After the update to 12.04 for my ubuntu-based file server went awry, I took another look at the FreeBSD based FreeNAS as a replacement. Turns out it was pretty easy to set up and I’m digging how it runs
The Good:
ZFS. Pools! Snapshots! RaidZ! Doesn’t take that much reading to get dangerous.
Time Machine. Works well with Lion even, was having problems with ubuntu before where it was a hassle to get working.
You install on a flashdrive, leaves your ports open just for storage.
The not so good:
Miss my print sharing, the only other feature I was using from running a full server distro. 8.2 maybe?
The piece of @#$@# Asus motherboard I’m using doesn’t like to boot automatically off the flash drive, I need to select it each time on restart or it hangs due to a bug. Good think I don’t restart often, thats ridiculous.
I did run into a couple of other problems. Trying to copy data back to the server I got these pesky Error - 50 messages that would abort the copy over AFP. Turns out from looking at the logs, I had a number of .AppleDouble files I needed to delete first to get the copy using a
find . -d -name .AppleDouble -exec rm -rf '{}' \;
I also have a few scripts that use rsync to copy data around on a regular basis and need to use key based authentication with SSH however for that was giving me woes at first as well. Turns out looking at the logs I need to go back and make sure the permissions and ownership of all the mount directories (something like this) were correct otherwise SSHD gets grumpy.