Installing and Upgrading FreeNAS® Before installing, it is important to remember that the FreeNAS® operating system must be installed on a separate device from the drive(s) that will hold the storage data. In other words, if you only have one disk drive you will be able to use the FreeNAS® graphical interface but won’t be able to store any data, which after all, is the whole point of a NAS system.

If you are a home user who is experimenting with FreeNAS®, you can install FreeNAS® on an inexpensive USB thumb drive and use the computer’s disk(s) for storage. This section describes the following: • • • • • •. Note FreeNAS® will only install to 64-bit hardware and the installer will not work on 32-bit hardware. The download page contains the following types of files: •.iso: this is a bootable installer that can be written to either a CD or USB flash as described in. •.GUI_Upgrade.txz: this is a compressed firmware upgrade image.

In this post, you will learn how to Install FreeNAS on a USB Flash Drive using Windows 10 and VirtualBox. Tomorrow we'll go into the cave with the Terrasphere fully equipped and with a fresh coat of the protective paint. Indian health clinic[/url] [url=nebraska rv space for sale, f350 rear air bag install, On reaching Yokohama, the detective,.

If your intent is to upgrade FreeNAS®, download this file and see the section on. Each file has an associated sha256.txt file which should be used to verify the integrity of the downloaded file. The command you use to verify the checksum varies by operating system: • on a BSD system use the command sha256 name_of_file • on a Linux system use the command sha256sum name_of_file • on a Mac system use the command shasum -a 256 name_of_file • on a Windows or Mac system, you can also install a utility such as or The value produced by running the command should match the value of the sha256.txt file.

Preparing the Media Beginning with version 9.3, FreeNAS® must be installed using a menu-driven installer, as the ZFS boot partition is created during the installation. To perform an installation, download the.iso file and write it to either a CD or a USB stick. To burn the.iso file to CD, use a CD burning utility. The command which is used to burn the.iso file to a compact flash card or USB thumbdrive depends upon the operating system. This section demonstrates utilities for several operating systems. Note if you will be burning the installation file to a USB stick, you will need two USB slots, each with an inserted USB device, where one USB stick contains the installer and the other USB stick is selected to install into. When performing the installation, be sure to select the correct USB device to install to.

In other words, you can not install FreeNAS® into the same USB stick that you boot the installer from. After installation, remove the USB stick containing the installer, and if necessary, configure the BIOS to boot from the remaining USB stick. Once you have written the.iso file to the installation media, make sure the boot order in the BIOS is set to boot from that device and boot the system to start the installation. Dd if=FreeNAS-9.3-RELEASE-x64.iso of=/dev/da0 bs=64k 6117+0 records in 6117+0 records out 400883712 bytes transferred in 88.706398 secs (4519220 bytes/sec) When using the dd command: • if= refers to the input file, or the name of the file to write to the device.

• of= refers to the output file; in our case, the device name of the flash card or removable USB drive. You may have to increment the number in the name if it is not the first USB device. On Linux, use /dev/sdX, where X refers to the letter of the USB device. • bs= refers to the block size.

On OS X Insert the USB thumb drive and go to Launchpad ‣ Utilities ‣ Disk Utility. Unmount any mounted partitions on the USB thumb drive. Check that the USB thumb drive has only one partition, otherwise you will get partition table errors on boot.

If needed, use Disk Utility to setup one partition on the USB drive; selecting “free space” when creating the partition works fine. Next, determine the device name of the inserted USB thumb drive. From TERMINAL, navigate to your Desktop then type this command. Diskutil list /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0 1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 499.2 GB disk0s2 3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3 /dev/disk1 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: FDisk_partition_scheme *8.0 GB disk1 1: DOS_FAT_32 UNTITLED 8.0 GB disk1s1 This will show you which devices are available to the system. Locate your USB stick and record the path. If you are not sure which path is the correct one for the USB stick, remove the device, run the command again, and compare the difference. Once you are sure of the device name, navigate to the Desktop from TERMINAL, unmount the USB stick, and use the dd command to write the image to the USB stick.

In Example 2.2b, the USB thumb drive is /dev/disk1, which is first unmounted. The dd command uses /dev/rdisk1 (note the extra r) in order to write to the raw device which is faster. When running these commands, substitute the name of the installation file and the correct path to the USB thumb drive. Example 2.2b: Using dd on an OS X System. Note if you get the error “Resource busy” when you run the dd command, go to Applications ‣ Utilities ‣ Disk Utility, find your USB thumb drive, and click on its partitions to make sure all of them are unmounted. If you get the error “dd: /dev/disk1: Permission denied”, run the dd command by typing sudo dd if=FreeNAS-9.3-RELEASE-x64.iso of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=64k, which will prompt for your password.

The dd command will take some minutes to complete. Wait until you get a prompt back and a message that displays how long it took to write the image to the USB drive. On Windows Windows users will need to download a utility that can create a USB bootable image from the.iso file. This section will demonstrate how to use to burn the.iso file. When downloading Win32DiskImager, download the latest version that ends in -binary.zip and use 7-Zip to unzip its executable.

