Supa,
THANK YOU! For posting the easy to follow guide... What a great idea, show a newbie each step of the way with pictures of which boxes are checked and unchecked. I am a newbie to FreeNAS like you, just trying to get a small system up and running to store local windows backups on and run PLEX for my house. I spent less that 45 minutes building machine and installing FreeNAS, logged in from windows machine and then... I spent 12 + hours of my spare time over the last 2 weeks trying to get the shares configured and seen by my windows machines...
I have to say was more than frustrated and discouraged trying follow the confusing and mostly incomplete setup steps over... and over... and over... and over... and over... (you get the point) only to have it fail or not work somewhere along the line. Then I would say to myself, you did something wrong start over… I would go back to forums and do some more research and start over…
Never did it occur to me that the instructions I was following were incomplete…
I was ready to throw in the towel with FreeNAS until this morning, I was searching the forum and came across your post…. Less than 15 minutes after reading your post I could see my new share on my windows machines!!! …I have completed my first back up in the time it took me to write this post…
Kudos to you for the post! Thanks Again!
NOTE: I think it is truly ionic that the moderator with the mean snarling dog picture scolds you for the safety issues of your post yet says nothing about the brilliance of it…
He should move your post the TOP of the newbie page and make it part of the quick start guide!
Had he done that, I could have spent 15 minutes configuring FreeNAS and the rest of time learning about network security….