Still a work in progress
The goal of this manual is to provide a starting point for you to install and use NAS4Free. Sections 1 and 2 of this manual cover basic installation of NAS4Free and include processes and procedures that may help you configure and use some of the services included in NAS4Free. If you need to know how to do something, you may find it in these first 2 sections of the manual.
Sections 3 and beyond cover details and more advanced features of NAS4Free. In these sections you can find brief explanations about the options and settings you see in the WebGUI. If you need to know what something is or does, you will probably find it in Section 3 or beyond.
NAS4Free is easy to install, configure and manage. It is arguably the simplest and most full featured NAS OS available in 2012. However, NAS4Free is not a turnkey system, you are the OEM, it is up to you to already know or learn about the services and features provided by NAS4Free so you can make effective use of your server.
Warning - While trying to be as helpful as possible, this manual WILL NOT TRY TO:
* Teach you what RAID is, how to set-up a network or manage a firewall.
* Teach you system administration and how to manage Users and Groups.
* Help you select the best MotherBoard or hard drive controller, etc..
* Show you how to do many other things like how to configure iSCSI to work with your ESXi server in an AD Domain.
You will need to know things like this already or learn about them from other resources.
NAS4Free can be installed onto a wide range of hardware. Anything from a actual server to an old PC you may have laying around!
Here are some limitations and interactions of NAS4Free:
Local User/Password feature is covered in this document. Additional notes are available in the changelog on the NAS4Free website.
Using CIFS/SMB to read/write any file(s) on a FAT32 drive partition is known to corrupt files!
For technical questions, please consult the following links in order:
NAS4Free installation and configuration involves three steps, which are:
Further customization, such as RAID configuration and localization to your environment can then be performed.
You can use NAS4Free with the CDROM and an MSDOS formatted floppy disk or USB key.
This description assumes the NAS4Free PC hardware is capable of booting from a CD Rom and has a floppy/flash/usb/hdd for storage.
Insert the CDROM in the CD/DVD drive, and boot your PC. After NAS4Free has booted with no error message concerning “no floppy disk found” you can skip the section 2.3 and go to section 2.4 directly
Installing NAS4Free wipes any existing content on the destination disk. Existing files will be deleted as part of the installation process.
The install process of NAS4Free doesn’t support Dual-boot.
Don't install NAS4Free on disk bigger than 2TB (NAS4Free support theses disks as “data” disk only, not as system boot disk).
This description assumes the NAS4Free PC hardware is capable of booting from a CD-Rom and has a boot Hard Drive (than can also be an USB key or CF card) and may have one or more Hard Drives for storage. * Download the NAS4Free ISO and burn the image onto a CD-Rom.
"Welcome to NAS4Free" "*********************" 1) Assign Interface 2) Set LAN IP address 3) Reset WebGUI password 4) Reset to factory defaults 5) Ping host 6) Shell 7) Reboot system 8) Shutdown system 9) Install/Upgrade to hard drive/flash device, etc.
"Install" "*********************" 1) Install 'embedded' OS on HDD/Flash/USB 2) Install 'embedded' OS on HDD/Flash/USB + DATA + SWAP partition 3) Install 'full' OS on HDD + DATA + SWAP partition 4) upgrade 'embedded' OS from CDROM 5) Upgarde 'full' OS from CDROM 6) Upgrade and convert 'full' OS to 'embedded'
If you select 1:
NAS4Free 'embedded' installer for Flash device or HDD. - Create 1 partition for OS image - Uses a RAM disk to limit read/write access to the device Warning: There will be some limitations: 1. This will erase ALL partition and data on the destination disk 2. You can't use your destination disk for sharing data Installing on USB key is the preferred way: It saves you an IDE or SCSI channel for more hard drives.
This option would install NAS4Free on a drive entirely dedicated for OS (this drive cannot be used for storage). It’s the recommended option if you are using CF card or USB Key
If you select 2 or 3: This would install NAS4Free on a drive and the remainder of the drive will be UFS-formatted for being used for storage(DATA) by creating two partitions on the drive
In both cases, once NAS4Free is installed, follow the instructions, remove the CD and when the menu comes up again
Use the option “4 or 5 or 6) Upgrade an existing release from CDROM”
After the first boot:
Once you have installed NAS4Free on a CF, HDD or USB drive and the computer has rebooted from 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 defaults 5) 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) with the IP address set to 192.168.1.250.
(This reboot step is an m0n0wall heritage; it should be possible to skip it).
Default login name and password
If you can ping another device from the NAS4Free PC, then from another computer on the same subnet, point your Web Browser at the NAS4Free PCs IP Address (http://192.168.8.128 in this example) You should be presented with a login/password dialogue box like that shown here.
At the login/password dialogue Enter:
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.
WebGUI Layout
NAS4Free web pages are configured with the Navigation Tree in the Left Hand side of the page and the 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.
Within the Display and Data Entry areas of WebGUI pages, some displays have additional controls such as those shown here.
A lot of this should be determined by your network administrator (which may be you).
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:
System|General Setup: Here you'll want to fill in:
You'll also be able to modify (if you want):
System|General|Password: Here, you can replace the default password.
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 with the exception of using geom. Vinum (unstable).
Here is the FreeBSD module name and equivalent:
All disks must be the same size for all RAID types with the exception of JBOD and Geom RAID5 (it will be based on the smallest disk).
The NAS4Free team recommends configuring each of the RAID Disks as standalone Storage Disks first to ensure they are fully functional and supported under NAS4Free. Once confirmed, remove any of the mount points and Disks for the RAID drives to ensure a clean start. The following description assumes that the drives have been confirmed as functional.
The High-Level process flow for configuring a simple RAID array is:
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.
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.
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, then the 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:
A healthy RAID array will show all the State: values as UP or COMPLETE.
Replacing a failed hard drive on a gmirror 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 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 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 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 and action “forget” (The Disk field is not used on this first action).
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, the replaced 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 the moment 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:
The High-Level process flow for configuring a complex RAID X + Y array is:
Users and groups in NAS4Free follow the unix/posix model of permissions, instead of the windows model 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 permission schemes.
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:
Additionally, the user can be permitted/denied access to the “user portal” (somewhat restricted form of the WebGUI)
Status|System This screen provides a general system overview, including:
Status|Processes This screen essentially contains the output of “top”, a system and process viewer with per-process memory 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)
Status|Disks This screen displays information about your (configured) disks, including: (for each configured drive)
Status|Graph|Traffic graph This screen shows a running graph of traffic on the chosen network adapter for as far back as the last 120 seconds. The graph starts empty, but progressively fills with data. Once the graph is full (at 120 seconds), 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 report to an email address of your choosing, either instantly or on a timed interval.
Diagnostics|Log This screen lets you display or download relevant logs about the system. These logs include:
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:
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|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:
Help|Report Generator Use this for generating reports to be posted in the Forum when asking for help or helping to supply information for bug reports. It won't generate any text without “Subject”, “Description”, and “Error” having something filled in. You'll still have to figure out 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.
Before performing an upgrade, visit System|Backup/Restore to make a backup of your configuration file.
Backup Configuration
Backup configuration
” area, click the “Download configuration” buttonThe WebGUI Interface and Setup needs to be inserted here, then we have single page SUG.
and so on until the end!