installing and configuring nas4free on a windows network

7/24/2019 Installing and Configuring NAS4Free on a Windows Network

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Installing and Configuring NAS4Free on a Windows Network

Alright, so you’ve read my previous article introducing you to what a network attached storage (NAS)device is and you’ve decided to implement such a device on your home network. Awesome! So what’s

next? Well, now comes the hard part. Sort of. You see, I’ve done the initial research for you and here in

this article, I’ll walk you step by step on how you can simply get a NAS box up and running before the

day’s end. Granted, like I’ve said in my previous article, there are numerous steps you have to performand each step is equally important. One skipped step and you might have a file server not working howyou want it to. As another fair warning, following the steps presented in this article will only get youstarted with NAS4Free. However, you will at the end of the tutorial have a completely functional NAS box with a couple of files shares that will be accessible from the other computers on your homenetwork. There are many, many features that you can implement on your NAS box such as configuringa RAID setup to disk encryption. If you are completely new to NAS4Free and configuring a NAS boxin general, this tutorial is meant for you. Once you’ve gotten the basics down, then I would recommend

you to research the many other functions that this free operating system provides to enhance thecapabilities of your NAS box.

This article is intended to go into how to configure your NAS box. If you want an introduction to what NAS is and whether or not you should use one, then please read my previous article!

What You’ll Need

A dedicated NAS box – This computer will be your NAS server. The computer can be as barebones as possible! You do not need a fancy graphics card nor tons of RAM. If it turns onand boots, you’re good to go! Granted, NAS4Free does have a supported hardware list whichyou can find here. My advice is to just boot the operating system and see where that gets yourather than spending too much time worrying about whether your hardware is compatible ornot. I did notice that NAS4Free needed at least 512MB of RAM. It kept rebooting when it only

had 256MB. NAS4Free – The FreeNAS operating system is technically the operating system of choice for

NAS builders. However, I find that OS to be buggy when I first embarked on this project (itwouldn’t even let me create a single user as it kept saying I didn’t fill out the required fields

even though it doesn’t tell me exactly what those fields are!). I then found out that FreeNAS isnow operated by a different group of users hence the changes. NAS4Free is a version that is built on top of FreeNAS 7 series. During my experimentation, NAS4Free works magically andthat is why I am using it as the operating system of choice for my NAS box. You can downloada free copy of NAs4Free here.

Management computer – This is the computer that you use day in and day out. We will use itto do the majority of the configuration tasks once we have NAS4Free up and running.

WinSCP – This awesome utility allows us to FTP into our NAS box to perform configurationand maintenance. You can download the free utility from here.

Hard disk(s) – You’ll definitely need empty hard disks to use with your NAS box to actually

store your data. If you are just starting out, feel free to start with a single disk just to get a hangof how NAS4Free works. Once you are more comfortable with NAS4Free, you can easily addadditional hard disks in the future for added storage space. In this tutorial, I am assuming youhave just one physical hard disk installed in the NAS box.

A working network – You obviously need a connected home network to work with data to andfrom your NAS box.

A client computer – This is just a regular computer connected to your home network to testwith NAS4Free. You can just as easily use your own management computer or spin up a virtual

machine.

My End Results..

The demo I will be showing here is fairly simple. At the end, I will have a fully functional NAS box onmy network. I have two users named Alice and Bob that need to store their data on my file server. Eachuser needs their own private folder where only they are able to access it and no one else. However, theyalso need a general public folder to share files between each other when the occasion calls for it. Both

http://www.anotherwindowsblog.com/2012/10/what-is-a-network-attached-storage-device.html



http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=nas4free_users_hardware


http://www.nas4free.org/


http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

http://winscp.net/eng/index.php









Alice and Bob should have read and write access to this public folder. On both Alice’s and Bob’s

computer, they will map two network drives corresponding to the two folders I’ve just talked about sothat they can have access to them whenever they turn on their computer while on the home network.

NAS4Free Installation

1.

Burn the NAS4Free ISO to a CD or DVD.2. Connect a keyboard and monitor to your NAS computer. A mouse is not needed as there is no

graphical interface when installing NAS4Free initially on the NAS box itself.3. Pop the NAS4Free CD into the computer and boot from it. You can change the device boot

order by heading into your computer’s BIOS screen.

The beauty with NAS4Free is that it boots and loads very quickly as the operating system is verylightweight. Eventually, you’ll get booted into the NAS4Free boot option menu. Let the timer run downautomatically or press the number 1 on your keyboard. This instructs NAS4Free to start in the defaultinstallation mode. Here is where you cross your fingers and pray that everything goes well becausehere is where NAS4Free will probe and inspect your computer hardware. NAS4Free automatically

loads a compatible device driver for your detected hardware. Once you get to the screen where you areonce again presented with a menu option and you see that NAS4Free has been assigned an IP address,then congratulations because NAS4Free has been completely loaded! If not, then you’ll have to

investigate the problem and try again.



While you can run the NAS4Free operating system from a LiveCD (which is what you have at this verymoment), I would recommend you to actually install the OS onto your hard drive directly. Trust me,this saves a lot of headache in the long run. Although NAS4Free needs very little maintenance onceyou get things started, there will still be times when you need to reboot the server or if the systemcrashes. By installing the OS onto the hard drive, you can save the networking information on future

reboots without you have to reconfigure things. To start the installation, press number 9 on yourkeyboard and then the Enter key.

On the initial screen, choose option 3 and hit OK. On the next warning screen, read the prompt and hitOK again. This is basically telling you that NAS4Free will install itself on the first partition and it willautomatically create another partition for you to use as the “data” partition. In past versions of

FreeNAS, I believe it was impossible to use the hard drive you’ve installed the OS on as a data drive aswell. This lead many users to install the OS onto a USB thumb drive instead. Next, you select the



source to install from. If you’ve booted NAS4Free from a CD, this will be your source. Next, pick the

drive to install NAS4Free. This should be on your first hard disk. Next, you get to choose how big a partition to install the OS on. The minimum needed is 380MB. Finally, you get to choose whether ornot to create a Swap partition. This partition space is used to help boost systems with low amounts ofmemory. I chose to not create this partition. Once the OS is installed, you will get a nice warning prompt about how to use your hard disk when you later use the GUI management utility. Basically it’s

warning you against reformatting the drive!



