FreeNAS Update and Screenshots
Recently I upgraded my FreeNAS to .68. I say recently even though it was a few months ago. Although there was a bug in the Upgdate php page of the last version of FreeNAS which would upload the image but not actually perform the update. I got a fixed version from FreeNAS’s website and everything worked flawlessly.
I’m contemplating going to the Beta version since it supports iSCSI targets on FreeNAS which is something I’m eager to play with. However, I don’t really want to play with that until I have a dedicated Gigabit network in place.
I didn’t notice any significant changes. There do appear to be a few more menu options, but none of the features that I usually use had any visible enhancements. After the upgrade, I did start using the Unison service to synchronize files between all my machines. It took a little bit to figure out the structure, but basically the Unison directory it asks for is the directory for it to store the Unison data files that keep track of what’s on what–not the files you actually want to synchronize–however, they will be stored on the volume you specify. The only downside was that I had to downgrade the Unison that was on my Macs since the FreeNAS is not the latest, and Unison is very picky about the version that’s installed on all the machines, and I didn’t want to get involved upgrading FreeNAS’s version at the time.
While not new by any means, I’ve been playing with NFS on FreeNAS since I have no more WIndows machines on my network. I like it. Even though I undersand Samba was partially invented to makeup for some shortcomings in NFS (that’s what I heard anyway), I find it to be easy to use and lightweight. Also, mounting NFS volumes is a snap in terminal.
If I’m to believe my S.M.A.R.T. stats, my system drive on the NAS might fail. I might take this as an opportunity to install FreeNAS on a USB Key. The USB card I have installed has a slot right n the card so in theory I could plug the key in internally and install FreeNAS on that.