Once installed, launch Win32DiskImager and use its “browse” button to browse to the location of the.iso file. Insert a USB thumb drive and select its drive letter from the “Device” drop-down menu. Click the “Write” button and the image will be written to the USB thumb drive. Note if the installer does not boot, check that the installation device is listed first in the boot order in the BIOS. When booting from a CD, some motherboards may require you to connect the CD device to SATA0 (the first connector) in order to boot from CD.

If the installer stalls during bootup, double-check the SHA256 hash of the.iso file. If the hash does not match, re-download the file. If the hash is correct, try burning the CD again at a lower speed or try writing the file to a different USB stick. Either wait for the menu to timeout or press Enter to boot into the installer. Once the media has finished booting, you will be presented with the console setup menu seen in Figure 2.3b.

Figure 2.3b: FreeNAS® Console Setup Press Enter to select the default option of “1 Install/Upgrade”. The next menu, seen in Figure 2.3c, will list all available drives, including any inserted USB thumb drives which will begin with da. In this example, the user is performing a test installation using VirtualBox and has created a 8 GB virtual disk to hold the operating system. Figure 2.3c: Selecting Which Drive to Install Into Use your arrow keys to highlight the USB, compact flash device, or virtual disk to install into and press the spacebar to select it. If you wish to mirror the boot device, arrow to the second device and press spacebar to select it as well. After making your selections, press Enter. FreeNAS® will issue the warning seen in Figure 2.3d, reminding you to not install the operating system onto a drive that is meant for storage.

Press Enter to advance to the screen shown in Figure 2.3f. Figure 2.3d: FreeNAS® Installation Warning. Note at this time, the installer does not check the size of the install media before attempting an installation. A minimum of a 8 GB device is required, but the install will appear to complete successfully on smaller devices, only to fail at boot. If you are mirroring the boot device, it is recommended to use devices of the same size; otherwise, the mirror will be limited to the size of the smallest device. The installer will recognize if a previous version of FreeNAS® 8.x or 9.x is already installed, and if so, will display the menu shown in Figure 2.3e. If the installer recognizes that a previous version of FreeNAS® is installed and you wish to overwrite the existing installation, arrow over to “Fresh Install” and press Enter twice to advance to the screen shown in Figure 2.3f.

Figure 2.3e: Performing a Fresh Install The next screen, shown in Figure 2.3f, prompts for the root password which is used to log into the administrative graphical interface. Figure 2.3f: Set the Root Password Setting a password is mandatory and the password can not be blank. Since this password provides access to the administrative GUI, it should be a hard-to-guess password.

Input the password, press the down arrow key, and confirm the password. Then press Enter to start the installation.

Note for security reasons, the SSH service and root SSH logins are disabled by default. Unless these are set, the only way to access a shell as root is to gain physical access to the console menu or to access the web shell within the administrative GUI. This means that the FreeNAS® system should be kept physically secure and that the administrative GUI should be behind a properly configured firewall and protected by a secure password.

Once the installation is complete, you should see a message similar to Figure 2.3g. Figure 2.3g: FreeNAS® Installation Complete Press Enter to return to the first menu, seen in Figure 2.3a.

Highlight “3 Reboot System” and press Enter. If booting from CD, remove the CDROM. As the system reboots, make sure that the device you installed to is listed as the first boot entry in the BIOS so that the system will boot from it. FreeNAS® should boot into the “Console Setup” menu described in. Installation Troubleshooting If the system does not boot into FreeNAS®, there are several things that you can check to resolve the situation.

First, check the system BIOS and see if there is an option to change the USB emulation from CD/DVD/floppy to hard drive. If it still will not boot, check to see if the card/drive is UDMA compliant. If the system BIOS does not support EFI with BIOS emulation, see if it has an option to boot using legacy BIOS mode. Some users have found that some brands of 4 GB USB sticks do not work as they are not really 4 GB in size, but changing to a 8 GB stick fixes the problem. If you are writing the image to a compact flash card, make sure that it is MSDOS formatted. If the system starts to boot but hangs with this repeated error message.

Run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_config go into the system BIOS and see if there is an onboard device configuration for a 1394 Controller. If so, disable the device and try booting again. If the system starts to boot but hangs at a mountroot>prompt, follow the instructions in. If the burned image fails to boot and the image was burned using a Windows system, wipe the USB stick before trying a second burn using a utility such as.

Otherwise, the second burn attempt will fail as Windows does not understand the partition which was written from the image file. Be very careful that you specify the USB stick when using a wipe utility! Upgrading Beginning with version 9.3, FreeNAS® provides more flexibility for keeping the operating system up-to-date: • Upgrades to major releases, for example from version 9.3 to 10.0, can still be performed using either an ISO or the graphical administrative interface.