Now that the OS has been installed locally on the hard disk, test it out by removing the installation CDand rebooting the computer. If all goes well, you should end back up at the console setup screen!

Configuring Static IP Address

Technically you really don’t have to perform this part of the procedure. It’s just that it has always beendrilled in my head that for any kind of server, it should always be assigned a static IP address instead ofgetting one from a DHCP server. With NAS4Free however, I do notice that it always assigned me thesame IP address upon each reboot.

As with any server or computer on a network where users rely on it for certain services, it’s imperativethat we assign the server a static IP address rather than it getting one from your router. However, frommy testing with NAS4Free, I noticed that it always assigned my NAS box with the same IP address of192.168.1.250. To play it safe, I’m going to assign it a static IP instead. For that we press the number 2

on our keyboard.

- First it will ask us if we want to use DHCP. My answer is no.

- On the next screen, I’ll assign my NAS box with a static IP address of 192.168.1.240. You obviouslyshould use an IP address that sits in the range of your own home network IP address range.

- In the subnet screen, I’ll stick with the default of a /24 notation.

- For the gateway address, I will leave it blank here because my NAS box does not need any outsideaccess to the Internet. Usually your gateway address is the IP address of your home router. However, a

user commented that his machines could not find the NAS server on the network until he issued adefault gateway address. Since there is no harm in specifying one, feel free to go ahead and do just thathere.

- In the DNS screen, I will leave it blank as well. Once again, I am on a home network and therefore aDNS server is not required for my machines to find the NAS box. Feel free to enter in an address here.Usually this will be either your router’s IP address or a specific DNS server of your choosing.



- For the IPv6 configuration screen, I simply skipped it.

Finally, NAS4Free will configure the network adapter with the options I chose and lets me know thatmy server can now be managed via the static IP address. To make sure it sticks, reboot your server andcheck if the NAS box is configured with the static IP address.



Time to Finally Get Started!

Still with me so far? Good because things are about to pick up! As far as your NAS box is concerned atthe moment, it is all configured and the next time you need to touch the box again is when you need toadd in additional hard disks! The second half of this tutorial deals with getting our hard disk ready,adding users and groups, creating directories and sharing out folders. Right about now, we should tryand initiate a connection to the NAS box from our management computer. Simply fire up a web browser and type in the IP address of the NAS box in the address bar. If you get the NAS4Free loginscreen prompt, you can then safely remove the keyboard and monitor attached to the NAS box. Theserver is now considered ‘headless’. Throughout your time following my instructions here, I would advise you to pay attention to some ofthe other features and settings that you come across in NAS4Free. Remember, there’s just too much tolist here and so I definitely will not be going over each setting in detail. If something strikes you asinteresting, be sure to follow up on it to see if you should apply it to your NAS box in the future.



Configuring Our Disk

First things first, we need to prepare our hard disk for use. At the login prompt, type in the usernameand password for a default installation of NAS4Free which is admin and nas4free, respectively.

If you are only performing a trial run of NAS4Free, you can leave the default password as is. However,you should definitely change the default password once you are confident that you will be using NAS4Free for good on your network. You can change the password by heading into System – >

General and clicking on the Password tab.

To prepare our disk, head into Disk –> Management. By default, there shouldn’t be any entry listedhere. Click on the blue plus symbol located on the far right side. In my demo, I only have one physicalhard disk installed and so that will be the one I import here. Fields that are not bolded are not requiredto be filled out. Therefore, I only select my one disk and hit the Add button.



At the next screen, notice that the changes have not been committed. We actually have to click on the“Apply Changes” button to commit the change. This is how NAS4Free works. Therefore, for the rest ofthe tutorial, I will not repeat this part so please remember to hit the Apply Changes button if applicable!

Once our disk has been imported and online, it’s now time to mount it. Normally, we would need to

perform a format of the disk but because we chose to install the NAS4Free OS directly onto the harddisk, it did this for us! Therefore, do not format this disk. If you have other blank hard disks, then youwill need to format it first prior to mounting it. You can do so by heading into Disks – > Format. Youthen select the disk and choose to format it with the UFS file system. Because I only have one disk inthis tutorial, I can go straight to mounting it by heading into Disks – > Mount Point. Hit on the blue plussymbol.



Here we need to configure a mount point for our disk. Think of a mount point as the starting place tostore our folder directories. Users on your network won’t see this mount point though but only thedirectories created within it. Here are the settings I’ve configured. Make sure in the Partition Numberfield box, type in the number 2. Partition 1 is where NAS4Free is installed at so we need to leave thatalone. For the Mount Point Name, you can use whatever you want. Under Access Restrictions, you cancompletely leave that part alone.

Adding Users and Groups

Once our disk has a mounted volume point, we can then begin to creating our users and groups.Basically, you should create a user account in NAS4Free for every user on your network. So in myexample, I will create two: one for Alice and one for Bob. This allows us to grant granular access permissions on shared folders. However, it doesn’t make sense to grant individual users access to thesame folder, which in our case is the Public folder. Therefore, we create groups and make users a partof that group. We then grant folder access permissions using those groups. This works very similarly toMicrosoft Windows.

First we create our group. Head over to Access – > Users and Groups. Switch over to the Groups taband click the plus symbol. You just basically need to give the group a name and description. Since thisgroup is used to grant users on my network access to the public folder, I will call this group Public.

Please jot down the Group ID number because we will need this information later in the tutorial.



Now we switch over to the Users tab. Once again, click on the blue plus symbol to begin creating users.I will create Alice here but Bob will be created similarly. Here, make sure to set the user’s primarygroup to ‘nogroup’ and in the Additional Group field, put them in the group we’ve just created above.

