Advice on first FreeNAS install and plugin use?

[eddie200112]

So I think I have successfully installed freeNAs 9.3 :) and have setup 5 or 6 CIFS shares that I can now access from my windows computers. Is there any way someone can take a look at my setup before I start trusting it with my data in case I made an error somewhere. Just nervous to trust all of it to the freeNAS build still. Maybe some log file I can trust someone to take a look at?

Also I installed some of the plug-ins (maraschino, HTPC, subsonic) but I can figure out how to access them or set them up. I just keep getting an IP address that goes nowhere..

Sorry and my last question is what would I need to be able to remotely log into my CIFS shares if say I wanted to play some of my music or videos when im away from home?

Thanks!

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

For remote access to your stuff you'd need to set up port forwarding on your router and additionally get a dyndns adress at minimum

As for the plugins, they may be listening on a specific port. I just installed the MineOS plugin on my machine and I had to append the port 8080 to the IP in the browser to actually get to the webinterface.

For the first question it would be a start if you'd post your hardware, software and storage setup

 

[danb35]

Sorry and my last question is what would I need to be able to remotely log into my CIFS shares if say I wanted to play some of my music or videos when im away from home?

CIFS, as I understand it, isn't designed to work outside of the LAN, and there are potential security implications to making it more widely accessible anyway. For media, you'd be better off with something like Plex, which is designed to make your media accessible wherever you go. If you want more general remote access to your server, the best way is to set up your router as a VPN server using something like OpenVPN. Many consumer-grade routers support third-party firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato which include a VPN server, or the local favorite, pfSense, will handle it quite well.

 

[eddie200112]

I googled maraschino ports and found it uses :7000 by default so I added port forwarding in my router to allow it but I still don't get anything when I enter the IP the app tells me to use 192.168.1.2:7000

 

[eddie200112]

I don't have XBMC installed or anything yet

 

[SweetAndLow]

Stop forwarding ports. That won't help you access your jails in the lan.

 

[eddie200112]

OK, please enlighten me then... ;)

 

[SweetAndLow]

1. playing your music and stuff outside of your network is going to require a plugin/jail of some kind. I suggest you check out plex. You pay some money for the client app's but the server is free.
2. forwarding ports only allows inbound connections from the land of the internet to connect to your server. You probably don't want this at this point. You want to make sure your jails work on your local area network first. Without knowing more about your network topology i can't give great advice but somethings i would start with are. Change your jail configuration to not use IP's from your routers dhcp range. If your maraschino plugin is telling your to use 192.168.1.x i have a feeling that is probably a dhcp ip address that is getting used static which won't work out in the long run. Make your jails use something like 192.168.1.200-192.168.1.255. Now after you fix that make sure your jail is up and running. Then connect using a web browser most likely the way the setup directions tell you to for your app(LINK). Example would be 192.168.1.200:7000

 

[danb35]

First off--if you've installed a plugin, and turned it on, you should be able to access it through the FreeNAS web GUI. In the left column, expand Plugins and click on the plugin in question--it should pop up with a box that has a link to the actual plugin. Failing that...

I'm going to get really basic here--I apologize if it sounds like I'm being insulting (that isn't my intent), but it really is sounding like there's something fundamental that is being missed.

Your FreeNAS server has an IP address. That address is usually expressed as xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, where each xxx is a number between 0 and 255. Usually, for home networks, the IP address is going to be somewhere in the range of 192.168.xxx.xxx or 10.0.xxx.xxx. Each jail also has an IP address, which needs to be different from anything else on your network. You can specify the range of IP addresses that will be assigned for jails in the web GUI, under Jails -> Configuration -> Advanced Mode. This range of IP addresses can't conflict with anything else on your network. For example, my FreeNAS server is at 192.168.1.10, its IPMI interface is at 192.168.1.11, and the IP range I've set up for my jails is 192.168.1.12-19. Alternatively, you can set your jails to use DHCP to get their IP addresses and other related configuration. I don't recommend this, as the IP addresses can change over time--but if everything on your network is getting its IP address from the same DHCP server, it's unlikely that you'll have IP address conflicts.

You also, most likely, have some sort of router that gives out IP addresses via DHCP. It's going to give out addresses in a certain range, which you can specify in the router's configuration software. You need to make sure that that range doesn't overlap with your jail IP range. Otherwise, you can have two things on your network with the same IP address, and there lies confusion.

Finally, you have the port number. The standard port for HTTP is 80, but for whatever reason, almost all of these web-based apps use something different, so you must specify the port when you try to access the app. The documentation should tell you what port is in use.

So, to put all of that together:

• The plugin must be installed
• The plugin must be enabled (Plugins -> Installed -> make sure that Service Status is On for the plugin in question)
• The Jail's IP address must not conflict with anything else on your network (see the Jails screen, and note the IP address of the jail you're interested in)
• You should then be able to reach http://jailip:portnumber with your web browser

If the first three conditions are met, and the fourth isn't, post in the Plugins forum describing what's happening.

 

[cyberjock]

So, to put all of that together:

• The plugin must be installed
• The plugin must be enabled (Plugins -> Installed -> make sure that Service Status is On for the plugin in question)
• The Jail's IP address must not conflict with anything else on your network (see the Jails screen, and note the IP address of the jail you're interested in)
• You should then be able to reach http://jailip:portnumber with your web browser

If the first three conditions are met, and the fourth isn't, post in the Plugins forum describing what's happening.

Another condition is that your home network's subnet meets RFC 1918 to prevent a conflict with the internet. Normally I'd expect this to be a "duh", but I've meet plenty of people that fubared this up, badly, and couldn't figure out why their stuff never worked right.