Unless the Release Notes for the new major release indicate that your current version requires an ISO upgrade, you can use either upgrade method. • Minor releases have been replaced with signed updates. This means that you do not have to wait for a minor release to update the system with a system update or newer versions of drivers and features and that you no longer have to manually download an upgrade file and its associated checksum in order to do so. • The updater automatically creates a boot environment, meaning that updates are a low-risk operation.

Boot environments provide the option to return to the previous version of the operating system by rebooting the system and selecting the previous boot environment from the boot menu. This section describes how to perform an upgrade from an earlier version of FreeNAS® to 9.3. Once 9.3 is installed, use the instructions in to keep the system updated. Caveats: Be aware of the following caveats before attempting an upgrade to 9.3: • Upgrades from FreeNAS® 0.7x are not supported. The system has no way to import configuration settings from 0.7x versions of FreeNAS®, meaning that you will have to manually recreate your configuration, and if supported, import the FreeNAS® 0.7x volumes or disks. • Upgrades on 32-bit hardware are not supported.

However, if the system is currently running a 32-bit version of FreeNAS® and the hardware supports 64-bit, the system can be upgraded but any archived reporting graphs will be lost during the upgrade. • UFS is no longer supported. If your data currently resides on one UFS-formatted disk, you will need to create a ZFS volume using other disk(s) after the upgrade, then use the instructions in to mount the UFS-formatted disk in order to copy the data to the ZFS volume. If you only have one disk, backup its data to another system or media before the upgrade, format the disk as ZFS after the upgrade, then restore the backup. If your data currently resides on a UFS RAID of disks, you will not be able to import that UFS volume. Instead, you will need to backup that data before the upgrade, create a ZFS volume after the upgrade, then restore the data from backup. • The initial configuration wizard will not recognize an encrypted ZFS pool.

If your ZFS pool is GELI-encrypted and the starts after the upgrade, cancel the wizard and use the instructions in to import the encrypted volume. You can then rerun the wizard afterwards, if you wish to use it for post-configuration, and it will recognize that the volume has been imported and will not prompt to reformat the disks.

• DO NOT upgrade the ZFS pool unless you are absolutely sure that you will never want to go back to the previous version. For this reason, the update process will not automatically upgrade the ZFS pool, though the system will tell you if newer feature flags are available for the pool. Unless you need a new feature flag, it is safe to leave the ZFS pool at its current version and uncheck the alert. If you do decide to upgrade the pool, you will not be able to boot into a previous version that does not support the newer feature flags. • The mps driver for 6G Avago SAS HBAs is version 20, which requires phase 20 firmware on the controller. It is recommended to upgrade the firmware before installing FreeNAS® or immediately after upgrading FreeNAS®, using the instructions in. Running older firmware can cause many woes, including the failure to probe all of the attached disks, which can lead to degraded or unavailable arrays.

While you can mismatch your firmware version with a higher version and things will “probably still work”, there are no guarantees as that driver and firmware combination is untested. Initial Preparation Before upgrading the operating system, perform the following steps: • Backup the FreeNAS® configuration in System ‣ General ‣ Save Config. • If any volumes are encrypted, make sure that you have set the passphrase and have a copy of the encryption key and the latest recovery key. Once the upgrade is complete, use the instructions in to import the encrypted volume. • Warn users that the FreeNAS® shares will be unavailable during the upgrade; you should schedule the upgrade for a time that will least impact users. • Stop all services in Services ‣ Control Services.

Upgrading Using the ISO To perform an upgrade using this method, the.iso to the computer that will be used to prepare the installation media. Burn the downloaded.iso file to a CD or USB thumb drive using the instructions in. Insert the prepared media into the system and boot from it. Once the media has finished booting into the installation menu, press Enter to select the default option of “1 Install/Upgrade.” The installer will present a screen showing all available drives; select the device FreeNAS® is installed into and press Enter. The installer will recognize that an earlier version of FreeNAS® is installed on the device and will present the message shown in Figure 2.5a.

Figure 2.5a: Upgrading a FreeNAS® Installation. Note if you select to perform a “Fresh Install”, you will have to restore the backup of your configuration using System ‣ General ‣ Upload Config after you boot into the new operating system. To perform an upgrade, press Enter to accept the default of “Upgrade Install”. Again, the installer will remind you that the operating system should be installed on a disk that is not used for storage. Press Enter to start the upgrade. Once the installer has finished unpacking the new image, you will see the menu shown in Figure 2.5b. The database file that is preserved and migrated contains your FreeNAS® configuration settings.

Figure 2.5b: FreeNAS® will Preserve and Migrate Settings Press Enter and FreeNAS® will indicate that the upgrade is complete and that you should reboot. Press “OK”, highlight “3 Reboot System”, and press Enter to reboot the system. If booting from CD, remove the CDROM. During the reboot there may be a conversion of the previous configuration database to the new version of the database. This happens during the “Applying database schema changes” line in the reboot cycle.

