(mac mini 4,2) TrueNAS works (installs) in VM (via DSM/xpenology) but not on baremetal on same rig

[Soogs]

Hi all

Hope this all makes sense.

I have an old mac mini which has pretty much become redundant since I got my i7 workstation so I decided to run it as a NAS.

I'm able to run Xpenology/DSM on it but after a lot of reading and watching have decided that TrueNAS is the better way to go in the long run.

So... I've burned the TN12 iso to USB and tried to install it directly to the Mac mini and it gets me as far as asking which drive to install to... it seems to hit an error and stop at this point.

It does, however, install onto the same hardware as a virtual machine and seems to work just fine (haven't really had much time to test her out fully).

Is there something I'm overlooking?

I thought it should run in the bare-metal as it runs in the VM or is this not guaranteed?

I'll try to get the exact error message

 

[Chris Moore]

How many internal drives can you put in that system? I am pretty sure it doesn't actually fit into the hardware requirements.

 

[Soogs]

It only has one hdd. the VM had 2 virtual disks.

during the installation, it does allow me to choose external drives if they are available although the results are the same from memory

 

[Etorix]

TrueNAS wants one full drive for installation, and then there should be data drives —at least two, but preferably at least four—for ZFS to work with in a useful manner. 2010-2012 minis hold at most two 2.5" drives. That won't cut it.

If you no longer have any use for the Mini, the best option is to sell it and buy someting else for use as NAS.

 

[Soogs]

do partitions count or do they need to be physical drives?

Could I not just install the OS to a flash drive, partition the internal drive into 2 parts and then attach external USB drives for the main storage?

 

[Etorix]

Physical drives!

Boot on USB is not advised; attaching HDDs via USB is strongly advised against, as the connexion is not reliable on the long term; and ZFS really wants to spead data across physical disks, not across partitions.

 

[seanm]

Soogs, depends what you're using your NAS for... if it's for business-critical or precious files, then the route you're pursuing is not the best idea, not if you really care about that data. If it's just movies or whatever that you don't care too much about losing, then I guess that's a different story. I appreciate wanting to reuse old hardware, instead of putting it in landfill!

 

[Soogs]

I'm just tinkering really. I want to move over time build a TrueNAS server but want to know if I understand it enough to warrant the money i will spend in the long run :)

 

[seanm]

Ah, well that's a great use for old hardware.

Macs are of course proprietary hardware, and open source OSes like FreeBSD don't always have drivers for all their components. Wifi likely won't work for example.