What have I gotten myself into?

[3N0]

Hello! (TLDR bold: I'm very, very new- please help)

The prospect of establishing an NAS solution built from an older rig of mine has been appealing for quite awhile but I quickly get bogged down in the lingo / acronyms. I LOVE the versatility available in TrueNAS but at this point it's more of a hindrance. I thought I'd be able to put the rig together, install TrueNAS and click a few buttons and all my problems would be solved.

"Shoulda gone with Synology then, bucko" I can hear some of you muttering to yourselves as you read this. Yes, it was an appealing option for all the reasons I'm here looking for help- but I DO want to learn... I just can't seem to get my head around everything at once but I sure would like to.

I'm reading through the forums- trying to find the true "for noobs" threads but all of them I've found so far seem to start off decent then descend into a whole new language. I'm watching youtube video tutorials and no two are saying the same thing... each person has their own take on what they want to do. One person's telling you to do it this way, another telling a different way... the videos are a couple months apart and versions differ. Or not- Up until just a short time ago I didn't realize Free/TrueNAS were the same but different. It definitely explained why I was following FreeNAS tutorials and a bunch of stuff wasn't lining up.

To add to this challenge of learning a whole new concept language- now I'm reading about all these different ways to back up data more efficiently. I thought I'd just set up two drives to mirror and run and I was reading a thread earlier of a guy who was doing that and someone chimed in... "Why not do it this way with snapshots instead yada yada..." Reading up on ZFS made me realize there are a lot of options... and I want to take advantage of its capabilities but I need to figure out how to eat this elephant one byte at a time (groan.)

So one thing that was immediately apparent was how supportive the community is so I'm hoping that generosity will be extended to me as well as I flail about here doing my best.

My custom server rig is just a repurposed i7920 with 12 gigs of RAM, I have TrueNAS installed on an 80GB SSD and two 1TB IronWolf drives available for storage. I wanted to take it easy on buying a bunch of drives in case it didn't work out... but I do plan on investing in at least 2 more larger capacity drives as I figure out what my needs are and get caught up with the technology and the TrueNAS software. Maybe I don't need that much...

My needs are quite simple- I just want to back up some files... my wife wants to backup a billion photos of the kids... I'd like to help my dad back up some of his stuff remotely. Maybe even make it a catch all for all my family's backup needs? I'd like for it to do this automatically... Maybe my expectations are too high?

I did follow one of the threads on the second page "step by step" and did manage to get some user folders created inside the network storage area- so I'm on my way but it would be nice if someone could help me fine tune my settings for my specific situation... make some recommendations on the most practical use of the space.

 

[JohnDigital]

I think there are so many conflicting ways of doing things represented in youtube and such, because Unix and its brother Linux are largely do it yourself OSs. There are so many different ways people do things, because there are so many ways to do things. Each flavor being a little bit different really gets it going. What worked two years ago might be invalid now or changed a tiny bit, etc. If your green its no doubt very confusing.

Now, what you describe of wanting your machine to do, TrueNAS and its parent FreeBSD do, and do very well. However it is a tad advanced. So for you it will be a matter of commitment and patience at first, and as you pick it up and get comfortable it will start to make sense. Youll need to learn to use the CLI (command line interface), and understand how file structure works in a Unix world, as that is mostly what we are all here for: storing files. And theres a lot of different ways to do it.

My needs are quite simple- I just want to back up some files... my wife wants to backup a billion photos of the kids... I'd like to help my dad back up some of his stuff remotely. Maybe even make it a catch all for all my family's backup needs? I'd like for it to do this automatically... Maybe my expectations are too high?

You say your on your way so I wish you luck and if theres anything you need im always popping in, but im curious what direction you are going and what softwares and such you intend to run, as theres a few ways this can be done automatically but they require setup, but once setup youll be golden.

 

[marked23]

@3N0

 

[3N0]

You say your on your way so I wish you luck and if theres anything you need im always popping in, but im curious what direction you are going and what softwares and such you intend to run, as theres a few ways this can be done automatically but they require setup, but once setup youll be golden.

Well to be honest in my mind I wanted to just set up mirrored storage across my two 1TB drives- which doesn't sound like the most efficient way to do it anymore. A combination of a backup with snapshots looks to be a more efficient, effective alternative.

I spent most of my time so far just working through the install and only just stumbled into the pluggins. I really don't have any need to store / play media... Really the only thing I wanted to do was create a safe backup for some everyday files and photos-

One of the things I've been finding lacking a little bit in some of the tutorials is there is a lot of "Go here, click this setting. Do this, click here. Activate this. Do the thing. You NEED to do this..." but there's really no context so it's screwing with me a little.

And now I've just gone in through my network to access the folders I set up yesterday and now I don't have permission.

Sigh.

This is going to take awhile.

 

[JohnDigital]

First, having just 2 drives basically limits you to only having a mirror, meaning the drives are identical copies, you can have a drive fail without losing data. If your just starting out its fine to only have 2 drives, but if your storage needs increase, youll want to use several disks. If these are pictures your wife would kill you if you lost, buy a few more same sized drives now, thus increasing your parity, before you start to fill this machine up. Things that i cannot live without reside on pools where 4 disks have to fail before data is lost (RAIDZ3). But you lose 3 drives worth of storage potential because they are dedicated to parity(repair potential). But for most RAIDZ2 is enough, meaning 3 drives have to fail. And RAIDZ which is not recommended (one parity disk across all disks). If its me id get 2 more identically sized (1TB) disks and set up your pool as a RAIDZ2. Youll realize 2TB of total space and 3dsks would have to fail at the same time to lose data. Something for you to seriously consider, especially if this is your backup machine.