This conversion can take a long time to finish so be patient and the boot should complete normally. If for some reason you end up with database errors but the graphical administrative interface is accessible, go to Settings ‣ General and use the “Upload Config” button to upload the configuration that you saved before you started the upgrade. Upgrading From the GUI To perform an upgrade using this method, the.txz file and its associated SHA256 hash to the computer that you use to access the FreeNAS® system. Then, go to System ‣ Settings ‣ Advanced ‣ Firmware Update as shown in Figure 2.5c.

Figure 2.5c: Upgrading FreeNAS® From the GUI Use the drop-down menu to select an existing volume to temporarily place the firmware file during the upgrade. Alternately, select “Memory device” to allow the system to create a temporary RAM disk to be used during the upgrade.

After making your selection, click the “OK” button to see the screen shown in Figure 2.5d. Figure 2.5d: Step 2 of 2 This screen again reminds you to backup your configuration before proceeding. If you have not yet, click the “click here” link. Browse to the location of the downloaded.txz file, then paste its SHA256 sum.

When finished, click the “Apply Update” button to begin the upgrade progress. Behind the scenes, the following steps are occurring: • The SHA256 hash is confirmed and an error will display if it does not match. If you get this error, double-check that you pasted the correct checksum and try pasting again. • The new image is uncompressed and written to the operating system drive. This can take a few minutes so be patient. • Once the new image is written, you will temporarily lose your connection as the FreeNAS® system will reboot into the new version of the operating system. FreeNAS® will actually reboot twice: once the new operating system loads, the upgrade process applies the new database schema and reboots again.

• Assuming all went well, the FreeNAS® system will receive the same IP from the DHCP server. Refresh your browser after a moment to see if you can access the system. If Something Goes Wrong If an update fails, an alert will be issued and the details will be written to /data/update.failed.

To return to a previous version of the operating system, you will need physical or IPMI access to the FreeNAS® console. Reboot the system and watch for the boot menu. In the example shown in Figure 2.5e, the first boot menu entry, FreeNAS (default), refers to the initial installation, before the update was applied. The second boot entry, FreeNAS-, refers to the current version of the operating system, after the update was applied. This second entry is highlighted and begins with a star, indicating that this is the environment the system will boot into, unless another entry is manually selected.

Both entries include a date and timestamp, indicating when that boot environment was created. Figure 2.5e: Boot Menu To boot into the previous version of the operating system, use the up or down arrow to select it and press enter. Should a boot device fail and the system no longer boots, don’t panic. The data is still on your disks and you still have a copy of your saved configuration.

You can always: • Perform a fresh installation on a new boot device. • Import your volumes in Storage ‣ Auto Import Volume. • Restore the configuration in System ‣ General ‣ Upload Config. Upgrading a ZFS Pool Beginning with FreeNAS® 9.3, ZFS pools can be upgraded from the graphical administrative interface. Before upgrading an existing ZFS pool, be aware of the following caveats first: • the pool upgrade is a one-way street meaning that if you change your mind you can not go back to an earlier ZFS version or downgrade to an earlier version of FreeNAS® that does not support those feature flags. • before performing any operation that may affect the data on a storage disk, always backup your data first and verify the integrity of the backup.

While it is unlikely that the pool upgrade will affect the data, it is always better to be safe than sorry. • upgrading a ZFS pool is optional. You do not need to upgrade the pool if you do not need newer feature flags or if you want to keep the possibility of reverting to an earlier version of FreeNAS® or repurposing the disks in another operating system that supports ZFS. If you do decide to upgrade the pool to the latest feature flags, you will not be able to import that pool into another operating system that does not yet support those feature flags.

To perform the ZFS pool upgrade, go to Storage ‣ Volumes ‣ View Volumes and highlight the volume (ZFS pool) to upgrade. Click the “Upgrade” button as seen in Figure 2.5f. Note if the “Upgrade” button does not appear, the pool is already at the latest feature flags and does not need to be upgraded. Figure 2.5f: Upgrading a ZFS Pool The warning message will remind you that a pool upgrade is irreversible. Click “OK” to proceed with the upgrade. The upgrade itself should only take a seconds and is non-disruptive. This means that you do not need to stop any sharing services in order to upgrade the pool.

However, you should choose to upgrade when the pool is not being heavily used. The upgrade process will suspend I/O for a short period, but should be nearly instantaneous on a quiet pool. Virtualization FreeNAS® can be run inside a virtual environment for development, experimentation, and educational purposes. Please note that running FreeNAS® in production as a virtual machine is. If you decide to use FreeNAS® within a virtual environment, as it contains useful guidelines for minimizing the risk of losing your data. In order to install or run FreeNAS® within a virtual environment, you will need to create a virtual machine that meets the following minimum requirements: • at least 8192 MB base memory size • a virtual disk at least 8 GB in size to hold the operating system and boot environments • at least one more virtual disk at least 4 GB in size to be used as data storage • a bridged adapter This section demonstrates how to create and access a virtual machine within the VirtualBox and VMware ESXi environments. VirtualBox is an open source virtualization program originally created by Sun Microsystems.

