Seeing a CD or USB Drives from your server?

[Piggie]

I know this is going to seem a really dumb question to many, so I apologise in advance :)

I've not yet got FreeNAS up and running as I have more "bits to buy" however something I'm unsure about is this:

It seems that in FreeNAS you tell it about drives and you create volumes etc.
Then you set up shares so your windows PC can see the drives in the NAS/Server and start reading the writing data.

Ok, that sound fine.

But, what about your PC accessing a CD-ROM drive on the server which you may put CD's or DVD's into sometimes.
Or accessing USB Thumb Drives you may plug into the Server running FreeNAS from time to time.

Does this just automatically work, or not, or what?

Thanks

 

[Piggie]

Funny to have no replies to this.
I'd have thought this would be an easy one for anyone using FreeNAS.

Perhaps I did not make the question clear enough?

If you are running FreeNAS and accessing it from your PC.

The machine running FreeNAS (your server) has a DVD-ROM drive and some USB ports (as most machines will have)

If you place a DVD or a USB Memory stick into the server running FreeNAS. Can you then access either of these from your PC linked to the NAS ?

 

[joeschmuck]

A simple answer is... Not via the GUI, not right now and although this would be a nice feature, I haven't heard a peep about this type of functionality. You could put in a feature request ticket and see if the developers see any use for it.

 

[Piggie]

A simple answer is... Not via the GUI, not right now and although this would be a nice feature, I haven't heard a peep about this type of functionality. You could put in a feature request ticket and see if the developers see any use for it.

Thanks for the reply. I was a bit puzzled by the lack of replies as I thought this would be such a basic thing that everyone running FreeNAS would be able to answer, and I was curious why I had no answers.

When you say "via the GUI" I'm not really sure what you mean.

I mean can you set up windows shares to the CD-ROM and any USB drives on machines connected to the server.

So that if you wanted you could put a CD/DVD into the drive on the server, or plug a USB drive into a USB port on the server, and then be able to see these shared across your machines on the network?

It would seem so obvious that people would want the ability to do this, this is why I was asking

 

[joeschmuck]

When you say "via the GUI" I'm not really sure what you mean.

I started a long reply on my first post but deleted most of it but here is goes...

I'm not an expert at FreeBSD or Linux in general but I'm learning (disclaimer).

As for loading a CD or USB drive to the system and making it sharable via CIFS I'm certain it could be done via the command line but it is not automated at this time. When you are running your FreeNAS machine and you insert a CD into the drive, guess what, it's not there according to the machine. There are many steps you need to take just to see the media and then you need to figure out how to share it via CIFS.

My advice is for you to do some Google searching like I did on how to mount the cdrom drive and then figure out how to share it with CIFS. Keep in mind you are dealing with FreeBSD 8.2 for the OS. Post what you find out, especially if you get it to work.

 

[Bohs Hansen]

When you say "via the GUI" I'm not really sure what you mean.

GUI = Graphic User Interface .. for a NAS thats usually (and also in this case) the web admin panel

rest has pretty much been answered.

 

[Piggie]

GUI = Graphic User Interface .. for a NAS thats usually (and also in this case) the web admin panel

rest has pretty much been answered.

:D

Oh yeah, I know what GUI means.... I've been around long enough to remember this when the Amiga came out! (I still have one in the loft)

My confusion when you said that, was that I was not wanting to access the drives via the GUI control panel of FreeNAS, but access the drives just by links/shortcuts to shares on machine on the network.

By the sound of it, it's a probably no at the moment.

As I said, I'm totally new to this, so please forgive any questions that may sound daft.
I'm just used to having one PC being able to have shortcuts on it's desktop to any parts/drives on another PC. Which is why I sort of assumed the same could be done on a NAS.

You know, put a CD-ROM in the NAS and then access it from a PC linked to it.

Perhaps this is not normally done, but I didn't know, so had to ask :)

 

[Bohs Hansen]

To sum it up in small: It can be done. .... but it can't be done easy right now. We'll have to wait until the devs make an auto-mount and share function for the USB and removable drives.

 

[Piggie]

To sum it up in small: It can be done. .... but it can't be done easy right now. We'll have to wait until the devs make an auto-mount and share function for the USB and removable drives.

Thanks :)

I'm still pondering drives and how on earth I am going to back up my data, as we know a NAS/Server is not a backup. But that's another lot of searching :)

 

[Bohs Hansen]

that's a bit offtopic here, but I just use a bunch of normal hdd's and a eSATA dock. Personally i got this one, well close to that one, mine only has eSATA and not USB.
Once the HDD is full I put it on the shelf and put a new into the docking station. Of course I only turn it on when I need it.