Installing FreeNAS to DVD-RAM and booting from it.

[dashtesla]

I know... i know.. XD

I do have two proper freenas boxes with hbas and mirrored boot drives and 32TB don't worry this isn't my main setup or anything.

it's silly but i have some two old atom D525 boxes laying around not doing anything atm and they both have 4 sata ports (one also has an IDE odd) so i happen to have some DVD-RAM media that's 4.7GB and I was wondering if it would be possible to install freenas to the dvd-ram somehow since would be pretty easy to clone the boot drive in case it somehow fails, I know it makes a lot more sense to just get two usb drives for each and mirror or even use iSCSI PXE (even though not enough ethernet ports..).

It's more of a curiosity thing than anything if it can somehow be done since DVD-RAM basically behaves like a usb stick and I would literally not have to spend even 10-40 eur on usb drives for them XD

 

[sretalla]

If you go down this road (which I think we all agree you shouldn't), you'll likely want to seek a 9.3 or older source as the boot drive becomes really chatty from 9.10 and up.

 

[dashtesla]

If you go down this road (which I think we all agree you shouldn't), you'll likely want to seek a 9.3 or older source as the boot drive becomes really chatty from 9.10 and up.

Thanks for your reply, well I do like the new UI, i'm still wondering what drives and what OS to put in there, freenas would be really lightweight and flexible i can stick some old 1/2TB hdds in there use that as a windows update repository/cache or a redundant time capsule which i'm still using my own little time capsule from apple that's got no redundancy whatsoever.

One can also store a lot of short "educational" videos in there to separate things from the main media server so also something to look into, but thanks for the tip i'll certainly install 9.10 vm see what features i would have with that, i'm mostly interested in using ZFS and not sure if i have 8GB for these old machines so, not even sure they can take 8GB..

 

[sretalla]

i'll certainly install 9.10 vm

Just to reiterate, 9.10 is where it's already chatty. You will want 9.3.

USB drives are cheap and will probably save you boat-loads of time in the end, but your time is your own and I wish you well in whatever you do.

 

[dashtesla]

Just to reiterate, 9.10 is where it's already chatty. You will want 9.3.

USB drives are cheap and will probably save you boat-loads of time in the end, but your time is your own and I wish you well in whatever you do.

It's about fun, not about time like my zip drives and floppies XD I find pleasure on doing things the wrong way and in ways people wouldn't do it. But you do have a point if It gets too complicated i'll just stick a usb drive and forget about it.

 

[Chris Moore]

The problem is that the FreeNAS OS has a lot of read and write activity in recent versions.
Nobody has tried, that is not to say you can't, but I think the drive might not perform well under the workload.
If it's just for fun, let us know what you find out. It might be interesting.

 

[dashtesla]

The problem is that the FreeNAS OS has a lot of read and write activity in recent versions.
Nobody has tried, that is not to say you can't, but I think the drive might not perform well under the workload.
If it's just for fun, let us know what you find out. It might be interesting.

Another project i'm working on is an HP Proliant ML370 G5 with 12x 5TB drives, since i didn't have any HBA left so i ordered some h310s to flash later (none except an awful adaptec that claimed to do passthrough/jbod but in reality doesn't), so still a pending project but i did install freenas and left it running because i want to see if i can get an old scsi LTO-3 drive to run with bacula plugin, turns out i always see the activity leds blinking for the boot drive even though nothing is going on, so that explains that..

Will do and thanks everyone for your prompt responses i'm really happy to use freenas everything works right I can finally stop posting on technet about ReFS not working, have a couple more servers i need to switch to freenas.

 

[cobaltfilms]

I-f.Love internet !
I was researching this bad idea, knowing it was a bad idea, and stumbed upon this thread,. What à laugh : I'm not alone trying to do the worst, when I know I shouldn't.
Anyway, this is the roots of hacking* and it shall live as long as Silicon rules.