VirtualBox runs on Windows, BSD, Linux, Macintosh, and OpenSolaris. It can be configured to use a downloaded FreeNAS®.iso file, and makes a good testing environment for practicing configurations or learning how to use the features provided by FreeNAS®. To create the virtual machine, start VirtualBox and click the “New” button, seen in Figure 2.6a, to start the new virtual machine wizard.

Figure 2.6a: Initial VirtualBox Screen Click the “Next” button to see the screen in Figure 2.6b. Enter a name for the virtual machine, click the “Operating System” drop-down menu and select BSD, and select “FreeBSD (64-bit)” from the “Version” dropdown. Figure 2.6b: Type in a Name and Select the Operating System for the New Virtual Machine Click “Next” to see the screen in Figure 2.6c.

The base memory size must be changed to at least 8192 MB. When finished, click “Next” to see the screen in Figure 2.6d. Figure 2.6c: Select the Amount of Memory Reserved for the Virtual Machine Figure 2.6d: Select Whether to Use an Existing or Create a New Virtual Hard Drive Click “Create” to launch the “Create Virtual Hard Drive Wizard” shown in Figure 2.6e. Figure 2.6e: Create New Virtual Hard Drive Wizard Select “VDI” and click the “Next” button to see the screen in Figure 2.6f.

Figure 2.6f: Select the Storage Type for the Virtual Disk You can now choose whether you want “Dynamically allocated” or “Fixed-size” storage. The first option uses disk space as needed until it reaches the maximum size that you will set in the next screen. The second option creates a disk the same size as that specified amount of disk space, whether it is used or not. Choose the first option if you are worried about disk space; otherwise, choose the second option as it allows VirtualBox to run slightly faster. Once you select “Next”, you will see the screen in Figure 2.6g. Figure 2.6g: Select the File Name and Size of the Virtual Disk This screen is used to set the size (or upper limit) of the virtual machine.

Increase the default size to 8 GB. Use the folder icon to browse to a directory on disk with sufficient space to hold the virtual machine.

Once you make your selection and press “Next”, you will see a summary of your choices. Use the “Back” button to return to a previous screen if you need to change any values. Otherwise, click “Finish” to finish using the wizard. The virtual machine will be listed in the left frame, as seen in the example in Figure 2.6h. Figure 2.6h: The New Virtual Machine Next, create the virtual disk(s) to be used for storage. Click the “Storage” hyperlink in the right frame to access the storage screen seen in Figure 2.6i.

Figure 2.6i: The Storage Settings of the Virtual Machine Click the “Add Attachment” button, select “Add Hard Disk” from the pop-up menu, then click the “Create New Disk” button. This will launch the Create New Virtual Hard Drive Wizard (seen in Figures 2.2e and 2.2f). Since this disk will be used for storage, create a size appropriate to your needs, making sure that it is at least 4 GB in size. If you wish to practice RAID configurations, create as many virtual disks as you need. You will be able to create 2 disks on the IDE controller.

If you need additional disks, click the “Add Controller” button to create another controller to attach disks to. Next, create the device for the installation media. Highlight the word “Empty”, then click the “CD” icon as seen in Figure 2.6j. Figure 2.6j: Configuring the ISO Installation Media Click “Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file.” to browse to the location of the.iso file. Alternately, if you have burned the.iso to disk, select the detected “Host Drive”. Depending upon the extensions available in your CPU, you may or may not be able to use the ISO.

If you receive the error “your CPU does not support long mode” when you try to boot the ISO, your CPU either does not have the required extension or AMD-V/VT-x is disabled in the system BIOS. Note if you receive a kernel panic when booting into the ISO, stop the virtual machine. Then, go to System and check the box “Enable IO APIC”. To configure the network adapter, go to Settings ‣ Network. In the “Attached to” drop-down menu select “Bridged Adapter”, then select the name of the physical interface from the “Name” drop-down menu. In the example shown in Figure 2.6k, the Intel Pro/1000 Ethernet card is attached to the network and has a device name of em0. Figure 2.6k: Configuring a Bridged Adapter in VirtualBox Once your configuration is complete, click the “Start” arrow and install FreeNAS® as described in.

Once FreeNAS® is installed, press “F12” to access the boot menu in order to select the primary hard disk as the boot option. You can permanently boot from disk by removing the “CD/DVD” device in “Storage” or by unchecking “CD/DVD-ROM” in the “Boot Order” section of “System”. VMware ESXi If you are considering using ESXi, read for an explanation of why iSCSI will be faster than NFS. ESXi is is a bare-metal hypervisor architecture created by VMware Inc.

Commercial and free versions of the VMware vSphere Hypervisor operating system (ESXi) are available from the. Once the operating system is installed on supported hardware, use a web browser to connect to its IP address. Гдз Лабораторная Работа По Физике 11 Класс Тихомирова on this page. The welcome screen will provide a link to download the VMware vSphere client which is used to create and manage virtual machines. Once the VMware vSphere client is installed, use it to connect to the ESXi server. To create a new virtual machine, click File ‣ New ‣ Virtual Machine.

