Using FreeNAS on Mac mini G4 (PowerPC)

[aurora72]

Hello

I'm searching for the possibility of using FreeNAS on Mac mini G4s. FreeNAS is currently not compiled for the PowerPC architecture but FreeBSD is and with some "extra configuration" FreeNAS functionality can be obtained on a PowerPC Mac with FreeBSD installed.

The question is, what "extra configuration" should I make and what are those ports I should compile and install to make PPC Mac's FreeBSD to run more like FreeNAS?

Yet more basic question: Will there ever be any PowerPC compilation of FreeNAS?

 

[jgreco]

It's all the little gotchas that make porting to a different platform problematic.

The thing that differentiates FreeNAS from FreeBSD is that it's pre-tuned and has an administrative interface designed for NAS work. I have yet to see anything that FreeNAS does that cannot be duplicated on a FreeBSD box. However, it probably isn't as simple as just taking the FreeNAS stuff and adding it to FreeBSD-ppc. There are probably differences at various levels that would make it difficult.

Do you really need the value-adds of FreeNAS, in terms of Web GUI, or can you just live with a competent shell-configured fileserver, obtainable via FreeBSD? If it's just the latter, then you really just need to identify what sorts of protocols you want to serve and then enable or install them.

 

[aurora72]

Hello

Thank you for the helpful comments.

As far as I understand it, FreeNAS, particularly its latest version 8, put some restrictions onto the hardware, e.g. the FreeNAS should be installed into a small sized (~64MB?) USB connected or direct Compact Flash card and the main storage must lie somewhere else.

That fits perfectly for a device which was designed e.g. as a Network video Recorder, but however my basic aim is to make use of old but working hardware, not to update the OS of a NVR I recently bought. All those Mac minis (PowerPC) are destined for death and they should make use of something, and a NVR usage prefectly fits that.

But to do that, I can't afford to spend excessive time on customizing the software or its configuration. That is why I have hoped for a PowerPC version of FreeNAS.

In this respect, I don't think I need all value-adds of FreeNAS. Actually I haven't even used or tried any FreeNAS on any hardware. Don't know if I can try FreeNAS 8, using USB boot on an Intel Mac mini, without affecting the data (the Mac OS X, actually). What I need is the basic NAS functionality, to be used by the network cameras as the storage. I might do that simply by configuring the FreeBSD accordingly, but again as I said, that 's a time consuming activity for me as a beginner.