In my case, it will be ‘Public’. Once again, make note of the User ID number.

Creating Directories

Creating Directories

A commenter by the name of Caleb shared a great tip with us. If you have a lot of users and therefore alot of folders to create, you can simply create a parent HOME folder and for each user path location,simply use the variable of $u at the end of the path. So, the Path for any user will look like this: /mnt/Stor age/Home/%u/ . The main advantage of using this method is due to you not having toindividually create a folder for each user and also not having to set the permissions on them. When auser logs in and accesses the Home folder share, they will only get access to their own folder directory.When logging in to the File Manager as noted in the next step, please remember to log in with admincredentials and not with any of the user accounts you’ve created in the previous steps.

The next step in the process is to create the folder directories for our users. Note that this is NOT theshares themselves but just the folders. Head over to Advanced – > File Manager and login if you see the prompt. Here you see a visual listing of the folder structure on our NAS box. Don’t worry about all theothers. The only folder we need to work in is ‘mnt’. Within, you should see a folder corresponding to

the mount point name you’ve created in the beginning. In my case, it’s simply Storage. Head inside

your mount point. Towards the right side, in the drop down menu, select Directory instead of File. Inthe text field next to this box, type in the name of the directory and click Create. In my scenario, I willcreate three different folders within my Storage mount point. The first folder is for Alice. The second is



for Bob. The third folder is called Public. Don’t worry about the permissions because we will take care

of that next.

Assigning Permissions to Directories

With the directories created, we now need to assign the actual permissions on those folder. For that tohappen, we need to use the WinSCP utility. But before we can use it to log into our NAS box, we needto activate that feature within the NAS4Free OS. Head over to Services — > SSH. NAS4Free has manyfeatures but by default and for security reasons, most of them are deactivated. To use WinSCP, we need

to enable the SSH service. Therefore, click on the Enable check box on the right side. Also enable the“Specifies whether it is allowed to login as superuser (root) directly” option.

Now you can fire up the WinSCP utility. Under hostname, type in the IP address of your NAS server.Under username, use root. The password should be nas4free unless you’ve changed it. Press the Login

button.



Once logged on, head back over the the ‘mnt’ directory where we’ve created our three folders in the

step above (this is the directory listing on the right side). Here, we need to individually set the access

permissions for each folder. Here I’ll start off with Alice. Right click on the folder and select Propertiesfrom the menu. In the Owner box, it should be listed as ‘root [0]‘. Highlight this and delete it. Instead ,

we set Alice as the owner of this folder. Therefore, type in Alice’s User ID number in this box. UnderPermissions, you’ll see a lot of check boxes allowing you to set individual permissions. Rather thanfiddling with these, simply type in 700 in the ‘Octal’ box and hit OK. This basically says that only the

owner, which we set to Alice, should have full read, write and execute permissions on the folder and noone else. I will do the same for Bob’s folder but of course, I will set Bob as the owner instead of Alice.

With the Public folder, things are different since we need to give our custom group “Public” access

instead of a single individual user. The procedure is the same but this time we type in the group ID inthe Group field rather than in Owner. For the permissions, we set it to 775 in the Octal field.

Here is what I have in the end:



Once this is done, you can exit out of Winscp.

Creating Our Shares

Alright, there’s just one more thing we need to perform to put everything together! We now need to

create folder shares which maps to our three directories that was created (Alice, Bob and Public). Headover to Services – > CIFS/SMB. These two technologies are used in a Windows environment to allowcomputers to basically communicate and share files with each other. If you have Apple computers onyour network, you’ll need to enable the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP). To enable CIFS/SMB support onyour NAS box, simply select the Enable check box (right hand side). You can pretty much leaveeverything else set to the defaults. Just make sure the Authentication type is set to Local User and thatthe Workgroup name matches the one you are using on your network (which should be set to

WORKGROUP if you haven’t altered it).



With the CIFS service activated, we can now finally create the folder shares for our users to use.Switch over to the Shares tab. Here we will create three different folder shares with each mapping toone of the directory we’ve created earlier. Click on the plus symbol to add a share. You only need to

provide three key pieces of information. You can leave the rest of the options set to default for now.

First you need to name your share. This is what the users will see when they browse to your NASserver. Surprisingly, a comment is actually required so type one here. The Path field is the mostimportant so make sure you absolutely get this right! The path value specifies to which folder or

directory should the shared folder be mapped to. In my scenario, I will create three folder shares. Onefor Alice, Bob and for Public. The first share will obviously map to Alice’s private folder with the

second mapping to Bob’s private folder and the third mapping to the Public folder, respectively.Simply click on the browse icon to browse to the directory. Your folders should be located within yourmount point.



Connecting to the Shares!

We have finally completed all the procedures to getting our shares up and running with the correct permissions! Now it is time for the home stretch. Here, we will connect to our NAS server as userAlice on her Windows 7 machine. If all goes correctly, she should be able to freely browse both thePublic and her private folder in addition to adding data to them. However, she should be denied accessto Bob’s private folder.

So, if everything goes accordingly, Alice should see the NAS4Free sever on the Network list (if not,

please remember to enable the CIFS/SMB service):



When she clicks on that server in the network list, she will be presented with a credential prompt. Here,the user will type in their username and password that has been configured for them within NAS4Free(users might not see this prompt if the username and password for their NAS4Free account is the sameas their local computer account):

Once her credentials have been validated, Alice should now be able to browse the network shares onour NAS box as seen here:



Notice below how Alice can create files and folders in both her private folder and in Public Share:

Here is what happens when Alice tries to access Bob’s private folder. As expected, she is denied access because we made Bob the ‘owner’ of the folder and made it so that only the owner can have access tothe folder:

OK, so everything works as expected! The final thing we need to do is help Alice map those networkfolders so that she’ll have easier access to them from now on. All she has to do is simply right click the



folder she wants to map a drive to and select the appropriate option from the menu (map networkdrive). In the resulting window, the user just needs to specify a drive letter to map the drive to. Also,make sure that the option “Reconnect at logon” is selected. This makes the drive mapping permanent. In most cases, if the NAS4Free user account name and password is the same as the localuser account on the computer, the user might not be prompted for credentials. If however thecredentials are different, specify the “Connect using different credentials” check box to let Windows

know not to use the local user account for authentication and instead use the one on the NAS boxinstead.

