Anyone have a link or guide on setting up freenas for remote access?

[fortyhands]

Sorry for the total noobness of my post, but I'm not sure what the best way to go about having remote access to the Freenas server. Should I simply configure it for FTP or is there a way to set it up as a VPN? Can files be accessed through the webGUI from other locations?

I know a lot of this will have to do with my router (ASUS RT-16 w/ Tomato), but any advice anyone could lend to get me started would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ProtoSD]

You have a whole bunch of choices, the WebGUI isn't one of them. Depending on which method you choose you'll have to adjust your router to allow access.

How do you access your files when you're home? What kind of home network do you have Windows, Mac, Linux?

 

[fortyhands]

Hey thanks for the quick response. I am setting this up for my step-father who isn't all that tech savvy, so if there was some way that I could have his laptop connect to the freenas server when he was out and about just as it would at home that would be awesome. When at home, the freenas server just shows up as networked storage. Our home network is a mixture of mac and windows computers.

I'm sure I'll be able to figure this out on my own with enough scouring on the net and trial n' error, but any suggestions, or recommended reading would be much appreciated.

Cheers!

 

[ProtoSD]

Hmmm, the only problem I can see with accessing from 'out and about' is that depending on what you mean, like hotels for example, is that they block a lot of the ports you might need.

You can pick just about any of the protocols like CIFS/Samba, AFS, NFS, FTP, SSH, or tunnel them thru SSH for security, but it's gonna depend on the other ends firewall(s) where he'll be trying to access from, so you need to look into that beforehand too. Maybe FTP might be easier if he's a non-techie, but if FTP is blocked on the remote side it's going to be a problem. You can try tunneling those protocols thru SSH on port 80. Those are just some things to consider. Look up SSH tunneling, then decide on your protocol.

Maybe someone else here has some suggestions?