Would like a graphical file manager

fred.sneed

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I searched, but didn't really find what I'm looking for. I played around with MC, but found I end up pissing it off in the web GUI. Seems to work fine from the shell on my NAS.

Background:
I recently setup a FreeNAS and have been playing, and am ready to move media from 14 oldish 1.5 and 2 TB internal drives onto three 8 TB striped drives. Once I have everything transferred to, then cleaned up on my NAS, I'm gonna transfer from my NAS back to the drives, as offline backup, with better organization than was possible before. The only irreplaceable stuff is already taken care of. This NAS is just for easy access, not reliability (yet).

I'd like to have some form of file manager that could see all drives (internal, eSATA, USB) on my FreeNAS box, not just shares. I've used "Import Disk" from the web GUI, but that's kinda all or nothing, and one way. I don't care whether I do it at my NAS box, or if it's something like a plugin for the web GUI. It's been 30 years since I did any UNIX command line, so assume I don't remember any of it. MAN used to be my friend.

thanks
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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Filezilla and a connection via SSH/SFTP?
 

Samuel Tai

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Actually, the GUI does show drives under Storage->Disks, and drive assignments to pools under Storage->Pools, pull down the gear to Status. However, Storage->Pools only shows the dataset hierarchy, and you're correct, there's no means for viewing the contents of datasets within the GUI.
 

fred.sneed

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Thanks. guys. I'd like to find a file manager (maybe this isn't the right term?) that would behave the same as Ubuntu's on a local machine. When I plug in a random USB drive, it "sees" it. Since I don't envision this being a "permanent" requirement, anything running locally on the NAS would be fine.

I did see Filezilla before posting, but given that it's an FTP solution, I assumed I'd need to setup each and every drive before being able to "play" with it.

My 14 HDs range from 2009 to current (meaning they aren't as organized as they could be), so being able to navigate and move things from HDs to NAS, and back, would be ideal. Again, I envision this as a temporary situation, ending once everything is organized. At that point, I won't need to see random eSATA drives being plugged into my NAS.

A crazy idea could be to simply swap in a different OS disk, and use another OS to move files, then plug the FreeNAS disk in to run. If I were to try that, which OS would be easiest to "see" my Pool? My Pool and datasets are already fixed, so all I'd be doing is moving files.
 

sretalla

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I'd like to have some form of file manager that could see all drives (internal, eSATA, USB) on my FreeNAS box, not just shares. I've used "Import Disk" from the web GUI, but that's kinda all or nothing, and one way. I don't care whether I do it at my NAS box, or if it's something like a plugin for the web GUI. It's been 30 years since I did any UNIX command line, so assume I don't remember any of it.
Perhaps FreeNAS is not for you then, just install FreeBSD and set up your desired services.

Access to disks that are attached over USB (at all) and SATA (but not ZFS) isn't something that FreeNAS wants to do for you, so if you're not in for that, you're out.
 

fred.sneed

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Perhaps FreeNAS is not for you then,

Yep, that seems to be your standard answer.

Thanks. guys. I'd like to find a file manager (maybe this isn't the right term?) that would behave the same as Ubuntu's on a local machine. When I plug in a random USB drive, it "sees" it. Since I don't envision this being a "permanent" requirement, anything running locally on the NAS would be fine.

I did see Filezilla before posting, but given that it's an FTP solution, I assumed I'd need to setup each and every drive before being able to "play" with it.

My 14 HDs range from 2009 to current (meaning they aren't as organized as they could be), so being able to navigate and move things from HDs to NAS, and back, would be ideal. Again, I envision this as a temporary situation, ending once everything is organized. At that point, I won't need to see random eSATA drives being plugged into my NAS.

A crazy idea could be to simply swap in a different OS disk, and use another OS to move files, then plug the FreeNAS disk in to run. If I were to try that, which OS would be easiest to "see" my Pool? My Pool and datasets are already fixed, so all I'd be doing is moving files.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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If you login with Filezilla as root via SFTP you will be able to navigate every single directory on the system and move stuff around, though it will probably go over the network. Don't shoot yourself in the foot ;)
 

jgreco

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Yep, that seems to be your standard answer.