Once done so, Alice can now access her shares to the NAS box as if those “drives” were a part of her

local computer! As long as the NAS server is up and running, your users will always be able to readand write data to their appropriate shares.

Is There More?!

If you want to learn how to remotely access to your NAS4Free server while you are away from home, please take a look at this article!

Well folks, if you’ve made it this far, then congratulations because you’ve made it to the end of thetutorial! In the beginning, I promised that by the end you’ll have a fully functional NAS box up and

running with folder shares set up with different folder access permissions. I think I’ve accomplished

that goal. However, there is a lot more you can do with NAS4Free than what I have shown here. This

http://www.anotherwindowsblog.com/2013/04/configuring-remote-access-for-nas4free.html

http://www.anotherwindowsblog.com/2013/04/configuring-remote-access-for-nas4free.html



“brief” tutorial is just the basics, believe it or not. Once you’ve gotten the concepts of what I was trying

to do here, then you’re good to proceed to a higher level of learning. This includes how to better provide security to secure the data on your NAS box along with implementing a type of resiliencyfeature such as RAID 1 or RAID 5.

In the simple model shown here, although it’s very bare bones, it can still be flexible. For example ,

from now on, I only have to manage new users, folders and permission settings. If a new user, Sally,comes along then all I would need to do is repeat the steps of creating her user account, adding her tothe appropriate groups, giving her access to her own private folder and finally mapping the networkdrives on her computer for ease of access.

I really hope that you’ve learned something here. Although configuring your own NAS box might

sound a little daunting at first, it’s actually not that hard to get started. It’s just that there are a lot ofsteps to follow. Your setup can be as basic or as complex as you want it be. If you are interested in ahome NAS solution but don’t want the hassle of building your own, please remember that you can

choose to purchase your own NAS device as well! Some of them comes with just the NAS device itselfwhere you have to manually add in your own hard disks while others already come pre-loaded withthem to ease the setup phase.

LAN interface and IP configuration

Once you have installed NAS4Free on a CF, HDD or USB drive and the computer has rebooted fr om

that device , and when the menu is up again,

"Console setup"

"*********************"

1) Assign Interface

2) Set LAN IP address

3) Reset WebGUI password

4) Reset to factory defaults5) Ping host

6) Shell

7) Shutdown system

8) PowerOff system

The default configuration of NAS4Free is to use the first detected NIC (Network Interface Card) withthe IP address set to 192.168.1.250.

Select 1 and enter the name of your Ethernet Interface (fxp0 in my case, yours may be different) Press <Return> at the Optional 1 Interface prompt, select ‘y’ and reboot the PC.

(This reboot step is an m0n0wall heritage; it should be possible to skip it).

Once the computer has rebooted and the menu is up again, select 2 and choose to use or not touse the DHCP client. If not, enter your IP Address settings (192.168.8.128 and /24 in myexample) and the proper gateway address.

Once the menu is up, select 5 and ping another device on the subnet and ensure networkconnectivity is OK (remember that it is not possible to ping a computer protected by a personalfirewall). Disable the firewall first.

FreeBSD doesn’t use generic network interface name as Linux (eth0 for example). The network

interface name is dependant of the drivers used:

fxp0 : For the first Intel EtherExpress chipset NIC found fxp1 : For the second Intel EtherExpress chipset NIC found bge0: For the first Broadcom BCM570XX Gigabit NIC found nve0: For the first nVidia nForce MCP chipset found etc…



Warning: fwip0 & fwe0 are firewire ports. If you see fwip0 or fwe0 on you port list, DO NOT use

it. Better yet, turn off firewire in the BIOS if you are not using those ports for anything.

NAS4Free transfer rates are very dependent on network transfer speeds more so than cpu andmemory performance.

If you experience slow transfer rates to and from the NAS4Free, connect the desktop directly to

the NAS with a crossover cable. Speed and Duplex settings can then be adjusted to test with thecomputers directly connected

The switch I connected to my NAS with required all interfaces to be set at auto negotation. Thecrossover cable will allow you to test/troubleshoot and bypass possible switch bottlenecks. The switch Iam using is due for replacement and the crossover cable isolated the bottleneck

Basic Configuration

Default login name and password

If you can ping another device from the NAS4Free PC, then from another computer on the samesubnet, point your Web Browser at the NAS4Free PCs IP Address (http://192.168.8.128 in thisexample) You should be presented with a login/password dialogue box like that shown here.

At the login/password dialogue Enter:

1. Default Username as admin,

2. Default password as nas4free

3. Select OK

The NAS4Free team strongly recommend that the default User name and Password be changed

before putting NAS4Free into production.

You should be presented with the NAS4Free Web GUI System Status page as shown on the next

page. The currently loaded version of NAS4Free is displayed on this page as well as other useful

information.

http://192.168.8.128/

http://192.168.8.128/



WebGUI Layout

NAS4Free web pages are configured with the Navigation Tree in the Left Hand side of the page andthe Display and Data entry area to the right of the Navigation Tree.

The NAS4Free Host name is displayed on this and all other NAS4Free WebGUI pages. This is useful

when more than one NAS4Free will be administered.

The NAS4Free host name can be administered on the General setup page.

Within the Display and Data Entry areas of WebGUI pages, some displays have additional controlssuch as those shown here:

1. - controls Adding another element

2. - controls deleting or Removing an element

3. - permits the user to Edit the attributes of an element.