The New Virtual Machine Wizard will launch as seen in Figure 2.6l. Figure 2.6l: New Virtual Machine Wizard Click “Next” and input a name for the virtual machine. Click “Next” and highlight a datastore. An example is shown in Figure 2.6m. Click “Next”. In the screen shown in Figure 2.6n, click “Other” then select a FreeBSD architecture that matches the FreeNAS® architecture. Figure 2.6m: Select a Datastore Figure 2.6n: Select the Operating System Click “Next” and create a virtual disk file of 8 GB to hold the FreeNAS® operating system, as shown in Figure 2.6o.

Figure 2.6o: Create a Disk for the Operating System Click “Next” then “Finish”. Your virtual machine will be listed in the left frame. Right-click the virtual machine and select “Edit Settings” to access the screen shown in Figure 2.6p. Figure 2.6p: Virtual Machine’s Settings Increase the “Memory Configuration” to at least 8192 MB.

Under “CPUs”, make sure that only 1 virtual processor is listed, otherwise you will be unable to start any FreeNAS® services. To create a storage disk, click Hard disk 1 ‣ Add. In the “Device Type” menu, highlight “Hard Disk” and click “Next”. Select “Create a new virtual disk” and click “Next”. In the screen shown in Figure 2.6q, select the size of the disk. If you would like the size to be dynamically allocated as needed, check the box “Allocate and commit space on demand (Thin Provisioning)”.

Click “Next”, then “Next”, then “Finish” to create the disk. Repeat to create the amount of storage disks needed to meet your requirements. Figure 2.6q: Creating a Storage Disk If you are running ESX 5.0, Workstation 8.0, or Fusion 4.0 or higher, additional configuration is needed so that the virtual HPET setting does not prevent the virtual machine from booting.

If you are running ESX, while in “Edit Settings”, click Options ‣ Advanced ‣ General ‣ Configuration Parameters. Change “hpet0.present” from true to false, then click “OK” twice to save the setting. If you are running Workstation or Player, while in “Edit Settings”, click Options ‣ Advanced ‣ File Locations. Locate the path for the Configuration file named filename.vmx. Open that file in a text editor, change “hpet0.present” from true to false, and save the change.

We are going to get FreeNAS installed using VirtualBox today. This will most likely be the longest post of the series as I’ll be doing quite a bit of hand holding. Since we are using a virtual disk there won’t be much you can mess up and the worst that can happen is you’ll have to start over. So if you feel like playing around with it yourself go right ahead but if you are having trouble I’ll be right here holding your hand and walking you through how it should be set up. Before we dive in and get FreeNAS running in a virtualized environment we need to get that environment set up.

We’re going to be using VirtualBox so and download the one that is appropriate for you. I’m working on an Intel Mac which means my screenshots may look different than what you’ll be looking at but for the most part everything will be the same. If you are on a PC go for the x86 version unless you know for sure you are running AMD 64 bit hardware then go ahead and get that one. While you’re downloading VBox it’s also a good time to start downloading the latest FreeNAS release too.

So head on over to their. Once again the i386 version will be just fine for you unless you know as a fact you have AMD64 hardware. A LiveCD is basically an image that can be burned to CD or DVD that you can boot your system up with and run just like you would had you actually went through the trouble of installing it. It’s great for things like trying out linux or even booting into Linux to troubleshoot a computer problem.

With FreeNAS you could run the whole server off nothing but that CD and a usb or floppy disk to save your configuration to. For our purposes we’re going to go ahead and install the Full installation of FreeNAS though so we can do some other fun things later.

Once you get VirtualBox downloaded go ahead and install it just like you would any other program. The default options should work just fine.

Go ahead and launch it. You should now be presented with a screen that looks like this probably after they bug you about your contact info (you can skip it). Main window What we want to do know is set up a new virtual machine. We are going to tell this program the different types of things we want in a virtual machine like memory and hard drive space. To start with press the big blue button labeled ‘New’ which will start the New Virtual Machine Wizard.

Click next and then give your machine a name. I’ll be using ‘FreeNAS Test’ without the ‘ of course.

To configure the OS Type You should choose BSD as the Operating System and FreeBSD as the Version. One page down! It should now be asking you the amount of base RAM you want.

It recommends that I use 128MB and it is actually already set for me. The exact amount FreeNAS requires escapes me at the moment but the hardware footprint it needs to run is very small and you’ll do just fine at 128MB. You should now be coming to the Virtual Hard Disk portion of the wizard. We’ll want to create a new disk so press the button labeled New. This will bring us into an entirely new wizard designed to set up our disk. For the disk we have a couple of options; dynamically expanding or fixed. I always choose dynamically expanding which means that as you use more space on the virtual machine the size of the disk will grow with you as you need it so your not wasting space.

