Installing over ubuntu server

[Uranium-235]

I have a poweredge 1800 (dual HT xeon, 64-bit 3ghz) 2gb of ECC&REG ram

I have two 1TB hard drives in linux raid 1 (mdadm). Been using webmin for admining it, which stopped working recently (though SMB still worked), and a ubuntu upgrade attempt stopped it working too, its not registering a network name as the upgrade did not complete (albeit does boot to login)

what do you think the best way to go about moving over to freenas is?

I'm pretty much the ONLY user on this server (which I use as a fileserver when repairing computers, downloading software to other computers i'm working on), FS is EXT3

I see the 8GB minimum requirement? I read this is mainly a problem with ZFS. Will there be a speed issue if its really just one person using it? Will it see my EXT partition and read the raid data? It says it also requires an 8GB boot device? Is this required or can I install the OS in a hard drive partition and make raid1 with mirroring partitions including the boot sector and fnas os?

I'm thinking perhaps, taking one drive out, wiping the other, setting up partitions, putting the other drive it, copying data and initializing the drive with FN as raided with the second drive. Not sure how possible this is.

also, because I only have 2gb, is it possible to use an older version that is still 64-bit and uses less ram? would v7 be optimal for this? I don't need any great capability, just SMB

thx,
Paul

 

[dlavigne]

FreeNAS will not import a Linux RAID1. You will need to copy your data, install FreeNAS, create a pool, and recopy the data back. And yes the minimum hardware requirements are indeed minimum requirements.

 

[cyberjock]

There are no versions of FreeNAS, on this codebase, that is compatible with 2GB of RAM. Even the oldest available version in the archive calls for 3GB of RAM, and using UFS.

So I think you need to decide if FreeNAS is for you (and if so be ready to spend some money on better hardware) or decide FreeNAS isn't for you and look elsewhere.