Hi All,
Intro:
I'm new to FreeNAS, but I'm by no means a N00b, although I sure do feel like it writing this post as I am unable to even get the basics right. I have more experience with SIP servers and firewalls, but this is my first client that I've set up a NAS for. I have been running FreeNAS at home for a few years but I haven't really explored it.
Overview:
This client has 10 employees with varying needs.
The site is made up of almost all Macs except for 1 PC.
They want to use the PC with a scanner for their employees to scan documents and store them on the NAS.
The 2 owners should have full access to all files.
The other 8 staff members should have access to 3 folders.
The computer used for scanning should only be able to access the "scans" folder. I think it would be best for this computer to have its own user account instead of just allowing it via its IP or hostname, but I'm open to suggestions.
Problems:
I don't know whether the shares should be AFP or NFS. As we have the 1 PC, do I need to make it all NFS?
I can't see how it is possible to give certain access to some users but restrict access from others.
I don't know why the network shares are able to be found by browsing "Network" on a Windows PC, and sometimes only accessible by entering the IP in explorer.
And also the same with a Mac - sometimes it shows on the left panel of Finder, and sometimes I need to click "Connect to server" and enter its IP.
Terminology:
(please tell me if my NAS terminology understanding is correct)
Drives - the physical hard disk drives or solid state drives that are in the machine
Volumes - a group of drives combined to make one storage pool
Dataset - sort of like a "folder" where files are stored on the volume. There can be multiple datasets to achieve certain objectives (I'm not exactly sure what though).
Shares - sort of like the doorway to access the Dataset. Accessing the files though SMB for windows, AFP for apple computers and NFS for...?).
Default Permissions: ?
As far as I can tell, FreeNAS is the most supported, most capable and most reliable open source and free NAS platform out there. I have considered a few others, even paid ones such as UnRAID, but I haven't had time to experiment with UnRAID yet. I wasted about 9 hours trying to get NextCloud working in a Jail on FreeNAS, but long story short is that it didn't work. I even paid a guy on Upwork to get NextCloud working in a Jail, but after about 12 hours he couldn't get it working either. I'm not talking about the plugin which is old and unsupported, I'm talking about running it properly with the latest version, setting it up from scratch. So as you can see, my experience with FreeNAS has not been a good one so far. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Intro:
I'm new to FreeNAS, but I'm by no means a N00b, although I sure do feel like it writing this post as I am unable to even get the basics right. I have more experience with SIP servers and firewalls, but this is my first client that I've set up a NAS for. I have been running FreeNAS at home for a few years but I haven't really explored it.
Overview:
This client has 10 employees with varying needs.
The site is made up of almost all Macs except for 1 PC.
They want to use the PC with a scanner for their employees to scan documents and store them on the NAS.
The 2 owners should have full access to all files.
The other 8 staff members should have access to 3 folders.
The computer used for scanning should only be able to access the "scans" folder. I think it would be best for this computer to have its own user account instead of just allowing it via its IP or hostname, but I'm open to suggestions.
Problems:
I don't know whether the shares should be AFP or NFS. As we have the 1 PC, do I need to make it all NFS?
I can't see how it is possible to give certain access to some users but restrict access from others.
I don't know why the network shares are able to be found by browsing "Network" on a Windows PC, and sometimes only accessible by entering the IP in explorer.
And also the same with a Mac - sometimes it shows on the left panel of Finder, and sometimes I need to click "Connect to server" and enter its IP.
Terminology:
(please tell me if my NAS terminology understanding is correct)
Drives - the physical hard disk drives or solid state drives that are in the machine
Volumes - a group of drives combined to make one storage pool
Dataset - sort of like a "folder" where files are stored on the volume. There can be multiple datasets to achieve certain objectives (I'm not exactly sure what though).
Shares - sort of like the doorway to access the Dataset. Accessing the files though SMB for windows, AFP for apple computers and NFS for...?).
Default Permissions: ?
As far as I can tell, FreeNAS is the most supported, most capable and most reliable open source and free NAS platform out there. I have considered a few others, even paid ones such as UnRAID, but I haven't had time to experiment with UnRAID yet. I wasted about 9 hours trying to get NextCloud working in a Jail on FreeNAS, but long story short is that it didn't work. I even paid a guy on Upwork to get NextCloud working in a Jail, but after about 12 hours he couldn't get it working either. I'm not talking about the plugin which is old and unsupported, I'm talking about running it properly with the latest version, setting it up from scratch. So as you can see, my experience with FreeNAS has not been a good one so far. Any help is greatly appreciated!
