link will help.
http://onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2000/03/17/linuxapps.html

In a nut shell it tells you that the linux.ko is part of the FreeBSD distribution and all you really need to do it enable it. Since I doubt FreeNAS comes with that ko file, you might be able to load FreeBSD 8.2 into a VM, copy the linux.ko file over, and enable it. I say FreeBSD 8.2 because that is what 8.0.4 was built on.

Then you need to install the runtime libraries which should be easy enough.

That's actually what I'm doing right now. But this brings us back to my original question... Isn't it portsnap that allows me to install the runtime libraries ? However, since the 'small Linux app' is statically linked, would it need the runtime libraries ? Wouldn't it have everything it needs already compiled into it ? Or have I forgotten what 'statically linked' means ?

 

[jgreco]

I'm not sure what the current state of FreeBSD's kernel modules are, but it used to be "Not A Good Idea" to mix loadable kernel modules from one FreeBSD system with a system with a different kernel configuration. In order to do this safely and successfully, it would be best to snag a copy of the kernel config used to generate FreeNAS and then build a FreeBSD kernel with that config. If you go about it that way, then it should be safe to copy over ko files.

 

[joeschmuck]

That's actually what I'm doing right now. But this brings us back to my original question... Isn't it portsnap that allows me to install the runtime libraries ? However, since the 'small Linux app' is statically linked, would it need the runtime libraries ? Wouldn't it have everything it needs already compiled into it ? Or have I forgotten what 'statically linked' means ?

Those are good questions and if you do not have to load the runtimes to get your Veeam project running then I wouldn't look back. But yes, I saw that too about loading the runtime libraries.

I'm thinking you will have to run all this in a jail. You said you had a jail setup? In 8.3.0-Release within the jail the portsnap command works. I see no reason for it not working in 8.0.4 as well.

 

[stoooo]

OK, I set myself up a FreeBSD 8.2 virtual machine. From that, I pulled off the linux.ko and copied it first to my virtual FreeNAS 8.0.4 and then to my physical one. The module did indeed load without any errors. The Veeam job still didn't run, but at least I now have fresh logs to send to Veeam support.

I have no idea what a jail is. I have seen the term bandied about, but haven't explored it yet.

 

[joeschmuck]

A jail is basically a container for another FreeBSD machine within the FreeNAS machine but it's isolated like a VM. To give it access to the outside world you create mount points, if you need to that is. You could install a jail into 8.0.4 but it's a pain so you are better off going with 8.3.0-Release to be honest. You might consider creating a VM of 8.3.0 and loading the Jails Plugin. Read the users manual on how to configure it, there isn't much to it. You can then add the proper lunix.ko and additional support files to this jailed machine. This may just be the easiest way for you to go and cost you less hours of your time because if you really do need those support files, well you will need to rebuild FreeNAS 8.0.4 with those files included. It's work.

God luck!

 

[stoooo]

OK, I see. Hmmm, not sure the little N40L will have the horsepower to run that, but I shall certainly investigate the idea. This sort of thing really is where having VMware comes in very handy.

 

[joeschmuck]

OK, I see. Hmmm, not sure the little N40L will have the horsepower to run that, but I shall certainly investigate the idea. This sort of thing really is where having VMware comes in very handy.

Not sure why the N40L wouldn't be able to handle it. The only concern I see is the low 4GB RAM but that shouldn't be a sizable factor in changing to 8.3.0. I would hold off upgrading your pool to V28 though and just try the newer version on a USB stick, but that would be after you find out if your VM version can support Veeam of course.

Yes, I own VMWare Workstation 8 and it's great for the little projects I do. It's a bit costly for a hobby but I enjoy it. For someone who doesn't want to spend the money, VMWare Player is free and full featured, can't be beat in my opinion for a free tool, and I used it for years before biting the bullet.

