Alright, so you’ve read my previous article introducing you to what a network attached storage (NAS) device is and you’ve decided to implement such a device on your home network. Awesome! So what’s next? Well, now comes the hard part. Sort of. You see, I’ve done the initial research for you and here in this article, I’ll walk you step by step on how you can simply get a NAS box up and running before the day’s end. Granted, like I’ve said in my previous article, there are numerous steps you have to perform and each step is equally important. One skipped step and you might have a file server not working how you want it to. As another fair warning, following the steps presented in this article will only get you started with NAS4Free. However, you will at the end of the tutorial have a completely functional NAS box with a couple of files shares that will be accessible from the other computers on your home network. There are many, many features that you can implement on your NAS box such as configuring a RAID setup to disk encryption. If you are completely new to NAS4Free and configuring a NAS box in general, this tutorial is meant for you. Once you’ve gotten the basics down, then I would recommend you to research the many other functions that this free operating system provides to enhance the capabilities of your NAS box.
This article is intended to go into how to configure your NAS box. If you want an introduction to what NAS is and whether or not you should use one, then please read my previous article!What You’ll Need
- A dedicated NAS box – This computer will be your NAS server. The computer can be as barebones as possible! You do not need a fancy graphics card nor tons of RAM. If it turns on and boots, you’re good to go! Granted, NAS4Free does have a supported hardware list which you can find here. My advice is to just boot the operating system and see where that gets you rather than spending too much time worrying about whether your hardware is compatible or not. I did notice that NAS4Free needed at least 512MB of RAM. It kept rebooting when it only had 256MB.
- NAS4Free – The FreeNAS operating system is technically the operating system of choice for NAS builders. However, I find that OS to be buggy when I first embarked on this project (it wouldn’t even let me create a single user as it kept saying I didn’t fill out the required fields even though it doesn’t tell me exactly what those fields are!). I then found out that FreeNAS is now operated by a different group of users hence the changes. NAS4Free is a version that is built on top of FreeNAS 7 series. During my experimentation, NAS4Free works magically and that is why I am using it as the operating system of choice for my NAS box. You can download a free copy of NAs4Free here.
- Management computer – This is the computer that you use day in and day out. We will use it to do the majority of the configuration tasks once we have NAS4Free up and running.
- WinSCP – This awesome utility allows us to FTP into our NAS box to perform configuration and maintenance. You can download the free utility from here.
- Hard disk(s) – You’ll definitely need empty hard disks to use with your NAS box to actually store your data. If you are just starting out, feel free to start with a single disk just to get a hang of how NAS4Free works. Once you are more comfortable with NAS4Free, you can easily add additional hard disks in the future for added storage space. In this tutorial, I am assuming you have just one physical hard disk installed in the NAS box.
- A working network – You obviously need a connected home network to work with data to and from your NAS box.
- A client computer – This is just a regular computer connected to your home network to test with NAS4Free. You can just as easily use your own management computer or spin up a virtual machine.
My End Results..
The demo I will be showing here is fairly simple. At the end, I will have a fully functional NAS box on my network. I have two users named Alice and Bob that need to store their data on my file server. Each user needs their own private folder where only they are able to access it and no one else. However, they also need a general public folder to share files between each other when the occasion calls for it. Both Alice and Bob should have read and write access to this public folder. On both Alice’s and Bob’s computer, they will map two network drives corresponding to the two folders I’ve just talked about so that they can have access to them whenever they turn on their computer while on the home network.
NAS4Free Installation
- Burn the NAS4Free ISO to a CD or DVD.
- Connect a keyboard and monitor to your NAS computer. A mouse is not needed as there is no graphical interface when installing NAS4Free initially on the NAS box itself.
- Pop the NAS4Free CD into the computer and boot from it. You can change the device boot order by heading into your computer’s BIOS screen.
