FreeNAS on a LG N4B2 NAS?

[jerryv]

Is it possible to install FreeNAS on a LG N4B2 NAS? It's an Intel atom based NAS.
http://lgknowledgebase.com/kb/index.php?View=entry&EntryID=6486

Thank your for help!

 

[Milhouse]

Your link is broken.

(I tried to fix it, but EntryID 6416 relates to a different product - the LG N2R1)

 

[jerryv]

Thanks milhouse, think I fixed it.

 

[Milhouse]

Review of the N4B2 here.

1.66GHz Atom, 1GB RAM (looks like a SODIMM slot on the motherboard, so probably could be upgraded to 2GB RAM, maybe even 4GB although that might be expensive).

The question is, will it boot from USB, as this is usually the best option for booting FreeNAS. According to this blog article the stock Debian Lenny based OS is installed to a partition on your data disks, and not NAND on the motherboard which may be a good thing.

What I'd do first is remove all 4 disks and try booting FreeNAS 8.0.1-RELEASE from a USB stick, see how far it gets (does it have VGA output? If not, will make debugging the boot process more difficult).

 

[jerryv]

Ok, thank you for the tip. I'll go and try to boot it from USB tomorrow without disks.
As for the debugging; I'm afraid there is no display output so that is gonna be tricky.

 

[pathensley]

I know this thread is a bit old, but I'm just exploring my new N4B2 & thought I'd share what I've found:

You can boot most any cd by writing LGSTORAGE to 0x7800 in the iso before burning - I was able to boot a nas4free livecd iso - but there's very little support out there for the LG's intel 82801ir raid card, so I wasn't able to see the internal drives (I blindly entered the keys to config the eth0 - then I could use the nas4free web gui).

You might be able to rip driver pieces from the box - you can gain sudo access for admin by injecting these commands in the postinst.sh in the firmware:
cp /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.tmp
chmod 666 /etc/sudoers.tmp
echo "admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" >>/etc/sudoers.tmp
chmod 440 /etc/sudoers.tmp
cp /etc/sudoers.tmp /etc/sudoers

then use the nas' web gui to install the hacked firmware file (takes a while - wait for the be-BEEP - then ssh to port 2211).

So far I've updated the box to 5.0.10, & installed makemkvcon - now trying to install handbrake-cli & plexmediaserver.