Click Next and enter how large you would like your disk to be and give it a name. The name ‘FreeNAS Test’ was already filled in for me and I’m keeping it as well as the size of 2GB which I will also keep the same. Keep moving along and it will verify that you are creating the disk and tell you where it will be located because in essence, your virtual machine is just a file on your computer. Now the disk should have automatically populated in the drop down menu and you can now hit next. If it didn’t just select the drop down menu and select the disk we just created.

That bring us to this screen verifying all the things we just told it to do. Create New Virtual Machine Summary Now you’ll notice that you have a Virtual Machine showing up on the left hand side of the VirtualBox window and you may be tempted to hit Start and boot up. Not quite yet, we still have a couple more things to configure. First click on CD/DVD-ROM and we want to point it to the FreeNAS file we downloaded earlier.

Tick the box for Mount CD/DVD Drive, and click on the radio button for ISO Image File. In the Media Manager you’ll want to click on add and find the file you downloaded earlier to add it. You’re looking for the file that starts with ‘FreeNAS’ and ends with ‘.iso’. Once you select it and click through you’ll see it show up under your virtual hard disk. Now look a little farther down for ‘Network’. More than likely the adapter type that is chosen is correct but you’ll want to change ‘Attached To:’ to say ‘Host Interface’.

Once you’re done with that we are finally ready to start the machine so go ahead and hit the green arrow labeled ‘Start’! You should be presented with some information about what they call the host key. Make a note of what this is for you. If I recall correctly it’s right-ctrl for Windows. You’ll need to press this to release the keyboard and mouse back to the host Operating System (OS).

Once you get booted up you’ll see a black and white interface with some menu options. FreeNAS Boot Screen Remember when I said this is a LiveCD? You are running FreeNAS right now! Although, you won’t be able to do much since we haven’t set anything up yet. Instead of configuring this LiveCD we’re going to go ahead and install it for ourselves. Go ahead and press 9 and hit enter.

Another menu will come up with a few more options and a little more color. We are looking for option 3 or the one that says “Install ‘full’ OS on HDD + DATA + SWAP Partition” so go ahead and choose that. It’s going to tell you it’s going to create everything for you and the data on the disk will be lost. This is ok because it’s the virtual disk you created not your actual hard disk. Press OK and and then OK again to tell it to use the VBOX CD. If you created the virtual hard disk like I said you’ll now see asking where to install the OS and something like “ad0 2048MB ”. Keep hitting OK here.

Here is where we are going to change it up a bit. We are going to want some additional space later to play with some things so lets bump up the OS Partition size from 128 to 256. That should be enough room.

Don’t worry about a swap partition. It’s the equivalent of a pagefile in windows and I’ve never seen it being utilized in any of my FreeNAS installs but if you want it and you know what you are doing then by all means, it can’t hurt. Now it’s going to give you some important information about getting your first disk set up and ready to go which looks something like this. How to use the FreeNAS Disk This is some pretty important information and some you may want to write down had I not just posted a picture of them here.

Don’t worry, I’m also going to walk you through what they are telling you to do. So go ahead and press enter and then exit the install menu and you’ll be back to the original black and white menu that came up. Press 7 to reboot the system confirming that that is really what you want to do. Once you are rebooted and back to that good old black and white menu go ahead and press 2 for Set LAN IP Address.

Circuit Maker 2000 Standard Serial Keygen there. Now we will use the default settings so pressing enter 3 times should get this set up for you. Use DHCP to set the IP, say no to configuring IPv6, you’ll see the IP for the web GUI and then press enter the third time to continue after making a note of the web address for the GUI.

I’m in a hospital right now so my IP is a little funky but you’ll probably see something like 192.168.0.100 but as long as you have some numbers in that configuration you should be fine. Go to a new tab in your web browser and put that address in. If you’ve followed my instructions you should now be prompted for a username and password. The default username is “admin” and the password is “freenas”.

Now you will see your shiny new GUI! FreeNAS Web GUI We’re almost done here with the most basic set up. Just bare with me. We now want to add the disk like the instructions told us to do earlier.

Hover over Disks and click on Management. To the right you’ll see a plus symbol, click on it. In the drop down make sure the disk that you were told to add earlier is selected.

In my case it’s ad0. For the description type in FreeNAS Test Disk. Leave everything else except for the last item, Preformatted File System, and set this to UFS since the installer took care of that for us. Later on if you add a disk to the system you’ll set this to unformatted and format the disk through that option in the Web GUI. Click on Add and then make sure you click on Apply changes so that they take effect. Now that we’ve added the disk let’s set a mount point so we can access it. Hover over Disk and click on Mount Point.

Once again click on the plus off to the right. The type is Disk, the Disk drop down should be set to the disk we just added.

For partition you’ll notice there are some comments. Number 2 fits our description, “ 2* second MBR partition ( DATA partition) if you select option 2 during installation on hard drive ( all versions).” so go ahead and select that.

File System is UFS and for the sharename put freenas. Enter a description if you like and then leave everything else the same as you click add. Don’t forget to apply your changes now!

