Hi,
Too long; Didn't read is at the end.
I just did this over the last few months and am considering buying another.
At the time 8.3.1 was the release to use. Having already setup all those things in Ubuntu 10.04 the move to Freenas was rather painful.
So to be clear I have setup everything you mentioned previously but under Freenas I just use Transmission, MiniDLNA, Subsonic. I stopped short of configuring Sabnzbd, Sickbeard and CouchPotato as there was a chance that if I moved to the 9.1.1 release I would have to set them up from scratch again.
To answer your question the plugins do work but if you are moving from Ubuntu like I was be prepared for a few evenings figuring out how to get Transmission to do ownership and permissions as you want them. Also, don't expect to be able to do simple things like have separate Completed and In Progress folders.
At the same time consider that you might have to write a plink script to ssh, chown, chmod and finally mv the files to a shared folder.
So to give an example. The following link talks about setting permissions within the Plugin jail and altering config files so that permissions work to better for the user.
http://forums.freenas.org/threads/transmission-folder-permissions.8175/
I've followed all this and other guides/advice like it and had varying results. One problem can be that it's not clear what version of Freenas people are talking about and what version of the plugin the advice applies to.
With MiniDLNA I found that the rescan media option required a manual restart and the guide to have this run to a schedule was for a different plugin version for a different Freenas version.
Also, I found that MiniDLNA would just stop working and have got used to reinstalling it.
The other consideration with MiniDLNA (minidlna-1.0.24_1-amd64.pbi) on Freenas 8.3.1 is that it only works if you have just one single Media directory specified. The forum and the official docs will tell you you can specify various media directories e.g:
Code:
media_dir=A,/home/user/Music # Use A, P, and V to restrict media 'type' in directory
media_dir=P,/home/user/Pictures
media_dir=V,/home/user/Videos
This does not work. I could not get it to work and the people who have got it working were using other versions and some considerable skill by the sound of it.
Firefly just did not work with a whole bunch of clients but luckily Subsonic and iSub (iOS) work great.
If I switch to 9.1.1 right now then installing Subsonic is very manual. I can follow the guide but my reservation is that if it breaks I have to do it all again. So it's for enthusiasts.
So there are issues and there ends the rather ranting and complaining tone.
Here is why you might want to use it. (IMO)
It's some fun to figure out these issues.
Cool things I have used freenas for include using RAIDz3. The project behind this seems to be picking up momentum and if you like reading about licensing then you are in luck (I genuinely enjoy the subject).
Once you figure out the web interface it's easier to manage things. Things like rsync tasks for just one example.
With the n54l you can add a HDD caddy where the ODD would go. It's not hot swappable but mounting it in Freenas works fine and the support for ext3, fat32 and even ntfs is there.
Before trying out Freenas I read as much of the wiki in the evening over a week or so. When it came to deciding if I wanted GELI Encryption I had a pretty good idea of how to go about it the right way.
I mention this now because if you need to do a restart when swapping HDDs you will have to enter your pass to unlock your main
pool.
That's the other thing. The language is different and terms like
resilvering may be new.
The other things I found with MiniDLNA was that apart from the fact that indexing large amounts of data with presumably awkward file names corrupted the database. Just a hunch but reducing the amount of files scanned say from Movies and Music to just Movies seemed to help it function. I also found that with both MiniDLNA and Subsonic that using a command line (yep, this is where some experience there is useful) I sanitised the file names with one of the many programs that will do the task.
TL;DR
I require a DLNA server/nas that ideally can also run sabnzbd/couchpotato/sickbeard, and have been advised that an HP ProLiant G7 MicroServer N54L running freenas & plugins would be a good solution.
Yes, it works but if that's all you want consider Ubuntu or a Synology NAS. (IMO)
I have an external hard drive that has media on it already that I’d need to be able to connect, and it would mainly serve a Samsung smart TV, but possibly other DLNA or XBMC devices in the future.
I need to act quite quickly (probably today) as HP have £100 cashback on them if delivered before the end of the month.
Don't quite understand why you would need to have External HDD to a Freenas HP server to a Smart TV. Why not have the data on the internal HDDs?
I have no experience of command line use, so just wanted to check here to see how easy/hard it would be to setup for someone with limited knowledge.
It's doable but not being able ssh into the box and set recursive permissions, for example, when needed can be a problem.
Reading through the forums it seems that the plugins for the above are still in their infancy, is this correct? are they 100% usable?
Someone who has set these all up would have to answer. I haven't setup Sab,SB,CP (in Freenas) but my experience with Transmission and MiniDLNA suggests that it might be harder to do in Freenas initially than say Ubuntu.
Can anyone foresee any major problems for me here
Yes, heaps. All written up above.
End of the TL:DR.
So if you are asking if you can have a turn key solution that works out of the box? No, this is a long way from it. The people who use this love FreeBSB, have some coding and server admin ability and have chosen this over a whole bunch of proprietary alternatives in favour of more control
under the hood.
I would suggest for your sanity you go for a Synology DS213J. If you have problem with using that with your Smart TV playing the video files I would say get a WDTV Live if you need. A WDTV is old but it still plays everything.
Meanwhile a Synology box has good plugin support but you pay a bit more for this option.
It's a shame that Qnap boxes with HDMI out don't get better reviews because that's pretty close to what you are looking for. Something like the QNAP TS-469L. But the consensus says go for Synology and use another separate player to display video on a TV.
Having said all this I have enjoyed setting up Freenas on the N54L but I can't recommend MiniDLNA with a Smart TV. I know that an NFS or SMB share works better and a WDTV has yet to be beaten by RasberryPi/xmbc or Plex or any other options like a PS3 with Showtime as a DLNA client.
Loads of formats won't play and simple things like seeking through a movie with DLNA in the mix is way worse than a simple NFS share.
The choice is yours ;)