On to it. So you literally just need the basic TrueNAS functions, this will be easy actually.. If you are just starting out, the best and first thing you should do (i assume youll be using windows) is create YOUR main user in TrueNAS with identical credentials to your windows user (username, password, and the actual email you have your Windows account set up as), in fact you should create a user for each windows user/machine.

When you create this users it will, by default create a group with a matching name to your user. You should leave this setting checked for your user only (so it creates a master group for you) and also join your user to the auxilary group "media", this group is already present, it just needs to be selected from the list. The options are right there in the GUI for user creation.

Then as you add additional users uncheck the new group creation and select "media" as their primary group. This will make your lives so much easier imo. Then once you have this setup ill help you make all of your SHARED data owned by your user and group media. And once this is done you should never have permission issues again.

Then once your satisfied with that we can think about getting nextcloud going for your family to easily use for backing things up and or retrieval from anywhere. The faster the internet connection the better the better the experience.

Then once were satisfied all of that is up and running perfectly we will set auto config backups, snapshots, SMART tests, scrubs, alerts.

 

[3N0]

Thanks for all your insights. One thing I knew going in was that I was going to "start from scratch" a lot- and this is the one thing I can state unequivocally was 100% correct.

I'm configuring and reconfiguring so I can "get gud" at it... and I'm starting to find my way around. I noticed you mention the auxiliary group "media" so I'm going to go ahead and follow that. I'm very interested in setting up the distance backup / retrieval from anywhere so give me a bit here to just go through this process a couple times and get everyone set up then I'll be ready for the distance backups!

 

[JohnDigital]

Your doing it. That's all that matters.

 

[3N0]

Your doing it. That's all that matters.

Okay JD let's try this... might be easier than me trying to explain what I've done so far.



One thing I noticed re-reading your post is I should set my primary group to just link to my name, but my auxiliary group to media- and set THAT up as the primary group for other users. I don't think that's causing my problems, but when I go back in closer to my final setup I'll do as you recommended.

 

[JohnDigital]

I explain to do it this way so, you can have control over some things by "owning" them to your user and group, preventing access, or overwriting, editing, etc. Everything for anyone else will be owned by the group media.

Get the permissions issues sorted first and everything else will fall into place.

 

[marked23]

@3N0,

I accidently hit the wrong keys and submitted the empty message above.
It seems apropos that I can't edit a message after submitting it.
Just like accidently adding a useless vdev to my zpool: It's there forever now.

Anyway, I was just going to share my commiseration.
When you ask "What have I gotten myself into?", I'm feeling the same way.

I've been repeatedly starting from scratch too. I expected to do that until I was comfortable with my recovery strategy. However, I wasn't expecting "restarting from scratch" to be the only way to undo changes in a zpool.

The things that make me wonder if TrueNAS is for me:

• No recovery tools
• No removing anything from a zpool
• If any vdev dies, the whole zpool dies

To me, this means that I need to have double the storage capacity on-hand, just to recover from a configuration mistake. Which means having two TrueNAS machines, to bounce data between. I went a little over-budget to build my one machine. But since there's no hope for data recovery on a failed zpool, I feel like I need two TrueNAS machines, at minimum.

 

[3N0]

@3N0,
To me, this means that I need to have double the storage capacity on-hand, just to recover from a configuration mistake. Which means having two TrueNAS machines, to bounce data between. I went a little over-budget to build my one machine. But since there's no hope for data recovery on a failed zpool, I feel like I need two TrueNAS machines, at minimum.

First off- Merry Christmas Marked...

Like JD said above I wouldn't commit anything substantial until you've bomb proofed / tested / tinkered with it a bit... in relation to your "configuration mistake-" I can't even get my instance to talk to Windows.

All I want for Christmas is for someone to watch the video I posted above and tell me what I've done wrong so I can move on... pretty please!?

 

[marked23]

In your video, I think you got into trouble at the 4 minute mark, when you replaced root's ACL with your own. In the link below, it mentions adding an additional ACL for your user. ...which is done on the right-hand side of that dialog.

/core/coretutorials/sharing/smb/

On the left side, leave “root” and “wheel” as the original owners of the dataset.
To give another user ownership permissions, click “Add ACL Item”, then choose “User” for the “Who” field, and “imcleod” for the “User” field.

Also, I'm not sure why you selected "media" as your new user's primary group (3:20). I suggest leaving the "New Primary Group" check-box checked.
(I'm not sure if this had a detrimental effect on your setup. I didn't try it, myself.)

Group identifier - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Many system administrators allocate for each user also a personal primary group that has the same name as the user's login name, and often also has the same numeric GID as the user's UID.

The login dialog popped-up when I tried to connect to the share.
I entered username and password, and it let me in.

Ho Ho Hope that helps!

 

[ChrisRJ]

@3N0,
[..] To me, this means that I need to have double the storage capacity on-hand, just to recover from a configuration mistake. Which means having two TrueNAS machines, to bounce data between. I went a little over-budget to build my one machine. But since there's no hope for data recovery on a failed zpool, I feel like I need two TrueNAS machines, at minimum.

I would recommend to use a VM for that kind of experiments. You can use small virtual disk (e.g. 10 GB each) as a starting point and get to know stuff.

 

[3N0]

Ho Ho Hope that helps!

I'm going to work through this now- thanks a bunch!

As for my I made media primary- that was a mistake... I'd misread one of the posts above. I'm going to start over again and see if I can apply the information in your post. Thanks Marked!

 

[3N0]

Ho Ho Hope that helps!

Okay well I changed the things you mentioned and I got it working on my PC and the imac as well. Next challenge is to figure out how to do it from a distance!

 

[3N0]

Wanted to start poking around nextcloud and being able to start looking into solutions for the remote storage opportunities and encountered this error.

Any suggestions?