John Hixson of iXsystems did a presentation on FreeNAS development (ODP slides)last month at the SCALE expo.
The goal of the presentation was to create a simple FreeNAS application to demonstrate some of the common methods used when dealing with FreeNAS development, as well as showcase some of the API.
The FreeNAS Team has added another video showing you how to set up FreeNAS 9.2.1 and install the Plex Media Server plugin.
First point release to a point release.
We are not particularly thrilled that we had to do one, but there were some Samba (CIFS) and jail related bugs (including a panic!) that definitely made it necessary; we’ve done little else for the last 2 weeks but tracking them down and stomping on them!
Ben Milman from iXsystems has put together a tutorial (How to Set Up FreeNAS with BitTorrent Sync Using a Plugin) showing step-by-step how to install and set up BitTorrent Sync on FreeNAS.
BitTorrent Sync is a free, unlimited, secure file-syncing app which can be easily installed through the BitTorrent Sync plugin for FreeNAS. FreeNAS enables users to build network-attached-storage (NAS) on nearly any hardware platform of their choosing. There is an old tutorial on the BitTorrent blog showing how to configure BitTorrent Sync yourself, but with Josh Ruehlig’s plugin it’s a lot easier now.
If you are using FreeNAS and you need to sync and share large files with anybody via secure, distributed technology, try out the BitTorrent Sync plugin with these install notes.
Links: FreeNAS website | BitTorrent Sync
About FreeNAS: FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-based (nanobsd) and BSD licensed open source Network Attached Storage (NAS) Platform developed by iXsystems, optimised to support file storage and files sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.
After one BETA, two Release Candidates, and many nightly builds, The FreeNAS team has announced FreeNAS 9.2.1-RELEASE.
Jordan Hubbard writes: “FreeNAS 9.2.0 was a great release, and we’re pleased to say that FreeNAS 9.2.1 is even better. Since 9.2.0 was released, we have fixed over 189 bugs, added new features, polished the UI, and improved the performance of FreeNAS even further. The documentation has also been updated for 9.2.1, though the source code is still a useful reference for features like the web API, which comes with several examples in the source tree. For the first time, we are also publishing an errata list for 9.2.1 so people will know about known issues that were not deemed severe enough to be ‘show stoppers’ for this release.”
Links: FreeNAS website | Announcement | Download | FreeNAS Forums
About FreeNAS: FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-based (nanobsd) and BSD licensed open source Network Attached Storage (NAS) Platform developed by iXsystems, optimised to support file storage and files sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.
On behalf of the FreeNAS developers at iXsystems, Jordan Hubbard has announced FreeNAS 9.2.1-RC2.
Loads of bugs have been fixed, things have changed and a few additional functionalities have been added.
Read the announcement to find out more about Jordan’s mixed feelings.
FreeNAS 9.2.1 is going to be awesome.
Jordan Hubbard has announced the availability of FreeNAS 9.2.1-RC. It is expected that this will be the only Release Candidate to be made available, unless show stopper are found.
The most interesting changes from the BETA releases are an upgraded version of Samba (to version 4.1.4), a new driver for the LSI 12G SAS card, a fixed Netatalk bug, mDNSresponder replacing Avahi and some changes to the graphs on the reports screen.
The FreeNAS development team is proud to announce the first Release Candidate image of FreeNAS 9.2.1! Barring the finding of any significant problems, this is essentially 9.2.1 RELEASE. We will, of course, fix any “release blocker” problems that people find over the next 10 days (we would like to release 9.2.1 on February 7th, all else permitting) so please test this as heavily as you can. We are also running it in production on our own servers, so we take “release candidate” pretty seriously!
I guess FreeNAS 9.2.1-RELEASE won’t be far off now.
Links: FreeNAS website | Announcement | Download | FreeNAS Forums
About FreeNAS: FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-based (nanobsd) and BSD licensed open source Network Attached Storage (NAS) Platform developed by iXsystems, that has been optimised to support file storage and files sharing across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.
Welcome to the latest (Free)BSD news round-up in which we have a mix of news snippets and links. Just a round-up of those miscellaneous (Free)BSD related links that are news worthy and which you may find hopefully interesting, but are yet too small to package as individual posts.
Some of the links below have already appeared in our Google Plus +FreeBSD Central and Twitter feeds.
PC-BSD 10.0-RC5 Now Available
This will likely be our LAST RC before issuing the 10.0-FINAL release in a week or so.