Network Configuration

A lot of this should be determined by your network administrator (which may be you). You areresponsible for knowing and understanding the correct/proper settings to use in your network. Failure

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to use the correct settings may cause your NAS4Free server to work slowly, improperly or not at all.You are responsible for knowing how to manage your network and knowing the correct settings in yourenvironment . Incorrect settings in your network or NAS4Free may adversely affect performance ofother network devices/services or prevent them from working at all, so make sure you understand yournetwork before adding any new devices or services to it.

Network|Interface Management:

Your network adapters should have already been configured from the console after initial installation.Most often, the network is set for “auto”, and it detects the correct network card/driver. If not, you

should be able to configure them on this screen.

Network|LAN Management:

On this screen you can configure:

Use of DHCP or Static IP configuration

Gateway, one of the most important settings. This should have been configured already duringinitial set-up.

Whether or not to use IPv6 MTU Media Type (10baseT, 100baseTX, 1000baseTX, 1000baseSX, or autoselect)

System|General Setup:

Here you'll want to fill in:

Hostname

Domain IPv4 and/or IPv6 DNS Servers (If using static IP, otherwise, these should be locked)

You'll also be able to modify (if you want):

The WebGUI default username HTTP or HTTPS WebGUI port HTTPS certificate (if using HTTPS, otherwise not displayed) NAS4Free will self-create one for

you if you don't supply one. Private Key (for SSH machine identity verification)

Language (defaults to English) Time Zone and system time (or use of a time server)

System|General|Password:

Here, you can replace the default password.

Software RAID

NAS4Free supports Software JBOD, RAID 0, 1 and 5 configurations as well as Hardware RAID. This

section describes configuring Software RAID 5. The process is virtually identical for all the others withthe exception of using geom. Vinum (unstable).

Here is the FreeBSD module name and equivalent:

JBOD: Geom concat RAID 0: Geom stripe RAID 1: Geom mirror



RAID 5: Geom RAID5 (Thanks to Arne for developing this non official FreeBSD module!!)

All disks must be the same size for all RAID types with the exception of JBOD and Geom RAID5 (itwill be based on the smallest disk).

Important - RAID does not equal backup. Even if you create a RAID array you must still keep another

copy of your data in a different location.

The NAS4Free team recommends configuring each of the RAID Disks as standalone Storage Disksfirst to ensure they are fully functional and supported under NAS4Free. Once confirmed, remove anyof the mount points and Disks for the RAID drives to ensure a clean start. The following descriptionassumes that the drives have been confirmed as functional.

The High-Level process flow for configuring a simple RAID array is:

1. Add Disks2. Format Disks for “Software RAID”

3.

Create the RAID array using the previously formatted for “Software RAID” 4.

Format the newly created RAID array in UFS filesystem5. Add Mount Point6. Enable Services (CIFS, FTP, etc.)7. For CIFS you have to create share.

To remove a RAID array, remove the mount point first and delete the RAID.

Add the Disks

Follow the Add Disk process as described above to add each of the Disks to be used in a RAID array.

In the example below, I have added 4 identically sized hard drives.

Ensure the drives are in an ONLINE status.

You cannot use the 2nd partition of a NAS4Free boot drive as a part of a RAID array. Only wholedisks can be used to form a RAID array.

Prepare (format) the disks

Open the Disk:Format TAB, select each of the Disks in turn and ensure the File system is changed to

Software RAID, click the Format Disk button and confirm your action.



Repeat for all Disks to be used in the RAID array.

The result should be for example:

Erasing MBR and all partitions:

Creating one partition:

******* Working on device /dev/ad1 *******

Initializing partition:

Destroying old GMIRROR information:

Done!

Create the Software RAID array

Open the Disks/Software RAID page and choose your Software RAID type.

For our example, we select ‘Geom RAID5’:

Click the icon on the right hand side to Add a new RAID 5.

Enter a RAID name for the RAID.

Click and select each of the drives to be used in this RAID array.

Drives will not appear here unless they have previously been formatted as Software RAID

http://wiki.nas4free.org/lib/exe/detail.php?id=documentation%3Asetup_and_user_guide%3Asoftware_raid_configuration_management&media=wiki:documentation_setup_and_user_guide_basic.add.png



Click the Add button and when prompted, click the Apply Changes button.

Creating a RAID 5 array can take a long time:

But you can use your raid during the building process! (even if it’s in ‘REBUILDING state).

The status field will not immediately update.

Format the software RAID array

When the Status is up or rebuilding, then the RAID array must be formatted.

Open the Disk:Format menu and choose the newly created RAID array:

Leave the Type as UFS (GPT and Soft Update), click the Format Disk button and confirm.

A display similar to this should be output (example when the RAID 5 was in state ‘rebuilding’):



(You should have lot’s of more line as this example! On this example the drive was a small 200MB)

Create the mount point

Once the RAID array is formatted, all that is left is to mount the array. Open the Disk/Mount Point

page and click the icon on the right hand side.

From the Disk drop down, select the RAID disk. The RAID name you previously configured is visible.

Change the Partition to EFI – GPT

Enter a useful Share name and click the Add button.

The Status should display as configuring , and then click the Apply Changes button and the Status should update to UP .

Your Geom RAID5 array is now ready for use. If you have already enabled CIFS, FTP or NFS, thenthe array, with the defined Share name, will be visible across you network.

Software RAID array status

You can verify the status of your RAID array from:

Status/Disks page and select the Information Tab Disks/Software RAID/geom used page and select the Information Tab.

A healthy RAID array will show all the State: values as UP or COMPLETE.

RAID 1 and RAID 5 arrays may take some time to synchronise completely, be patient and monitor thestatus of the RAID synchronisation by continuing to refresh the Information page.

http://wiki.nas4free.org/lib/exe/detail.php?id=documentation%3Asetup_and_user_guide%3Asoftware_raid_configuration_management&media=wiki:documentation_setup_and_user_guide_basic.add.png



Replacing a failed hard drive on a gmirror array

Note - Supplemental step by step instructions for removing / replacing failed drives in SoftRAID1 andSoftRAID 5 arrays are available in FAQs:

How do I remove / replace a disk in a SoftRAID1 array ?

