Fixing a CF issue (possible bug?)

[freakalad]

I'm pretty new to the new FreeNAS scene (have a pretty decent passing familiarity with FreeBSD); had a few problems, but I think I licked it.

I've built me a shiny new host with all the bells & whistles:
* Intel i3
* Some Gigabyte board fitting the bill
* 4GB RAM
* On-board USB multi-card reader
* 6 x 2TB WD Caviar green SATA's
* 4GB Compact Flash disk

I installed the 64-bit system onto the CF via the ISO, burnt to a CD & loaded via external/USB drive.

All went well; configured all the disks in a RAID-Z2 configured volume.

Started doing other configurations, but got hung up when creating users, because the system reported that it couldn't commit the settings because the filesystem is readonly (something about not being able to create the "/home" directory):

Code:

/dev/ufs/FreeNASs1a on / (ufs, local, read-only, soft-updates)

To solve the issue, I took the following approach:
* created a "home" dataset
* remount the CF rw: `mount -o rw /`
* create a user & watch the log/output
* "/home" is a symlink to "/usr/home", so moved/renamed "/usr/home" & created another symlink pointing "/usr/home" to "/mnt/$VOLUMENAME/home"
* a simpler approach may be to simply modify the "/etc/fstab" to mount "/home" to "/mnt/$VOLUMENAME/home"
* remount the CF ro: `mount -o ro /` or reboot

This seems to have solve the issue OK for me.

 

[ProtoSD]

There's a place in the GUI where you can specify home directories. It's under Services -> CIFS
You'll loose your setup the way you've done it when you do an upgrade. /etc/fstab is created from the FreeNAS database during boot, so changes you make there won't be persistent. The 'home' dataset is a good approach. You can edit the user under Accounts and set their home directory there also after creating the dataset, which creates a mountpoint that will persist after a reboot.

 

[freakalad]

Thanks for the prompt reply, protosd.

The process I followed was:
* create volume(s)
* create groups & users
* define services (and I did specify the users' home there appropriately)

The problem was that the system was still throwing permissioning issues re "/home", even if I did specify the home dir of $USER as "/mnt/$VOLUME/home/$USER/"

This was more of a hack than any real long-term solution.
I suspect there my be some nuance I've missed, or maybe the read-only / is a result of my OS on CF implementation (to protect the embedded system from repeated writes).

I may also do something similar for logging, since I also want to use my FreeNAS host for remote-logging purposes for other hosts on my network (including my pfSense).