The beauty with NAS4Free is that it boots and loads very quickly as the operating system is very lightweight. Eventually, you’ll get booted into the NAS4Free boot option menu. Let the timer run down automatically or press the number 1 on your keyboard. This instructs NAS4Free to start in the default installation mode. Here is where you cross your fingers and pray that everything goes well because here is where NAS4Free will probe and inspect your computer hardware. NAS4Free automatically loads a compatible device driver for your detected hardware. Once you get to the screen where you are once again presented with a menu option and you see that NAS4Free has been assigned an IP address, then congratulations because NAS4Free has been completely loaded! If not, then you’ll have to investigate the problem and try again.
While you can run the NAS4Free operating system from a LiveCD (which is what you have at this very moment), I would recommend you to actually install the OS onto your hard drive directly. Trust me, this saves a lot of headache in the long run. Although NAS4Free needs very little maintenance once you get things started, there will still be times when you need to reboot the server or if the system crashes. By installing the OS onto the hard drive, you can save the networking information on future reboots without you have to reconfigure things. To start the installation, press number 9 on your keyboard and then the Enter key.
On the initial screen, choose option 3 and hit OK. On the next warning screen, read the prompt and hit OK again. This is basically telling you that NAS4Free will install itself on the first partition and it will automatically create another partition for you to use as the “data” partition. In past versions of FreeNAS, I believe it was impossible to use the hard drive you’ve installed the OS on as a data drive as well. This lead many users to install the OS onto a USB thumb drive instead. Next, you select the source to install from. If you’ve booted NAS4Free from a CD, this will be your source. Next, pick the drive to install NAS4Free. This should be on your first hard disk. Next, you get to choose how big a partition to install the OS on. The minimum needed is 380MB. Finally, you get to choose whether or not to create a Swap partition. This partition space is used to help boost systems with low amounts of memory. I chose to not create this partition. Once the OS is installed, you will get a nice warning prompt about how to use your hard disk when you later use the GUI management utility. Basically it’s warning you against reformatting the drive!
Now that the OS has been installed locally on the hard disk, test it out by removing the installation CD and rebooting the computer. If all goes well, you should end back up at the console setup screen!
Configuring Static IP Address
Technically you really don’t have to perform this part of the procedure. It’s just that it has always been drilled in my head that for any kind of server, it should always be assigned a static IP address instead of getting one from a DHCP server. With NAS4Free however, I do notice that it always assigned me the same IP address upon each reboot.As with any server or computer on a network where users rely on it for certain services, it’s imperative that we assign the server a static IP address rather than it getting one from your router. However, from my testing with NAS4Free, I noticed that it always assigned my NAS box with the same IP address of 192.168.1.250. To play it safe, I’m going to assign it a static IP instead. For that we press the number 2 on our keyboard.
- First it will ask us if we want to use DHCP. My answer is no.
- On the next screen, I’ll assign my NAS box with a static IP address of 192.168.1.240. You obviously should use an IP address that sits in the range of your own home network IP address range.
- In the subnet screen, I’ll stick with the default of a /24 notation.
- For the gateway address, I will leave it blank here because my NAS box does not need any outside access to the Internet. Usually your gateway address is the IP address of your home router. However, a user commented that his machines could not find the NAS server on the network until he issued a default gateway address. Since there is no harm in specifying one, feel free to go ahead and do just that here.
- In the DNS screen, I will leave it blank as well. Once again, I am on a home network and therefore a DNS server is not required for my machines to find the NAS box. Feel free to enter in an address here. Usually this will be either your router’s IP address or a specific DNS server of your choosing.
- For the IPv6 configuration screen, I simply skipped it.
Finally, NAS4Free will configure the network adapter with the options I chose and lets me know that my server can now be managed via the static IP address. To make sure it sticks, reboot your server and check if the NAS box is configured with the static IP address.
Time to Finally Get Started!
Configuring Our Disk
First things first, we need to prepare our hard disk for use. At the login prompt, type in the username and password for a default installation of NAS4Free which is admin and nas4free, respectively.
If you are only performing a trial run of NAS4Free, you can leave the default password as is. However, you should definitely change the default password once you are confident that you will be using NAS4Free for good on your network. You can change the password by heading into System –> General and clicking on the Password tab.To prepare our disk, head into Disk –> Management. By default, there shouldn’t be any entry listed here. Click on the blue plus symbol located on the far right side. In my demo, I only have one physical hard disk installed and so that will be the one I import here. Fields that are not bolded are not required to be filled out. Therefore, I only select my one disk and hit the Add button.
