Please help: FreeNAS direct connect w/ Mac

[SweetAndLow]

It should be /24, because 192. is in Class C space. You can subdivide a network, but shouldn't go larger than its class--so 10.2.3.0/24 is valid, but 192.168.1.0/16 isn't. I haven't seen consumer routers using /16 subnets in Class C space, but I'm sure it could happen.

Was just about to post the exact same response.

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[zejohn]

Hi all,

Thanks for all your help! I was so pleasantly surprised.

I found the 100mbps bottleneck to be the Apple usb ethernet adapter I'm using. It's not gigabit, just 100mbps. Facepalm.

Still, though, that does not solve the problem of not being able to directly connect. I'll probably go through the router through the time being, but I'd really like to figure out this direct connection interface for when I eventually go to 10gbps Ethernet. I'll try out all your suggestion in ~5 hours when I get home.

I also checked my speeds last night to make sure the drives themselves were fast enough, and was shocked to find them to be quite slow (on a relative scale). Roughly 200 mBps read/write speeds, when I know they should easily be able to get 600 mBps. I'm running 6x4TB drives on RaidZ2. Everywhere I've looked online says 600mBps is easily achieved. I know I won't be able to get to this speed on a gigabit Ethernet line, but for when I eventually upgrade to 10gb, this will be a big bottleneck. Any ideas on how to debug this? I found these speeds by using the dd commands found everywhere on FreeNAS. I'll probably go home tonight and wipe everything to Raid0 and post what speeds I see then. Might be a Raidz2 problem. Not sure.

Anyway, so those are my main two priorities. 1) Direct connection via Ethernet to the FreeNAS. 2) slow drive read/write speeds. I'll try everything you guys already mentioned for number 1. Thanks for all your help! Follow up post to come soon.

 

[wblock]

Is there no way to do this by connecting directly to the FreeNAS w/o a router?

Maybe. Effectively, you end up making the FreeNAS system into a router. That will expose it to whatever is on the other end of the incoming Ethernet, so it needs a firewall, which is something FreeNAS is not made to do and will require some non-trivial hackery on your part. Then make it also be a gateway, so your Mac on the inside of the firewall can talk to devices on the other side of the FreeNAS system.

Then you can install jails to provide the services that a router would provide, primarily DHCP.

I don't think modifying the FreeNAS system to do this sort of stuff is a good idea. Particularly when even a cheap router will do the same stuff without modifying the FreeNAS system. For that matter, even a switch would allow the Mac to access the FreeNAS system and the net at the same time, again without modifying the FreeNAS system at all. A router with a firewall would be better, though.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Hi all,

Thanks for all your help! I was so pleasantly surprised.

I found the 100mbps bottleneck to be the Apple usb ethernet adapter I'm using. It's not gigabit, just 100mbps. Facepalm.

Still, though, that does not solve the problem of not being able to directly connect. I'll probably go through the router through the time being, but I'd really like to figure out this direct connection interface for when I eventually go to 10gbps Ethernet. I'll try out all your suggestion in ~5 hours when I get home.

I also checked my speeds last night to make sure the drives themselves were fast enough, and was shocked to find them to be quite slow (on a relative scale). Roughly 200 mBps read/write speeds, when I know they should easily be able to get 600 mBps. I'm running 6x4TB drives on RaidZ2. Everywhere I've looked online says 600mBps is easily achieved. I know I won't be able to get to this speed on a gigabit Ethernet line, but for when I eventually upgrade to 10gb, this will be a big bottleneck. Any ideas on how to debug this? I found these speeds by using the dd commands found everywhere on FreeNAS. I'll probably go home tonight and wipe everything to Raid0 and post what speeds I see then. Might be a Raidz2 problem. Not sure.

Anyway, so those are my main two priorities. 1) Direct connection via Ethernet to the FreeNAS. 2) slow drive read/write speeds. I'll try everything you guys already mentioned for number 1. Thanks for all your help! Follow up post to come soon.

What dd command? Your should use dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/pool/dataset/30gig bs=1M count=30000

This should be run on a dataset without compression.

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[danb35]

Everywhere I've looked online says 600mBps is easily achieved.

600 millibytes per second? That's an odd unit of measure. You probably mean Mbps, megabits per second. And what is telling you that you can get that kind of throughput from spinning rust? Or does your server run all SSDs?

Edit: In any event, yes, you should be able to directly connect your Mac (or any other computer) to the FreeNAS box, even if it is mostly a pointless exercise. But in so doing, the Mac won't have Internet access, unless you write a router and firewall from scratch in a jail on the FreeNAS server. Or do what @wblock suggests, and get a router so you can have your own network in your dorm room.

 

[zejohn]

What dd command? Your should use dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/pool/dataset/30gig bs=1M count=30000

This should be run on a dataset without compression.

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Yep, that's what I did!

600 millibytes per second? That's an odd unit of measure. You probably mean Mbps, megabits per second. And what is telling you that you can get that kind of throughput from spinning rust? Or does your server run all SSDs?

I meant MBps, or Megabytes, not bits, per second. I'm running 6 wd red 4tb drives, and they each are rated for ~150 MBps so I should be seeing at least 600 MBps if not more with 6 of them in raidz2