Using FreeNAS without Internet Access or NTP

[Jeremy Janz]

I have been using FreeNAS for a while now and found it to be a great system. However, I live in a very remote place and our internet goes out every once in a while, sometimes for an extended period of a couple days. When this happens I have trouble connecting to the FreeNAS and it has trouble streaming files. When it first happened I went so far as to re-install the whole system to no avail. It was not until I reganed internet access that things worked properly. So I have three questions:

Can FreeNAS work without Internet access?

If not, does this have to do with the NTP? (Because I could hook up a GPS to my PfSense and use it as a NTP server for the FreeNAS)

Is there a setup for the FreeNAS that does not require the Internet?

Thanks.

 

[cyberjock]

FreeNAS works just fine without internet access. You will have to accept that there will be errors you will have to ignore, specifically with NTP. You could easily setup your pfsense box to use NTP and point the FreeNAS box to your pfsense box for NTP updates.

In FreeNAS 9.3 your updates will come from the internet in packages, but since you are only going to have to deal with the internet being down sometimes this shouldn't be a problem. You can just grab updates when your internet is up.

Likewise jails and plugins are downloaded from the internet when you choose to install them, so obviously you'll need to have internet at the time you want to install them.

Anyway, FreeNAS does work without the internet, but some things just won't be available to you.

 

[Ericloewe]

You could try setting up a second server as an NTP server to mute at least some errors.

 

[cyberjock]

You could try setting up a second server as an NTP server to mute at least some errors.

That's exactly what I was recommending when I said to use his pfsense box as the NTP server. ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

That's exactly what I was recommending when I said to use his pfsense box as the NTP server. ;)

Oops, completely missed the end of that sentence.