How do I remove / replace a disk in a SoftRAID5 array ?

In the case of a failure on one hard drive, your RAID ar ray is in the ‘DEGRADED’ state:

Here is an example with the RAID 1 array named “mirroire” in “DEGRADED” state with a missing

hard drive:

And we can check that the disk is missing in the Disk/Management page:

We can see that in our example, the disk da1 is missing.

First Step

For replacing this disk: Stop NAS4Free and replace this disk with a new one (in the same place on theATA or SCSI channel). And restart NAS4Free.

After restarting NAS4Free, the Disk/Management should display it back (ONLINE if it’s the same, or

CHANGED if it’s a different disk).

The Software RAID 1 status is still ‘DEGRADED’, we must add this new disk:

Second Step

Open the Disk/Software RAID/Geom mirror/Tools page and select your DEGRADED RAID array andaction “forget” (The Disk field is not used on this first action).

http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0059






Third Step

Still on this Disk/Software RAID/Geom mirror/Tools page, re-select your DEGRADED RAID array,the select the newly replaced Disk, and choose action “insert”:

You can now check your RAID status (Disk/Software RAID/Geom mirror): It should be‘REBUILDING” or “COMPLETE” (the time needed for rebuilding depend of your disk size).

You should check the Disk/Mount Status too, as sometimes needs a remount.

Replacing a failed hard drive on a graid5 array

In the case of a failure on one hard drive, your RAID array is in the ‘DEGRADED’ state.

Here is an example with the RAID 5 array “bigdisk” with a missing hard drive:



And the disk is missing:

First Step

For replacing this disk: Stop NAS4Free and replace this disk with a new one (in the same place on the

ATA or SCSI channel). And restart NAS4Free.

After restarting NAS4Free, the Disk/Management should display it back (ONLINE if it’s the same, or

CHANGED if it’s a different disk).

The Software RAID 5 status is still ‘DEGRADED’, we must add this new disk:

Second Step

Open the Disk/Software RAID/Geom Raid5/Tools page and select your DEGRADED RAID array, thereplaced Disk name and action “insert”.

You can now check your RAID status (Disk/Software RAID/Geom raid5): It should be‘REBUILDING” or “COMPLETE” (the time needed for rebuilding depends on your disk size).



You should check the Disk/Mount Status too, as sometimes needs a remount.

Software RAID configuration with geom vinum

Geom Vinum is all in one module permits you to create a software RAID 0,1 and 5 array. But, for themoment the NAS4Free team doesn’t recommend you to use it because too many users have met with problems using the RAID 5 option of this tool.

Complex Software RAID combinations (RAID 1+0, 5+0, etc..)

NAS4Free permits you to create advanced Software RAID combinations, for example:

RAID 1+0: Permits you to create a RAID 0 array using RAID 1 arrays RAID 5+0: Permits you to create a RAID 0 array using RAID 5 arrays RAID X + Y: Permits you to create a RAID Y array using RAID X arrays

The High-Level process flow for configuring a complex RAID X + Y array is:

1.

Add the Disks (4 disks minimum for a RAID 1+0, 6 disks for a RAID 5+0)2. Format Disks for “Software RAID” 3. Create the RAID X arrays using the previously formatted for “Software RAID” 4. Format the newly created RAID X arrays for “Software RAID” 5. Create the RAID Y array using the previously RAID X arrays formatted for “Software RAID” 6.

Add Mount Point7. Enable Services (CIFS, FTP, etc.)

Users and GroupsUsers and groups in NAS4Free follow the unix/posix model of permissions, instead of the windowsmodel of “rights”. Sometimes this is confusing for users that come from a windows background.

This guide is a good start for getting familiar with unix/posix users/groups and the related permissionschemes.

Access|Groups|Add

This screen allows you to create groups for purposes of your own choosing. Each group consists of a

group name, numeric group ID (GID), and an optional description.

Access|Users|Add

This screen allows you to create users. Each user account consists of:

Username Full name (optional)

http://cnl.web.arizona.edu/unixintro.htm#ownership

http://cnl.web.arizona.edu/unixintro.htm#ownership



Password Numeric user ID (or UID) Login shell (many users choose bash, accounts that shouldn't have shell access use “nologin”) Primary group Secondary group(s) (optional) Home directory

Additionally, the user can be permitted/denied access to the “user portal” (somewhat restricted form ofthe WebGUI)

Status Monitoring

Status|System

This screen provides a general system overview, including:

Hostname

Version and build information Detected system and CPU System uptime Last configuration commit CPU temperature(s), speed, and usage Memory Usage Load averages Disk usage

Status|Processes

This screen essentially contains the output of “top”, a system and process viewer with per -processmemory and CPU usage information.

Status|Services

This screen displays running and configured services. A green check in “enabled” means the service

should be running. Otherwise should not be running. A green check in “status” means the service is

configured. Otherwise isn't configured. (“Status” results aren't particularly useful.)

Status|Interfaces

This screen displays information about your network adapters, including: (for each adapter)

Name (driver) MAC Address Gateway Media (10baseT, 100baseTX, etc) MTU I/O Packets (count and size) I/O Errors and collisions (should be rare on modern networks) Status

Status|Disks

This screen displays information about your (configured) disks, including: (for each configured drive)

Disk (device name) Size Description (either detected from drive or user-supplied) Drive model and serial number (if detected)



Filesystem (as declared in Disks|Management) I/O Statistics Temperature (if the drive supplies this information) Status (online, faulted, etc.)

Status|Graph|Traffic graph

This screen shows a running graph of traffic on the chosen network adapter for as far back as the last120 seconds. The graph starts empty, but progressively fills with data. Once the graph is full (at 120seconds), the graph will start to scroll and discard older data.

Status|Graph|CPU load

This screen shows a CPU usage graph, very much similar to the traffic graph.