PC-BSD Blog – 23 Jan 2014
New pfSense website
The pfSense project has a new website
pfSense 2.1.1-PRERELEASE Snapshots available
For those who are inclined to try such things, 2.1.1-PRERELEASE snapshots are up for testing at snapshots.pfsense.org. New features and changes.
Amazon supporting FreeBSD Foundation
When you shop at Amazon through this link, https://smile.amazon.com/ch/84-1545163, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of your eligible Amazon Smile purchases to the FreeBSD Foundation.
FOSDEM 2014 BSD program
The program for the BSD devroom at #FOSDEM 2014 in Brussels is now available.
FreeBSD Programming Primer
BSD Mag has an issue with 12 tutorials on how to develop a Content Management System (CMS) which will run under an AMP stack on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux. In this series Rob Somerville looks at the tools, processes and methods involved in writing a CMS.
BSD Mag – 14 Jan 2014
PC-BSD Weekly Feature Digest
For those of you waiting for PC-BSD 10 to become a reality, the wait is almost over.
PC-BSD Blog – 24 Jan 2014
The Daemon, the GNU & the Penguin
Peter Salus’s book, the Daemon, the Gnu, and the Penguin, was a regular Groklaw feature in 2005 and 2006. It is now in book form (paperback) and available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. It’s been expanded, and the subtitle now is “How Free and Open Software is Changing the World”.
iXsystems’ new FreeNAS device needs your label vote
Here’s your chance to influence the design of an upcoming FreeNAS product from iXsystems! Help us pick which label you’d like to see by leaving a comment on this post.
Vote via +iXsystems, Facebook or the FreeNAS forums
FreeBSD 11 has been added to the BSD Family Tree
OpenBSD rescued from unpowered oblivion by $20K bitcoin donation
Latest update includes many user-requested features and improvements, as well as a REST API for remote administration of FreeNAS.
iXsystems has announced the release of FreeNAS 9.2.0. This update incorporates all the improvements made in FreeBSD 9.2, as well as a vast collection of minor and major tweaks throughout the FreeNAS web user interface. This release is made possible through the efforts of an active and engaged FreeNAS community. Nearly every sub-system, including sharing services, plugin jails, storage management and user accounts, has been improved with community-submitted feedback in the form of bug reports, feature requests, forum discussions, and user-submitted patches.
The biggest new addition in FreeNAS 9.2.0 is a REST API, allowing FreeNAS to be controlled remotely and programmatically. This allows for the creation of third-party applications, potentially on mobile devices, that provide alternative interfaces to FreeNAS. The REST API can also be used to manage multiple FreeNAS appliances simultaneously, using custom scripting or applications which configure FreeNAS automatically for specialized roles.
Almost every existing FreeNAS feature has been improved as well. ZFS performance has been increased through the use of the kernel UMA allocator by default. Encryption performance on AES-NI capable hardware is now nearly indistinguishable from non-encrypted performance, thanks to improvements to the FreeBSD GELI subsystem being incorporated into FreeNAS. Netatalk was updated to version 3.1.0, bringing a number of improvements and somewhat simplifying the interface for the AFP service. The Active Directory and CIFS services were also simplified and now have defaults that make it easier to configure both services correctly.
Along with the core services, the FreeNAS plugin system continues to improve. There is now a jail template system which allows users to create templates based on existing jails and quickly deploy additional jails based on those templates. A number of new default jail templates are also available, including jails for a number of popular Linux distributions such as Debian 7.1.0 and Ubuntu 13.04. FreeNAS 9.2.0 also adds a shell button for jails, allowing quick and easy access to the command line interface for individual jails.
Several new plugins have also been made available in FreeNAS since 9.1.0 was released, including updated versions of SABnzbd and SickBeard and a brand-new BTSync plugin, all submitted by community members. For those who want to get the absolute most out of FreeNAS, this is the most flexible and customizable release yet.
About FreeNAS®
FreeNAS is a free and open source Network Attached Storage operating system based on FreeBSD®. The goal of the project is to design a lightweight, BSD-based software package that acts as a full featured NAS server, complete with a Django-based web user interface, full ZFS implementation, and the ability to interface with existing networks – regardless of operating system or protocol. FreeNAS also includes the first Free and Open Source ZFS encryption offering in the world. (via)
The FreeNAS team at iXsystems has taken the for-them-unusual step of rolling and releasing Release Candidate 2, FreeNAS 9.2.0-RC2, due to the significant number of changes that had to be made in fixing a number of bugs.
Barring any more significant bugs being found, this will be the last Release Candidate before going to 9.2.0-RELEASE
Read the release announcement and test if you have the time. If you find any bugs, please file a bug report.