[moderator hat on]: A little less snark, please. The truth is that FreeNAS does not do everything that everyone wants. It has specific goals, and your goals appear to be somewhat at odds. Recognizing that FreeNAS is not the solution to every problem is a completely reasonable thing to have suggested to you, especially since it's actually a pretty good suggestion.
 

danb35

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Yep, that seems to be your standard answer.
What answer would you prefer? You're asking for two things (a web file manager and support for non-ZFS filesystems) that the devs have no interest in doing--and in the case of the web file manager at least, they've been asked several times by way of a number of support tickets. There are a number of things you could install in a jail to do at least some of the "web file manager" stuff, but it isn't going to see newly-attached disks. So he's correct, and it's better that you know it than not: if these things are requirements for you, then FreeNAS is not the droid you're looking for. If they are not "required" but rather "nice to have", know that they aren't there, and consider that in evaluating FreeNAS vs. whatever else you're considering.
 

fred.sneed

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Sorry for sounding snarky. I'm obviously not getting my intentions across. I've reread my above posts, and my question seems clear enough, to me, but based on several responses, It's clearly not.

I do not want or expect FreeNAS to do something it's not intended to do. I can easily attach all of my drives to a laptop or desktop and use Windows or Linux to transfer files. I was just hoping for a more efficient short-term solution for transferring 20 +/- TB. I tried to express my short term needs, hoping to get some suggestions about how I could do this.

I did try and search for what others tried, but often found the "maybe FreeNAS isn't for you" response. I have tried FreeNAS and "the other" one, and chose FreeNAS. Am I your typical user? No. I've dealt with pride of authorship in my previous life, and never intended to step on any toes.

I apologize for any hurt feelings I might have caused.
 

danb35

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If it's just a matter of transferring data on those disks to your FreeNAS box, the Import Disk feature sounds like it would be right up your alley.
 

Patrick M. Hausen

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@danb35 If I get the OP right, he already knows that. He's obviously not comfortable with moving the data without a graphical drag&drop thingy. @fred.sneed I would use an SSH session into the FreeNAS and cpio -p, but then I have been "doing Unix" literally for decades. rsync -a might be even better if there's a chance you will need to restart an interrupted transfer for whatever reason.
 

Tigersharke

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If it's just a matter of transferring data on those disks to your FreeNAS box, the Import Disk feature sounds like it would be right up your alley.

@danb35 If I get the OP right, he already knows that. He's obviously not comfortable with moving the data without a graphical drag&drop thingy. @fred.sneed I would use an SSH session into the FreeNAS and cpio -p, but then I have been "doing Unix" literally for decades. rsync -a might be even better if there's a chance you will need to restart an interrupted transfer for whatever reason.

Could this be done (either above method) by attaching those 14 drives directly to the FreeNAS via usb for the process?
It seems like that is part of the issue for some reason.
 

fred.sneed

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Could this be done (either above method) by attaching those 14 drives directly to the FreeNAS via usb for the process?
It seems like that is part of the issue for some reason.

Thanks guys. Subject is "Would like a graphical file manager", so I don't have to have one. All of my drives are internal drives, that I can connect to my NAS box via USB or eSATA, two drives at a time (USB 2 docking station). Import Disk copies the whole disk. All 2 TB, even if I only need to copy 1 TB. I also can't pick and choose what goes where. I started off using that with a lot of my disks a few weeks back. 1/2 of them crapped out, and I had to manually pick up where they left off. Even with eSATA, this is a slow process. I don't have a UPS, so power blips are a thing this time of year. Most of this was while I was still playing, so I ended up just deleting about 10 TB.

I don't have any problem with typing vs. GUI, but my filing structure (or lack thereof) has changed from 2009 (the oldest HD) to now, so it's not quite as easy as it could be. Ideally

I'll do some reading on rsync, as that sounds like a more reliable way than simply telling it to copy, and coming back a day and a half later, only to find it died, somewhere. I'm also gonna look into Filezilla, but may ultimately find it's easier to boot from one disk/OS for loading/tweaking, and the current one for normal use.

Again, thanks for suggestions.
 

Tigersharke

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Hmm.. if you know beforehand what your content criteria is, perhaps part of it might be vaguely automated with scripts or even pattern matching. I have no idea how this would dovetail into the rsync operation as I have never used that or anything similar.
 

Apollo

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I searched, but didn't really find what I'm looking for. I played around with MC, but found I end up pissing it off in the web GUI. Seems to work fine from the shell on my NAS.

Background:
I recently setup a FreeNAS and have been playing, and am ready to move media from 14 oldish 1.5 and 2 TB internal drives onto three 8 TB striped drives. Once I have everything transferred to, then cleaned up on my NAS, I'm gonna transfer from my NAS back to the drives, as offline backup, with better organization than was possible before. The only irreplaceable stuff is already taken care of. This NAS is just for easy access, not reliability (yet).