 

[stoooo]

Joe, I don't know if you realise or not but VMware's ESXi is free these days. They give away the hypervisor because Microsoft include Hyper-V with their current server offerings. VMware makes its money from support contracts and tools/extra features that help with managing larger environments. And ESXi is a lot more forgiving of hardware these days. It's not like the bad old days where you had to have drive controllers and NICs off the HCL or it wouldn't work. The VMware classes even run ESXi on ESXi so that all the students get an ESXi machine to play with but they can still run the entire class on one physical box. It has to be a beefy box, but it does function. So, if you have a spare machine laying around, you can dabble with the full blown ESXi for nothing more than the time spent downloading it.

 

[joeschmuck]

I've never used ESXi but I did know it was free. At times I wish I were more into the virtual stuff but I think time has past my by. My roots go back to punched cards and raw machine coding and eventually assembly language coding. It was a blast for sure.

 

[Stephens]

I sometimes tell the story of how I was pleased as punch when I finally got access to a punched card machine. Before that, I literally had to fill out the cards using a #2 lead pencil. Being able to just press a key and have the punch card machine "encode" it directly was heaven. I say that to say I hear you, but I just installed a VM for the first time the other day just to play around with it. I've been hearing so many people talking about VM's here (and other places) that I just decided to give it a go. It's never too late if you have a spare machine around. I did it because I had a 16-bit DOS application a client needs that won't run on my Windows 64-bit desktop. So I installed VMWare Workstation, then installed an old copy of Windows XP, then the old DOS application. It worked.

Come on. Jump in. Just do it on a machine that supports VT-x (Intel Virtual Technology extensions) if you can. And one that isn't a production machine. FYI, I've noticed that since installing VMWare Workstation on a desktop, things are a little slower and all my I/O goes through VMWare (it's always there) even if I have no virtual machines running. But that's probably somewhat of a misnomer. What I consider to be my "host OS" (Win 7 x64) is probably now logically really a guest OS on VMWare.

I'm actually considering getting a faster desktop just to run VMWare (or some VM). One really nice thing is being able to run a browser in a VM and blow it away periodically. I currently do this with Sandboxie, but a VM is even better for safe browsing. And since browsing is how seemingly 99% of viruses are spread these days...

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread, but I do hope you give VM's a try one day. You don't have to commit to it.. just give it a try. It was less painful than I anticipated.

 

[stoooo]

I don't quite go back as far as punch cards. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80.

The only real concern with VMware is memory. I run ESXi on a pair of HP ML110 G7 servers. Single quad core CPU rated around the 3GHz mark, which is reasonably quick. One of them has 16GB RAM, the other has 32GB RAM. In reality, when things are quiet, memory utilisation on these things drops to around 500MB. And that's with 12 VMs currently running on them.

The only thing I struggle with is accessing the consoles via the vSphere management application. I think it's because the NIC I use to manage ESXi on the boxes is shared with the Lights Out port. Accessing them via their ssh or RDP connections over their LAN connection on a different NIC port works flawlessly.

I first used VMware back in 2000 when it came bundled on my SuSE CDs. I had a machine in a class that simply refused to load Windows 2000 natively. So I stuck SuSE on there, put W2K in a VM and ran it full screen. The users had no idea. Strangely enough, it was the fastest performing machine of the bunch, even though I had only assigned 256MB RAM to the VM, whereas the others all had direct access to the full 512MB.

There are some amazingly clever things going on in the world of virtualisation. And if you have a chance to look into Veeam's bag of tricks you'll understand why I really want to make it work.

 

[joeschmuck]

Sinclair ZX80, I remember that and I soldered one of those together as a kit. That was the second computer I built. The first one was about 3 years earlier and was purely hexadecimal.

I also recall the punch card machine, something about mounting the card to a metal drum and then the punched card would spit out. Ah, it's a bit hazy now.

My main machine was built specifically with running VM's in mind. I have 24GB RAM, i7-930, two 240GB SSD, one 128GB SSD, and one 2TB drive for the larger files. When I was compiling FreeNAS (8.0.4 and earlier) I would create a 20GB RAM Disk and that is where FreeBSD would reside so I could compile very fast, I'd also have a VM of CVSUP so the FreeBSD repository was local on my machine vice running over the internet to grab it. Doing this on a hard drive, even a SSD would take much longer compared to the RAM Disk. And my VMWare Workstation is almost always running something.