You’ll notice that a lot of adding and removing and configuring stuff deals with the plus symbol off to the right or other symbols like a minus and some tools and after you’ve changed something you always want to apply the changes. We have the disk set up and mounted but how do we access it now? We need to set up a CIFS/SMB share so that other computers including the one you installed the virtual machine on can access it. This is the equivalent of sharing a folder in windows by right clicking on it and enabling sharing in Windows. So mouse over Services and click on CIFS/SMB.

At the top off to the right you’ll want to enable this service. If you know your Workgroup name is different go ahead and change it but leave everything else the same and scroll to the bottom to press Save and Restart.

It should tell you that everything had been applied and now all you have to do is set up what shares you want the service to have access to. Right now we only have the one disk so we’ll add it. Click on the shares tab and the plus off to the right. For the name type FreeNAS and give it a description. We need to browse to the path of the share so click the 3 dots by Path.

You’re only option should be freenas because that’s what we named our disk. Click on that and hit ok and the path will be filled in for you. Something like “/mnt/freenas/”. Leave everything else the same and click Add and then Apply changes. You now have the most basic set up completed.

At this point you may want to save your configuration so if you play around and break something you can always fix it. You’ll find this by hovering over System and click on Backup/Restore. What you can do with this setup is connect to that disk from any computer on your network. The instructions are different from operating system to operating system but generally you want to go into my network places and browse for network computers. You should see one that is labeled FreeNAS and clicking on it will show our mounted Disk with no files on it.

You also may just want to mount the drive my going into My Computer, clicking on tools and the Mount Network Drive. Assign it a drive letter, browse to the drive, and then click on OK or finish and it will then show up in My Computer just like your other Hard Drives. Yes, you will get full function. Whenever you use VirtualBox to virtualize any operating system it's as if you've installed it fresh on a new hard drive.

You will need to start virtual box everytime you would like to run your FreeNAS VM (Virtual Machine) but you could use VMWare server that will start and suspend the machine everytime the host computer boots up and shuts down. If you'd like I'll write up a detailed post on how to get that going. Once you get VirtualBox going you'll see your VM in the list and all you have to do is highlight it and then click the big green arrow labeled start. The machine will boot up as if you were booting up another computer.

You'll have full access to your host computer as well as your FreeNAS VM. As far as the disk goes you'll be using a virtual disk. It basically creates a file on the host os that tells the VM that this is the space allocated to it. The VM then controls that file as if it is it's own partition and it will need to be formatted and everything like normal. If you need extra space you can create another virtual disk and add it to the machine.

Then within Freenas you will need to add the disk, format it, and then create a mount point. Hopefully this answers your questions! Hi James, I'd really like to read someting about installing FreeNAS on vmware Server, if it's possible. I also have a question about using FreeNAS software RAID 5 running on vmware server with Windows as host OS. I'm a bit confused about filesystem.

What I have understood is: I have to format disks I would like to add in the NAS by the host OS. Then I have to create a virtual disk from the vm software and add it to make it visible to FreeNAS. So I can format them in FreeNAS using one of the available filesystem. After I have to mount the disk and make a software RAID. Is this correct? Is this the best way to follow? The last question is about hardware.

If I run FreeNAS over a VM, I would not have (quite) any hardware compatibility issues, right? If my vm software can serve the right virtual device for FreeNAS I'm free to use whatever I likeor not? Thanks a lot for your help, Lorenzo. @James good article. I want to follow up on one of the questions being asked earlier.

How do I access an hard disk already on the host? Ideally I would like the ability to access that disk from the guest and host at the same time. So I thought about using the “shared drive” feature, but I was stopped by the fact that I can't really install the necessary virtualbox addons. Seems that the freenas is missing too many basic commend. Next I thought of using smbclient to mount a share from the windows host, but no, smbclient is not part of the freenas.

I also tried to access the host drive via usb, since it's happen to be a usb drive, but that would make it disappear from the host. Any suggestions? Hi James, I like the article you wrote.

Except my variation of things made me hit a wall. Background info: Host: Linux Mint5 KDE Elyssa, Virtualbox by Innotek OSE from mint5 linux repository verstion 1.5.6_OSE. I was able to get FreeNAS installed to a vbox vm, except it didn't assign any ip to access it.all I got was 0.0.0.0/24 and.

For the Network option under the version of Vbox I use, I get an error when I try to use Host Interface, I don't have a bridged option either. It gets up and running if I choose NAT.but then I can not access the VM and it will not assign an IP. I tried manual IP address.and the dns too, got that from my router and tried to use open dns also. None of that helped. Any ideas would be great. Since right now I don't have a spare box to dedicate yet to FreeNAS.

I'm not real familiar with linux or mint. I would try posing your question to the forums at vbox or a linux site dedicated to mint. If you were using Windows I'd ask you if you had tried rebooting 🙂 Perhaps there is a virtual lan driver that virtual box installs that didn't get installed. Are you using the freeware version of virtualbox or the one that comes with drivers that aren't considered freeware? I always had trouble with the one that was freeware and I always installed the one that wasn't. Hopefully one of those things will guide you down the right path.