I'd like to have some form of file manager that could see all drives (internal, eSATA, USB) on my FreeNAS box, not just shares. I've used "Import Disk" from the web GUI, but that's kinda all or nothing, and one way. I don't care whether I do it at my NAS box, or if it's something like a plugin for the web GUI. It's been 30 years since I did any UNIX command line, so assume I don't remember any of it. MAN used to be my friend.

thanks
Using the "import disk" feature seems to imply you are importing disks with NTFS partitions.
I have had experience issue in the past, both with the import procedure and rsync.

I think the approach to dealing with file transfer across from different disks is more challenging, but what I have done in the past is simply start with creating a dataset on the 8TB disk pool for every disk in your collection you want to copy the content from.
Start with one dataset and create a Samba share if you are on Windows and have your disk mounted on your Windows PC.
Then you can use Filezilla, but I prefer "Beyond Compare" and use it to point at both the disk and the share.
Then you can start copying everything over. I would use the "Binary Comparison" feature just to make sure there are no issues on the copied data.
It is very easy to then see which files are missing or have copy issues.

Once copy is completed and satisfactory, then you can deal with the next disk pointing to another dataset.

You can also create a folder specific to a particular disk rather than dealing with datasets as it will help with file and folder relocation on the 8TB disk pool.
Once everything is done, you can manipulate folder structures by opening a SSH terminal and run MC in it within a "screen" session, this way you can reconnect without MC being interrupted in any way.
 

fred.sneed

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One final bit of information (bad pun). My NAS box is in the same room as my PC. The room's hardwired for Gb, but only has one jack. I have a spare router, but it's old 10/100 Mb. My NAS is Gb and PC is currently 5 GHz wireless, which is faster than if I were to use my 10/100 router.
So...
Copying stuff from an internal HD via eSATA to NAS internal SATA at bus speed
or...
Copying from internal HD SATA via USB 2.0 through my PC's 5 GHz wireless to NAS. Can't do eSATA on my PC.
 

Tigersharke

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Afaik a switch would do, and others have mentioned connecting two PCs directly with ethernet. As for your question, I believe that the USB 2.0 would be a significant bottleneck of itself, but I do not know specifics as I have never done this myself.
 

Apollo

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One final bit of information (bad pun). My NAS box is in the same room as my PC. The room's hardwired for Gb, but only has one jack. I have a spare router, but it's old 10/100 Mb. My NAS is Gb and PC is currently 5 GHz wireless, which is faster than if I were to use my 10/100 router.
So...
Copying stuff from an internal HD via eSATA to NAS internal SATA at bus speed
or...
Copying from internal HD SATA via USB 2.0 through my PC's 5 GHz wireless to NAS. Can't do eSATA on my PC.
Not many options.
I would have selected to import the disk from Freenas feature, but I have had experience issue in the fact some files and folders where not imported in the process.
What you could do, and this is a solution you can experiment with , is to use the "Disk import" feature and instead of selecting the 8TB pool top level, create a dataset where the import will take place. This approach will lead you to the fastest transfer possible.
Then take the disk to your Window PC and connect it via the USB2.0 port and connect either over 10/100Mb or 5Gbit network to the shared dataset (you can create a share from the main pool or maybe create a lower level dataset where the share points to, which will contain aal the new created datasets from import) and just use "Beyond compare" to just perform quick folder comparison.
If differences exist, then try to copy the missing or corrupted files over the share connection.
 

fred.sneed

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Not many options.
I would have selected to import the disk from FreeNAS feature, but I have had experience issue in the fact some files and folders where not imported in the process.
What you could do, and this is a solution you can experiment with , is to use the "Disk import" feature and instead of selecting the 8TB pool top level, create a dataset where the import will take place. This approach will lead you to the fastest transfer possible.
Then take the disk to your Window PC and connect it via the USB2.0 port and connect either over 10/100Mb or 5Gbit network to the shared dataset (you can create a share from the main pool or maybe create a lower level dataset where the share points to, which will contain aal the new created datasets from import) and just use "Beyond compare" to just perform quick folder comparison.
If differences exist, then try to copy the missing or corrupted files over the share connection.
That's pretty much what I've done so far. If the Import completes without any errors, WooHoo! Some of the ones that crapped out were far enough along that they were easy enough to manually fix. I'm currently cleaning up and organizing what I already have on the NAS, then using Teracopy to move the cleaned up files back to my HDs. I'm basically going to fill up the HDs by data type, and alphabetical and/or chronologically.

With 14, there was no real way for me to organize them ahead of transfer. It will be easier to move the files, rename and organize them, then make a "backup" on my HDs, and file them away.
 
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