New to Freenas (going in circles)

[TheDubiousDubber]

I have seriously been trying things over and over again, I have been trying to get freeness configured today and for hours at a time last night, and I cannot figure it out. The documentation found at doc.freenas.org is helpful, but not very detailed when it comes to all the options available during setup. I am trying to get this box working as a media server. I would like to download using SABnzbd (couch potato/sickbeard) and stream content to my HTPC using the Plex plugin. However, I haven't even gotten to the plugins yet because I don't understand how to set this thing up. It appears the guides out there I either can't understand, or are too vague or don't apply to my setup. How does a noob like me get started? I am a truly lost and need some serious help.

Edit: It is possible that most of the frustration applies to permissions and the setup of users and groups, but it seems like there is little help out there when it comes to this. I realize there is no cookie cutter setup to permissions, but if this is such a problem to understand is there some kind of info out there that someone can direct me towards so I can learn it?

 

[joeschmuck]

I won't tell you that it's easy to setup FreeNAS although most people who use it don't have much of an issue getting it initially established. I would first get it set up for general file sharing and once you have that done, then maybe start setting up user accounts, although I don't believe you need to do that for the purposes you have stated. Installing the plugins and configuring those might take you a little bit of reading, there is no instant gratification here, not yet.

My suggestion is to write down what you want to do and then do one thing at a time, not all at once. Read the user manual and the forums and until we get a good search engine, use Google to search like "freenas plex" and then check out the results. Good Luck.

 

[TheDubiousDubber]

Thanks for the suggestion. To start off, I guess I need to know what to start with. Although I have an almost entirely Apple environment. I don't know if I should be using CIFS instead of AFP as Apple is making the move to SMB3. I think AFP might make it easier, but all of the posts I've found reference CIFS when configuring setups so there isn't much to go off of other than the guide which as I said previously is limited in its information.

 

[Ericloewe]

Thanks for the suggestion. To start off, I guess I need to know what to start with. Although I have an almost entirely Apple environment. I don't know if I should be using CIFS instead of AFP as Apple is making the move to SMB3. I think AFP might make it easier, but all of the posts I've found reference CIFS when configuring setups so there isn't much to go off of other than the guide which as I said previously is limited in its information.

CIFS is probably the better option.

 

[TheDubiousDubber]

Alright, so I'm going step by step here. I've created a single pool (raidz2 of 6x2TB drives) and named it 'media'. I've then created a single share using CIFS and called it 'Malcolm' with a path of /mnt/media. I've create a single user 'myname' and a single group 'Admin'. I've made my user a member of the group. Under the storage tab I've changed permissions on the 'media' volume to owner:nobody and group:Admin, The checkboxes equate to permissions of 775 and I checked the box to make permissions recursive. After doing this I can mount the volume Malcolm, but I can't do anything. I can't create a folder or copy over a folder. I don't know what I'm doing wrong here.

 

[anodos]

Not a Mac user and so my help will be limited. Just a few quick pointers
1) create datasets for shares. I.e. /mnt/media/Malcolm
2) set acltype for shares to windows/Mac.
3) set ownership of shares to "yourname:admin"
4) don't ever change acltype or permissions for /mnt/media. You run the risk of clobbering your .system dataset.
4) use whatever tools macs have for editing windows acls to set permissions.

 

[pschatz100]

1) create datasets for shares. I.e. /mnt/media/Malcolm

Very good advice. You should create at least one dataset on your volume before setting up shares and loading data. Depending upon how you want to manage your data, you can set up folders or additional datasets within the first dataset. It is not wise to change system characteristics (permissions, etc) on the volumes themselves.

If you don't understand what datasets are, then read up - you will be glad you did. Datasets will make the management of your system easier, and if you do something bad inside a dataset it will most likely be confined to that dataset without damaging the entire system.

 

[mjws00]

Just use cifs/smb for your macs, it will play nicely. Create a separate dataset for your timemachine backups. If you use the walkthrough in the manual it will work well. No choice to but to use AFP for that. But that is the only place you need it. You don't need to worry about multiple protocols locking files or anything nasty if you only use it there.

I thought the video walkthroughs were very simple to follow and worked well.

Good luck this stuff can be a little tricky. Especially when mixing OSes.

 

[rogerh]

I couple of other things I have found useful in a similar environment: have a separate dataset for TimeMachine for each Mac, each with a reasonable sized quota in GB, all shared by AFP. For each Mac dataset make a new user in the FreeNAS gui and set each user as the owner of the appropriate dataset. Then use the particular user and password for the particular Mac in the TimeMachine GUI. Then, without a deliberate attempt to connect, the Mac Finder will not be able to browse the TimeMachine shares, which is a good thing, and the Macs will not be able to steal each other's space. These AFP datasets can be accessed via the FreeNAS box's Hostname set in the GUI.

Then, if you use a *different* Netbios name in the CIFS service dialogue in FreeNAS, the Macs *will* be able to browse the CIFS shares under that name, and see the Freenas box in finder under its Netbios name, using an appropriate CIFS user (NOT one of your TimeMachine users) or Guest access, even though the (different) Hostname will also appear in Finder but will be inaccessible without deliberately using the TimeMachine user. Which latter you don't want to do except in TimeMachine itself.

Hope this is clear, please ask if it seems confused!

 

[TheDubiousDubber]

Thank you all for the replies. I've learned a great deal through some trial and error after following some suggestions here. I also appreciate the link to the video, I didn't think to search for videos so I'd been previously limiting myself to the doc and this forum. In my troubles figuring all this stuff out, I began looking into LDAP as a way of circumventing some of the permissions setup. Although it may be a bit overkill for my situation, I thought it may make dealing with permissions a bit easier. I have an extra machine laying around and thought about installing OS X Server to configure Open Directory. I've been using Macs for over 20 years so I'm very familiar with how they work, I know Windows pretty well, but Linux is still strange to me. So, I guess my question is how easy is it to configure FreeNAS's LDAP to work with Apple's Open Directory?

Also, another important question I had. I hadn't initially picked up on some of the settings when creating a dataset. Being I'm a mixed environment, but mainly Apple based, is it best to select Apple when creating the dataset or leave as UNIX?