Status|Email Report

If Emailing has been configured, this page will let you configure the option of sending an email reportto an email address of your choosing, either instantly or on a timed interval.

Diagnostics and Logs

Diagnostics|Log

This screen lets you display or download relevant logs about the system. These logs include:

System SSH Daemon FTP (and FTP transfers) S.M.A.R.T. Rsync (client, server, and local) UPnP DAAP

Diagnostics|Log|Settings

This page allows you to control where logs are stored, and how they are displayed.

Diagnostics|Information

This group of tabs displays information about the following:

Disks Disks (ATA) (drive capabilities) Partitions (fdisk output) S.M.A.R.T. Space used Mount points

Software RAID iSCSI Initiator MS Domain CIFS/SMB FTP RSYNC Client Swap Sockets UPS



Diagnostics|Ping and Diagnostics|Traceroute

These options are used for testing network/internet connectivity.

Diagnostics|ARP tables and Diagnostics|Routing tables

These pages display connection/networking information.

Advanced Tools

Be aware that using an embedded install, many files are stored in ram, and changes to them will not

be persistent on reboot.

Be aware that editing the wrong files can damage your installation and render it unstable or unable

to operate correctly, and in some cases can make the system non-bootable.

Advanced|File EditorThis tool lets you manually edit files.

Advanced|File Manager

This page allows you to log into QuiXplorer to browse and manage files.

Advanced|Execute command

This page lets you do several things, including:

Execute a command (as if you were logged into the commandline)

Download or Upload files

Execute PHP commands

Diagnostics and Logs

Diagnostics|Log

This screen lets you display or download relevant logs about the system. These logs include:

System SSH Daemon FTP (and FTP transfers) S.M.A.R.T. Rsync (client, server, and local) UPnP

DAAP

Diagnostics|Log|Settings

This page allows you to control where logs are stored, and how they are displayed.

Diagnostics|Information



This group of tabs displays information about the following:

Disks Disks (ATA) (drive capabilities) Partitions (fdisk output) S.M.A.R.T.

Space used Mount points Software RAID iSCSI Initiator MS Domain CIFS/SMB FTP RSYNC Client Swap Sockets UPS

Diagnostics|Ping and Diagnostics|Traceroute

These options are used for testing network/internet connectivity.

Diagnostics|ARP tables and Diagnostics|Routing tables

These pages display connection/networking information.

Advanced Tools

Be aware that using an embedded install, many files are stored in ram, and changes to them will not

be persistent on reboot.

Be aware that editing the wrong files can damage your installation and render it unstable or unable

to operate correctly, and in some cases can make the system non-bootable.

Advanced|File Editor

This tool lets you manually edit files.

Advanced|File Manager

This page allows you to log into QuiXplorer to browse and manage files.

Advanced|Execute command

This page lets you do several things, including:

Execute a command (as if you were logged into the commandline)

Download or Upload files

Execute PHP commands

Getting Help

Help|Report Generator



Use this for generating reports or helping to supply information for bug reports. It won't generate anytext without “Subject”, “Description”, and “Error” having something filled in. You'll still have to figureout where to post or send that information.

Help|Forum

This menu item links you directly to the NAS4Free Forums.

Help|Information & Manual

This menu item links you directly to this wiki.

Help|IRC Live Support

This menu item links you directly to the FreeNode WEB client for IRC and the #NAS4Free channel

Help|Release Notes

This page displays the release notes file included with the running version.

Help|License & Credits

This page shows the License, Contributors, and Software used.

Help|Donate

This menu item links to the NAS4Free donation system with Paypal.

Upgrade Advice

Before performing an upgrade, visit System|Backup/Restore to make a backup of your configurationfile.

DO NOT use a embedded firmware upgrade if your NAS4free server has less than 384MB RAM.If a firmware upgrade fails (Broken Pipe or Mount/Umount related errors, etc), the only solution is tore-install from scratch. This will delete all data on the OS disk. This has no effect on data-only drives,

just data stored on the OS drive.

384MB of RAM is the minimum system requirement for upgrading any Embedded version of NAS4Free.

512MB of RAM or higher is recommanded for a better system performance

Backup Configuration

1. Navigate to the System|Backup/Restore page

2. In the “Backup configuration” area, click the “Download configuration” button

3.

When prompted by your computer, select Save, and a location on your computer to save theconfig file

Do not store the config file on your NAS4Free storage



System|General Setup

Using the Drop Down Navigation Menu on the top of the page, below the NAS4Free logo, click“SYSTEM” then select “GENERAL”. On this page you can configure and maintain very important

settings for your server.

Hostname

Hostname: Lets you set the name for your server that will be seen by DNS and *nix type systems.Domain: Lets you set the domain portion of your server name that will be used by DNS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System


http://wiki.nas4free.org/lib/exe/detail.php?id=documentation:setup_and_user_guide:general_system_options&media=wiki:documentation_setup_and_user_guide_sysgen_host.png





DNS Settings

DNS server settings are required to for NAS4Free to connect to Internet services and servers by nameinstead of IP address, like NTP time servers or to ping other network devices by name.

Up to two DNS servers may be configured on this page. A reboot is not required when changing theDNS settings.

IPV4 DNS servers: Allows you to set the addresses of two DNS servers. Usually your ISP or Network

Administrator will provide this information to you.

IPV6 DNS servers: Allows you to set the addresses of two DNS servers. Usually your ISP or NetworkAdministrator will provide this information to you.

Note - IPV4 DNS servers should always be available for configuration since IPV4 is enabled in NAS4Free by default. IPV6 DNS servers will not be available to configure unless you have enabledIPV6 in your LAN settings. IPV6 is not enabled by default.

Changing WebGUI Access Default Settings

WebGUI User Name

Username: This is the Username you will be required to enter when logging into the WebGUI.

Default Username: admin

Default Password: nas4free

*Changing the WebGUI Username will not modify the system root account Username.

