Goodbye FreeNAS, Hello Ubuntu Server

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Robert Beal

I’ve finally given up on FreeNAS. What was initially a great and simple system has turned out to be quite problematic. The two show stoppers for me where:

The hard drives, either went missing, wouldn’t mount, would sometimes mount, then later fail. It was completely random, and the error log would literally say “error mounting”, nothing more. This isn’t very helpful for diagnosing the problem.
It wouldn’t shut down properly. It was more of a reboot in that it would power up again! It worked initially but then would randomly stop working. I’ve no idea why.

My server is an old Dell OptiPlex 170L, with an SiI 3114 Serial ATA Controller. Here’s an HTML page with more detail.

I found the above using this great article, and the command

sudo lshw -html > output.html

Anyway, I’ve reverted back to Ubuntu Server and it’s working great.

Boot up time is faster.
I can use EXT3 (instead of UFS) file system, and it’s stable. This is especially handy as I use Linux on all of my pc’s, so can always take a drive out of my server and mount it easily in another pc.
I can install other services / applications. Namely Git and Subversion.
Being a Linux user I’m a little more familiar with Ubuntu.

Given you pick the right hardware (which applies to Ubuntu too), FreeNAS would be great. The web interface is very easy to use and setup. And the initial install is incredibly simple.

However, on my hardware it doesn’t work, and Ubuntu does. So my advise is, if you’re having trouble with FreeNAS, or are unsure, go with Ubuntu Server. Setup takes a little longer, but it just works and works. Plus you learn a little along the way which is always handy.

http://www.jonnyro.com JonnyRo

So far i've been having pretty good luck with FreeNAS, but i'm running it on some pretty plain vanilla hardware.

I'm storing my config on a floppy drive, and using two SATA 320GB disks for storage, no software raid, just two volumes.
EvylRat

I'm also pretty happy with FreeNas. Mine's been running virtually on an Opteron 146 for a while, speed throughout is actually comparible to my works Buffalo station. not bad for virtual. I will be looking to consolidate the virtual PCs once I can find a simple server solution. Anyone tried Ahami?
Rob

Hmmm, yeah it's most likely my hardware. I did like it for it's simplicity. Much easier to setup than OpenFiler or NasLite (which I tried too).

I'll figure out what my hardware is an update the post (just so people know). It's basically an old school Dell I was given for free. P4 2.4Ghz (must be a Northwood), but all on Dell hardware.

I managed to rip it out of the stock case, and put it into a case of my own.

It did lack SATA connectors, so I added a cheap branded PCI card (I forget the brand). This could have been related to my hard drives disappearing.

Anyway, I've been running Ubuntu server for sometime now without a single problem. It actually suits me quit well as I can use it as a dev server when prototyping any stuff for work.
http://www.cregox.info Caue Rego

Those are indeed weird problems with freenas.

I've been trying to use both ubuntu and freenas but I'm in such a dead end trying to make the ext3 files to just be freely accessible that I'm almost formatting it to ntfs, and that's when I'd try freenas first.

How did you solve this issue?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7694917#…

Ubuntu Server would be quite great if it were more like freenas for getting it started and running, including the web interface, which could look more like a cpanel variant.
Robert

Ubuntu Server is definitely harder to set up. I've a reasonable experience with Linux having used it for 5 years so I've not had too many problems. It takes a little longer to learn, but once set up it just runs and runs.

With regards to ext3, typically if everyone does have read/write access, then 777 isn't far off wrong. But personally I'd set up a group and use 755 permissions, and then add the guest user to that group.
http://www.cregox.info Caue Rego

i would setup a group and use 775 permissions, but i can't change the permissions at all! every file created is done so with 644 (755 for dir). be it localy or through samba (which, by the way, is configured to do 777). so, in my case, it seems like a mounting issue that i just can't figure out, and it seems like nobody cares for a long time. i find very old discussions on this subject that also gets to nowhere. quite frustrating.

anyway, you already answered my question. thank you.
Robert

Ahh, now your problem makes a little more sense.

For file creation you want to look at "umask". I've just googled it, here's a good article explaining it (save me doing so), http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/understanding-linux….

You can set the umask value in /etc/profile, or the bash.rc in the users home directory. Samba should be running off a specific user so it should be possible for Samba too.
http://www.cregox.info Caue Rego

Thanks again Robert.

Coincidentally I've found about that umask command on wikipedia, through reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fstab

I still couldn't make any use of this as well. I didn't think it would be a shell issue, although I don't know what it is exactly. I'm just supposing it's on mount. Anyway, changing /etc/profile didn't help a bit, but using umask on the shell does change the way files are created on it. I have no use for just that, tho.
http://www.sugimoto.com.br Felipe Sugimoto

Dear friend. I had the SAME problem. After hours, days and weeks looking for the solution I found that our SiI 3114 Serial ATA Controller doesn't work (well) with FreeNAS.

I pretend to make an Ubuntu server with RAID 5 using ext3 and use it also as a gateway/firewall router on Mythbuntu. I don't know yet if it will be possible, but I'm studying.
Jannik

Same probleme here ,can’t change the folder permissions in Freenas . I gave up after 20 hour (including all the other problems) When I think of it , a nas server is a bit of a joke if its build on a PC . I have never had problems when I have my ubuntu or linux mint doing the same and much more . Boot time in more or less the same . You gain nothing ! only a BIG HEADACHE.

HEADACHE .
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Jay

I loaded freenas on to a small 40 gb HD and have 2 140 gb HD for storage. It ran great, reboot it wont come up, reinstall works great, reboot won't install. Moved drives around on the mother board, replaced drives with others. Still could not get it to run. After a few days we looked at the power supply and it was to small to run the three drives. replaced the PS set up a raid 1 with an external back up and its been running non-stop for over a year.

I really like the web access to the server and I have it emails me weekly with a server report.
Robert

Yeah the web access is awesome in FreeNAS. I may be chucking my old AMD Athlon64 3500+ into my server case, so might give it a try again at some point. I'm still running Ubuntu, very smoothly too. It's handy as I also run Mercurial and Git from it, as well as a TeamSpeak server. Got around 2.5TB in it now, might add another 1TB and run two drives in RAID 1.
tom dot com

Yes, me too. I have two notebooks, one has been installed FreeNas. When I want to install another cheaper one which has no CD. I tried many many methods that I finally only install Freenas.img. However, it always prompts me “mount system root failure”. During my experience on installing FreeNas, it doesn’t support (maybe my limiting knowledge) installation via pxe, grub2, or unetbootin….. Wasting time.

Mr. Miyagui

For freeNAS, what i did was to dd my old 2gb usb key with ubuntu. There’s a good guide to format it to FAT16. Just make sure you download the embedded img and voilá. Don’t forget to make sure where your usb key is mounted in the link’s example he’s using “sdi”, in my case i had to use “sda” or “sdb” on some cases. The only problem after this quick installation is that your network card couldn’t be supported (Had some trouble with a Realtek RTL8111E chipset but ended up fixing it by just googling for it.

http://solori.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/installing-freenas-to-usb-flash-easy-as-123/

PAY75

I tried for 3 days to get FreeNAS working on my old PC but it wouldn’t recognise eth0. I gave Ubuntu a try and it connected immediately. I still like the idea of FreeNAS so may look to run it from USB
Ian Vaughan

Did you find packages (or source) for all required components that come shipped with FreeNAS?

http://robertbeal.com Rob

Can’t remember that far back, but at the time, I dowloaded an iso image for FreeNas and burnt it to disk. Not sure what you mean regarding packages or source, although it may have changed since I tried it.

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Robert Beal