More plugins!

[Savell Martin]

Please make a headphones app!

Its the same as CP/SB/SabNZBD but used for music :)

 

[William Grzybowski]

Well, let's be careful with our terminology. If we host a plugin, it's "official" as far as the users are concerned since there's nothing in the plugin UI which differentiates one type from another, nor do we pop up any kind of warning saying "This is an unofficial plugin and not supported by the FreeNAS project." If we had done all of that, then we could say this, but we didn't so we can't. :) At the very least, we can forward any bug report(s) for such plugins to their authors or, if the bug is a particularly bad one (which this one is not), decide to stop hosting it.

Agreed. But it doesn't scale, so maybe we need to start thinking about that.

 

[fracai]

Maybe support for adding 3rd party listings of plugins. Is appcafe more than a web server and directory of PBIs?

 

[William Grzybowski]

Maybe support for adding 3rd party listings of plugins. Is appcafe more than a web server and directory of PBIs?

You already can configure your own plugins index url in Plugins -> Configuration.

 

[fracai]

That seems like a pretty easy way to properly distance iX from "non-official" plugins.

 

[cyberjock]

I'm with fracai, iX should put a barrier or something between the ones created and maintained by iX and "the rest". Otherwise we can expect to support every plugin that appears on the appcafe, which isn't the intention on this forum as far as I know.

 

[William Grzybowski]

We don't want that. It would be too hard for new users to install plugins.
Just because you can install a package with a "apt-get install something" doesn't mean debian/ubuntu/whatever is responsible for all bugs of "something".

Imagine if you had to change the apt repository for every package you want to install.

 

[cyberjock]

I'm not saying we should have a situation where its different repositories for each plugin. But a field that says "this is an official iXsystems plugin" and one that says "maintained by cyberjock in the FreeNAS forums" or includes an email for support or something in the GUI would go a long way. I know I don't want to be in a forum where 50+ plugins are available and everyone posts every question about every plugin here because its non-obvious. Ugg!

Remember, 99.9% of users that start using FreeNAS have virtually no linux experience, they have no clue what a "repository" is, and will not understand that a plugin written by %randomuserfromsomewhere% isn't maintained here. They're going to install FreeNAS, see the plugins available, and when they don't work they're going to come here for support. After all, the plugin was available through FreeNAS, so naturally we must be maintaining it, right? All that's going to happen is we will have tons of threads telling everyone "hey, this isn't supported here". Stickies won't fix it(as we've seen that our current stickies are ignored). File this as a future competitor for the next most popular topic after "read the RAM hardware requirements and then increase your RAM by 8 fold" that we see many times per week. They add no value and only make forum searching pointless.

Most users are exclusive Windows users up until they start playing with FreeNAS. You get Windows from Microsoft, but you get Adobe Acrobat from Adobe, and you get Office from Microsoft. But you get FreeNAS from the FreeNAS website and you get the plugins from inside FreeNAS, so clearly it must be maintained by the same guys that support FreeNAS. That is going to be the logic most people will take. That's exactly the norm in the Windows world.

I'm just forward thinking on this. It's going to be a big freakin' mess when everyone comes here for plugin support and the plugins aren't even owned by iX.

If doing something to draw the line isn't an option then maybe a whole separate forum just for FreeNAS plugins is a better place for it.

 

[titan_rw]

Just because you can install a package with a "apt-get install something" doesn't mean debian/ubuntu/whatever is responsible for all bugs of "something".

Keeping with the linux analogy though, doesn't Debian differentiate groups of packages depending on which 'section' they're in? IE, straying from 'main' into 'contrib' and 'non-free'? IE, you can easily install nvidia binary only drivers from 'non-free' (which comes from debian.org I'm pretty sure), but being from 'non-free', and being binary only, it 'taints' the kernel. So don't expect any support from the kernel team on a tainted kernel.

 

[nello]

I've heard from a friend that he used a Raspberri Pi as a VPN server and he could do 10Mb/sec throughput. For most people in the USA that exceeds the upload capacity of their home connection anyway.

Nice tutorial for turning a Raspberry Pi into an OpenVPN server:

http://blog.remibergsma.com/2013/01/05/building-an-economical-openvpn-server-using-the-raspberry-pi/

 

[airflow]

Hi folks,

Those of you who have clicked your plugins icons today will notice we have 4 new plugins on http://www.appcafe.org/freenas now! Thanks to everyone who worked to make that happen - we're well on our way towards making the dynamic plugin feature of 9.1.x a worthwhile investment!

For those who'd like to create and host your own plugins, please feel free to contact us (you can contact me directly, if you like, or address your request to the freenas-forum account) and we'll be happy to host your plugin(s) on appcafe after a short review to make sure they actually work. :)

We're also working on an upload request page there, so it's more automated, but it's not quite ready yet, so for now just ask us directly and we'll make it happen!

If you'd like more information on creating FreeNAS plugins, please see the documentation we've created.

Thanks!

I'm interested in eventually building and providing plugins for certain software (like MinimServer or BubbleUPnP Server). The links in Jordan's post have all gone invalid, is there any actual documentation about how to do this? I searched for "PBI" in the 9.3 docs, but this didn't yield anything.