WebGUI Protocol and Port

Protocol: This is the method our browser and NAS4Free will use to communicate so you can accessthe WebGUI. Use the Drop Down Menu to change the protocol to HTTPS if you require a higher levelof security when accessing the WebGUI.

Note - The default protocol is HTTP.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISP



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP

http://wiki.nas4free.org/lib/exe/detail.php?id=documentation:setup_and_user_guide:general_system_options&media=wiki:documentation_setup_and_user_guide_sysgen_webgui.png

http://wiki.nas4free.org/lib/exe/detail.php?id=documentation:setup_and_user_guide:general_system_options&media=wiki:documentation_setup_and_user_guide_sysgen_dns.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPs






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol




Port: Allows you to change the default port for accessing the WebGUI.

You can change the WebGUI protocol from the default HTTP on port 80 to the alternate and moresecure HTTPS on port 443. Either port (80 or 443 are configurable).

Important - If you are also going to use the NAS4Free Webserver make sure you do not use the same

port as the WebGUI.

You must reboot NAS4Free when you change the WebGUI Protocol.

Certificate and Private Key

Certificate: If you use the HTTPS protocol, NAS4Free will automatically enter a default x.509certificate for you. If you want to get your own certificate you can paste it here.

Private Key: If you use the HTTPS protocol, NAS4Free will automatically enter a default RSA privatekey for you. If you want to create your own private key you can paste it here.

Note - These settings will only be available if you are using the HTTPS protocol to access theWebGUI. They are required to provide security.

Language

Language: Use the Drop Down Menu to select your preferred language for the WebGUI.

Date and Time

Time Zone: Use the Drop Down Menu to select your time zone.

System Time: Used to manually set the system date and time. You can enter it in the proper format orclick the “CALENDAR ” icon to do it graphically.

Enable NTP: Click the box if you want NAS4Free to update its date and time automatically via NTP.

NTP Time Server: NAS4Free uses pool.ntp.org by default but you can change this to any valid,nearby NTP server of your choice.

Time Update Interval: Set the number of minutes between time synchronizations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol

http://www.pool.ntp.org/

http://www.pool.ntp.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol







System Advanced Options

To view or adjust Advanced System Options click the “SYSTEM” Tab then select “ADVANCED”.

The System|Advanced page will open as shown below. There are several Tabs on this page that allowyou change many NAS4Free settings. Every Tab is briefly described below and each is discussed inmore detail later in this section of the Setup & User Guide.

Console MenuThis option is useful to prevent unauthorized access to the console menu and the shell, note that if thisoption is enabled only the shell will be accessible after pressing Alt+F2/F3.

Console Screensaver

http://wiki.nas4free.org/lib/exe/detail.php?id=documentation%3Asetup_and_user_guide%3Asystem_advanced&media=wiki:documentation_setup_and_user_guide_sys_adv_menu.png



After enabling this option the user will be able to specify the time in seconds before the console screengoes to standby/blank mode during no input activity.

Firmware Version Check

Firmware Version Check does check when enabled, if there is a newer firmware version ready for

download when you use firmware upgrade option on embedded system installs.

System Beep

If your NAS4Free server has a speaker or audio capabilities, NAS4Free provides tones to the userwhen shutting down and when boot up is complete. These are provided for NAS4Free installations thatare ‘headless’, that is, where no screen or keyboard is left connected to the NAS4Free server. Tones

may be disabled via the System/Advanced page using System Beep option as shown in the imageabove.

Kernel TuningTuning will permit advanced users to tune some FreeBSD kernel parameters. This option toggles somekernel parameter settings to alternate values. The values for the Tuning option being selected (checkedor de-selected (unchecked) are shown in the table below.

Tuning Unchecked Tuning Checked

net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack: 1 net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0

net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 32768 net.inet.tcp.sendspace=65536

net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 65536 net.inet.tcp.recvspace=65536

net.inet.udp.recvspace: 42080 net.inet.udp.recvspace=65536

net.inet.udp.maxdgram: 9216 net.inet.udp.maxdgram=57344

net.local.stream.recvspace: 8192 net.local.stream.recvspace=65535

net.local.stream.sendspace : 8192 net.local.stream.sendspace=65535

kern.ipc.maxsockbuf: 262144 kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=2097152

kern.ipc.somaxconn: 128 kern.ipc.somaxconn=8192

kern.ipc.maxsockets: 3072 kern.ipc.maxsockets=16424

kern.ipc.nmbclusters: 3072 kern.ipc.nmbclusters=60000

kern.maxfiles: 1064 kern.maxfiles=65536

kern.maxfilesperproc: 957 kern.maxfilesperproc=32768

Before you do some benchmark comparisons, try to enable this option

Power Daemon

The Power Daemon and Power Mode options configure the FreeBSD powerd Daemon. According tothe powerd wiki page:

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=powerd






The powerd utility monitors the system state and sets various power control options accordingly. It

offers power-saving modes that can be individually selected for operation on AC power or batteries.

Regarding the power modes:

maximum Choose the highest performance values. May be abbreviated as

max.minimum Choose the lowest performance values to get the most power

savings. May be abbreviated as min.

adaptive Attempt to strike a balance by degrading performance when

the

system appears idle and increasing it when the system is

busy. It offers a good balance between a small performance

loss for greatly increased power savings. May be abbreviated

as adp.

Hiadaptive Like adaptive mode, but tuned for systems where performance

and interactivity are more important than power consumption.

It increases frequency faster, reduces frequency less aggres-

sively, and will maintain full frequency for longer. May be

abbreviated as hadp.

ZeroConf/Bonjour mDNS

About ZeroConf:

By default, NAS4Free will announce this available service (multicast) with the Zeroconf protocol. Thiswill permit other computers to detect that there is a computer that provide FTP, SSH, SAMBA, AFP,etc…. services. Zeroconf/Bonjour is used by Apple computer and newer Linux distributions.

installing and configuring nas4free on a windows network

Documents