My first guide on FreeNAS with FlexGet and Transmission on a Jail

[9bNv1xVCEx]

This is my first post in the FreeNAS forum. I have been using a FreeNAS box as a home file-server for the last 3 years now. I am grateful for FreeNAS and I thought I should give back to the community by sharing my current setup configuration.

I've tried to document the steps from setting up to configuring the main aspects of the machine, so that other people with similar requirements may take advantage of my experiences. This guide is also shared in GitHub by clicking here and I will to update it with any comments or suggestions!

FreeNAS Setup
The purpose of this guide is to set out instructions for:
1. Installing FreeNAS and setting basic configuration required for basic file-sharing through CIFS.
2. Install a BSD Jail to hold Transmission and Flexget.
3. Setup configuration for storage and file-sharing of the Jail.

Chapter 1: Deployment of FreeNAS and BSD Jail

1. Use Win32 Disk Imager to burn the .iso file of FreeNAS to a USB Memory Stick
2. Boot the machine from that USB and follow on-screen instructions to install FreeNAS on a second memory stick.
   
   The second memory stick will be the production storage and will host the actual operating system. The first memory stick can be repurposed after installation.
   
   Ensure BIOS settings allow booting from USB;
   
   If you are installing on headless server, connect a screen for the installation part. I hove not yet found a way to bypass this requirement.
   
   
3. Follow on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
   
   For a home-setup consider whether it may be preferable to configure network interfaces to use DHCP.
   
   
4. Access FreeNAS WebGUI to begin configuration.
5. To enable gmail integration, configure smtp.gmail.com:587 to use TLS and if 2-step verification is enabled on gmail (recommended) generate an Application-Specific password for explicit use by FreeNAS.
6. Configure Storage as follows:
   
   • Create a Jail specific dataset (say: /mnt/volume1/my-jail-dataset);
   • Configure compression, deduplication and atime;
   • Create a dataset which will hold your downloads and data (say: /mnt/volume1/my-main-dataset).
7. Check network configuration as follows:
   
   • Ensure domain name, IPv4 gateway and DNS are configured correctly;
   • Under interfaces, the network card should be configured to use DHCP and IPv4.
8. Configure services as follows:
   
   • Turn on CIFS and SSH;
   • Set SSH to allow root login (CIFS will be configured later).
   • Create a new Jail and allocate the destination storage (i.e. the location within the Jail) whereas the source of the storage was created above.
     
     The name given to the Jail cannot be changed afterwards. Example locations as used in the above examples:
     Source: /mnt/volume1/my-main-dataset
     Destination: /mnt/volume1/my-jail-dataset/usr/local/etc/transmission/home
     

Chapter 2: Transmission and Flexget configuration
FreeNAS plugins natively support Transmission but in this workcase we will be creating a Jail to install both Transmission and Flexget directly from the repositories.

1. Prepare the Jail
   
   Note: use pkg install nano and use setenv VISUAL /usr/local/bin/nano to replace vi with nano.
   
   1. Set up direct SSH access to the Jail by editing sshd_enable="NO" to "YES" in /etc/rc.conf. Start the SSHD withservice sshd start. Note: also run ./sshd start in /etc/rc.d/. Follow instructions in freenas documentation for more details.
      
      
   2. Enable root login by editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config and setting #PermitRootLogin no to PermitRootLogin yes and restart sshd by service sshd restart.
      
      
   3. Use passwd to set a password for root user.
      
      
   4. Update pkg before anything as follows:
      
      • run pkg clean to clean /var/cache/pkg/. Use rm -rf /var/cache/pkg/* to just remove it all.
      • then use pkg update -f to force an update of the repository catalog rm /var/db/pkg/repo-\*.sqlite will remove all remote repository catalogs.
      • to force reinstall of pkg use pkg bootstrap -f
      • pkg upgrade -y
2. Install Transmission and Flexget
   
   • Install dependencies pkg install -y net/py-urllib3 databases/py-sqlite3 devel/py-pip rar unrar > Try without above steps first as my guide may need some updating to remove redundant steps.
   • Install transmission with pkg install -y transmission-daemon
   • Upgrade pip with pip install --upgrade pip
   • Upgrade setuptools with pip install --upgrade setuptools
   • Install flexget with pip install flexget > To ensure latest version of flexget is installed use pip install --upgrade flexget
   • Install the rpc element of transmission with pip install transmissionrpc > To ensure latest version of transmissionuse pip install --upgrade transmissionrpc
   • Start and stop transmission to create configuration files. Start with /usr/local/etc/rc.d/transmission onestart and stop with /usr/local/etc/rc.d/transmission stop
3. Configure transmission parameters and locations
   
   • First look into settings.json found in /usr/local/etc/transmission/home > Download location should be something like /usr/local/etc/transmission/home/Downloads
   • Set transmission_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf to enable start up on every boot
   • Configure other settings as needed.
4. Configure flexget parameters.
   
   • Use the flexget cookbook to define config.yml in /root/.flexget/ > The flexget cookbook is a collection of scripts which when used together form a recipe. The config file contains these recipes.
   • Add flexget to crontab using crontab -u root -e and add <'@reboot> /usr/local/bin/flexget daemon start -d' > To start fresh with Flexget use: flexget database reset --sure
5. Share the completed downloads data from the Jail over the network and set user permissions.
   
   • Create a new transmission user / group in FreeNAS and disable password login.
   • Set the user and group ID in FreeNAS to be precisely identical to the IDs used within the Jail. > Use nano /etc/passwd and nano /etc/group to determine user and group ID.
   • Create a guest user (if it does not already exist) and add it to the group guest. Disable password login and add as an auxiliary group the transmission group.
   • Create a new share for the path /mnt/volume1/data/Downloads (or similar) and set to allow guest access with the default permissions.
   • Configure in services the CIFS shares to use the guest account.
6. Housekeeping (optional steps)
   
   • Enable ssh authentication to both the FreeNAS instance and the Jail. Key pairs will need to be created and the public key added to the user profile (root in this case). The private key stays out of server and will be only needed by the client that will connect remotely. > The public key needs to be copied to the jail (remember that if you will be usingPuTTY to generate keys, the public key needs to be copied from the dialogue (as opposed to being saved).
   • Get Transmission remote GUI from here.
   • This guide is really good.
   • Use which flexget to determine working directory
   • Use killall -HUP transmission-daemon to force stop transmission when you want to reload settings
   • Use jls to get a list of all jails and use jexec to access the jail through the FreeNAS instance by sshd.