 

[jkh]

The guide is still up at http://olddoc.freenas.org/index.php/Creating_your_own_PBIs but deprecated since, apparently, nobody was ever able to get a working plugin by following them. The only reliable method now appears to be "take an existing plugin apart and modify it until it resembles the plugin you want to have, then stick it back together again." That said, @Joshua Parker Ruehlig has taken over plugins recently and knows more about them than anyone - perhaps he'll eventually be willing to share some tips and tricks in this forum!

 

[cyberjock]

Tip #1: Walk away.. no.. RUN AWAY! Very quickly! Don't even stop to look back! LOL
Tip #2: You didn't obey Tip #1, did you?

 

[airflow]

The guide is still up at http://olddoc.freenas.org/index.php/Creating_your_own_PBIs but deprecated since, apparently, nobody was ever able to get a working plugin by following them. The only reliable method now appears to be "take an existing plugin apart and modify it until it resembles the plugin you want to have, then stick it back together again." That said, @Joshua Parker Ruehlig has taken over plugins recently and knows more about them than anyone - perhaps he'll eventually be willing to share some tips and tricks in this forum!

I looked briefly at the doc. It really looks non-trivial. I also found and read Jordan's comments about the jail-system in FreeNAS as a whole, it's current status/importance within development (which is low), and I see the benefits of moving to real virtualization (bhyve).

Just my 2cents regarding jails in FreeNAS: I am a FreeNAS-user for only a little bit over half a year, but in this time I could already gain some experience with jails and FreeBSD generally. I implemented quite a few different additional functionalities for my FreeNAS-system through jails. I consider it easy to understand, fast & light-weight. Contrary to some postings in this forum, with the right tools I found updating and maintaining the software a breeze. Short: I like it!

Still, I trust the dev's of making the right choices and am looking forward to bhyve (if that's the path). My offer of building plugins for FreeNAS was just my way of giving something back to this nice project! I guess I let that be for a while, until the jails/plugins topic is sorted out.

 

[slyferd]

I need a surveillance plugin, is it possible?

 

[pirateghost]

I need a surveillance plugin, is it possible?

That's a pretty generic term

 

[Ericloewe]

Surveillance of what? Premises (a.k.a. somewhere to store video from IP cameras)?

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

@airflow
1) Checkout my github (user=josh4trunks) onto a FreeBSD 9.3 machine, in my testing it doesn't work in a jail (I build my stuff in VirtualBox).

2) If there's a port for the software you want, skip to the next step. otherwise, make a port for it. FreeBSD's Porter's handbook and the ports directory in my repo should help.

3) Copy a folder in the plugins directory, for a simple one use sabnzbd's. rename all references in all the files to your new plugin name.

4) run the command in the readme to build your PBI. It should take several hours the first time because it builds freebsd from source. if you made your own port copy it to your ports directory, and add an entry for any users/groups to UIDs/GIDs.

5) test your PBI. some stuff might not work cause $PATH / $LD_LIBRARY_PATH doesn't include the pbi directory. you'll notice some of my plugins include an external-links file that links necessary libraries/binaries to /usr/local

##MAJOR CAVEATS##

you can't build PBIs with the currents ports tree. the current ports tree dropped support for building the old pkg format. But, the pbi-tools that work on FreeBSD 9 don't support the new package format. My solution is to use a ports tree from September 20, 2014. I manually update specific ports/dependencies.

If you do update a port it may no longer build because the old pkg system doesn't understand "@dir" in the pkg-plist. you need to manually delete these.

I think these issues will be resolved when FreeNAS 10 is out.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I'm not saying we should have a situation where its different repositories for each plugin. But a field that says "this is an official iXsystems plugin" and one that says "maintained by cyberjock in the FreeNAS forums" or includes an email for support or something in the GUI would go a long way. I know I don't want to be in a forum where 50+ plugins are available and everyone posts every question about every plugin here because its non-obvious. Ugg!

I have to agree. I am/was part of the noob crowd you describe. We know a good bit of people refuse to RTFM. So dropping hints in the GUI may be the way to go. Under the "Plugins" menu, you go to the "Available" tab to install new plugins. If we were to create an "Official" and a "3rd party" tab in place of "Available", It MIGHT clue some people in to the difference. Adding the additional information you suggested is an excellent idea.

I don't feel we should hold back the functionality of FreeNAS because people are idiots. We just have to school them. Like a puppy or spouse or something.

And by the way, I have read most sections (the parts I comprehend) of the manual. When I am feeling lucky and want to start a new service in FreeNAS, the help buttons "?" are a great tool. Some "?" dialogs are great. Other "?" dialogs leave me saying "so a SCSI target is what again? WTF?". The point I am trying to make is, in GUI hints help us noobs. I think you gurus (not directed at you, cyber) loose sight of what it is like to be a a noob. You guys have all the terminology memorized and you know the concepts. Think about the first time you kissed a girl, some hints would have been handy, right? Even if you have been in IT for 200 years blah blah blah..........you are still gonna be a FreeNAS noob until you aren't.

 

[SinDeus]

I need a surveillance plugin, is it possible?

You could try installing ZoneMinder in a jail. See this thread.