FreeNAS setup help?
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So I've got an instance of FreeNAS spun up, with the ZFS volume mounted, and a Windows (CIFS) setup, and it is accessible via the Web UI (reached by entering the server's IP). Everything on my network can see the FreeNAS as a device, but the connection is denied from all other PCs and Macs. Guest logging is enabled, and full Read/Write is enabled as well. To connect to it, I've been trying from both the Homegroup tab, and by navigating to \\IP\Drive\CIFS Partition
Any advice on how to get this to work?
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First.... why FreeNAS? It's just a lesser version of FreeBSD. Which begs the second question, why FreeBSD, it's not ideal as a storage platform.
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I'm sure you've already seen this post but it may help to double-check your work:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cifs-windows-sharing-guide.20948/ -
This is where FreeNAS sucks, more complicated than just using FreeBSD to troubleshoot. You have to know more to do basic tasks.
Have you checked the firewall to ensure that the ports are open?
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@scottalanmiller FreeNAS is more consumer friendly. Going to be using this NAS for Pictures, Music, and Videos, so I figured that FreeNAS was the better choice. Firewall ports are open (It's also on the LAN).
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller FreeNAS is more consumer friendly.
You've missed my extensive writing on why it's less consumer friendly
It's like a front wheel drive car. It's easy to sell to people as consumer friendly because it seems easy to drive when things are going well. What it lacks is consumer friendliness when things go wrong - when things matter. Like a front wheel drive car, it is easy to go fast in the snow, but when a kid is in the road in front of you and you need to slow down, a front wheel car wants to go into a spin.FreeNAS is easy to install and horrendous to fix. Way better to be a little harder to set up and easier to fix once up and running. Speed to setup is mostly pointless, time to repair is what matters. FreeNAS gives the impression of consumer friendliness, but not the reality.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller FreeNAS is more consumer friendly.
You've missed my extensive writing on why it's less consumer friendly
It's like a front wheel drive car. It's easy to sell to people as consumer friendly because it seems easy to drive when things are going well. What it lacks is consumer friendliness when things go wrong - when things matter. Like a front wheel drive car, it is easy to go fast in the snow, but when a kid is in the road in front of you and you need to slow down, a front wheel car wants to go into a spin.Off topic... but I love the analogy. I'm going to steal it.
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@scottalanmiller Hmm. Well, I suppose I can do FreeBSD then, but I do want to know what I'm doing wrong here, first.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@scottalanmiller Going to be using this NAS for Pictures, Music, and Videos, so I figured that FreeNAS was the better choice.
Having looking into this a lot, I know of no use case where FreeNAS is the best choice. Because for reliability you must be more of a FreeBSD expert than you need to be to use FreeBSD reliably, it fails in every use case.
FreeBSD itself is not nearly as well known as Linux. And Linux is overall better for storage (FreeBSD is better for networking.) So FreeNAS isn't just extra hard on its own, but it introduces FreeBSD making things harder still.
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@scottalanmiller But does FreeBSD also support AFP, NFS, and CIFS compatibility?
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For personal use, it only matters so much. It's up to you what you want to do with the storage. But I would advice against FreeNAS. No real upsides and leaves you hanging when you need assistance the most.
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A big advantage to using Linux or FreeBSD directly is that the experience equates directly to something very useful for IT in general. Using FreeNAS doesn't really train you on business gear so you don't get the personal enrichment value that a project like this can bring.
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@scottalanmiller
It's another type of system I can work with, so I'll figure out what I did wrong with this one, and then do the other. -
@Mike-Ralston said:
It's another type of system I can work with, so I'll figure out what I did wrong with this one, and then do the other.
Sure, all learning is good learning. Some is more efficient though. If you want to learn the most, do straight FreeBSD and then OpenSuse.
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I like FreeBSD myself. Never used FreeNAS in a buinsess environment. If you are going with something that simple it usually will end up being just a windows file server based NAS.
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I'd look at GlusterFS on centos over freenas
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I'd look at GlusterFS on centos over freenas
If building a cluster, definitely.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I like FreeBSD myself.
I love it, just not for storage tasks generally. It's its one major architectural weak point.
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@coliver said:
I'm sure you've already seen this post but it may help to double-check your work:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cifs-windows-sharing-guide.20948/I followed all of these steps, and everything looks to be set up properly, except, I can't enable the CIFS service, and it doesn't tell me why. It just says "This Service Could Not Be Started".
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@coliver said:
I'm sure you've already seen this post but it may help to double-check your work:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/cifs-windows-sharing-guide.20948/I followed all of these steps, and everything looks to be set up properly, except, I can't enable the CIFS service, and it doesn't tell me why. It just says "This Service Could Not Be Started".
If I remember correctly that means that something is wrong with your config file. I haven't worked with CIFS shares on Linux in a while... Can you look into the log and see if there is an issue there? Generally it says the line number an error occurred on.