At the next screen, notice that the changes have not been committed. We actually have to click on the “Apply Changes” button to commit the change. This is how NAS4Free works. Therefore, for the rest of the tutorial, I will not repeat this part so please remember to hit the Apply Changes button if applicable!
Once our disk has been imported and online, it’s now time to mount it. Normally, we would need to perform a format of the disk but because we chose to install the NAS4Free OS directly onto the hard disk, it did this for us! Therefore, do not format this disk. If you have other blank hard disks, then you will need to format it first prior to mounting it. You can do so by heading into Disks –> Format. You then select the disk and choose to format it with the UFS file system. Because I only have one disk in this tutorial, I can go straight to mounting it by heading into Disks –> Mount Point. Hit on the blue plus symbol.
Here we need to configure a mount point for our disk. Think of a mount point as the starting place to store our folder directories. Users on your network won’t see this mount point though but only the directories created within it. Here are the settings I’ve configured. Make sure in the Partition Number field box, type in the number 2. Partition 1 is where NAS4Free is installed at so we need to leave that alone. For the Mount Point Name, you can use whatever you want. Under Access Restrictions, you can completely leave that part alone.
Adding Users and Groups
Once our disk has a mounted volume point, we can then begin to creating our users and groups. Basically, you should create a user account in NAS4Free for every user on your network. So in my example, I will create two: one for Alice and one for Bob. This allows us to grant granular access permissions on shared folders. However, it doesn’t make sense to grant individual users access to the same folder, which in our case is the Public folder. Therefore, we create groups and make users a part of that group. We then grant folder access permissions using those groups. This works very similarly to Microsoft Windows.
First we create our group. Head over to Access –> Users and Groups. Switch over to the Groups tab and click the plus symbol. You just basically need to give the group a name and description. Since this group is used to grant users on my network access to the public folder, I will call this group Public. Please jot down the Group ID number because we will need this information later in the tutorial.
Now we switch over to the Users tab. Once again, click on the blue plus symbol to begin creating users. I will create Alice here but Bob will be created similarly. Here, make sure to set the user’s primary group to ‘nogroup’ and in the Additional Group field, put them in the group we’ve just created above. In my case, it will be ‘Public’. Once again, make note of the User ID number.
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Bypass ISP Video Throttling with a VPN
Configuring Remote Access for NAS4Free
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Getting to Know DNS! Part 3
Getting to Know DNS! Part 2
After I’ve moved to another apartment (with a new router) my NAS didn’t seem to function properly anymore. So I decided to do a fresh installation of N4F and also update it to the newest version.
But after following your tutorial again somehow my NAS still isn’t visible in my network. The disks are mounted and when I use the filemanager all my files are visible on the disks. When I looked further into the problem I noticed some strange things. When I go to diskmanagement the filesystem of all my disks apparently is ‘unknown or unformatted’. I can’t simply choose to format the disks because they’re full with my data.
The second thing I’ve noticed is that the things I change with WinSCP aren’t saved. When I reboot the nas and then start WinSCP again the owner of the shares is set back to ‘root’ again.
Are the things I mention the cause of my problems? Or am I doing something else wrong?
As for the issues of the server not showing up, can you simply browse to the shares by specifying an IP address instead? Also, what operating system are you using? For example, try typing in \\192.168.1.250 into the Run command prompt or in the Windows Explorer window. Obviously, substitute the IP address with the address of your server.
I’m not sure what is going on as far as the format issue goes.
Have you made sure to actually install Nas4Free onto your hard hard? If not, the settings you make will not stick around if you reboot the server. If you’ve followed my tutorial, then I’m assuming that you have indeed installed the operating system onto your hard drive. In that case, I’ll have to kindly redirect you to the NAS4Free forums for more help because I simply lack the knowledge to continue further. It would have helped if I also experienced the same issues as you did here but I did not for the most part except for the server not appearing in Windows.
http://forums.nas4free.org/
Thank you for your reaction. It seems I found the problem.
First off all I had to import the disks instead of adding them. After I did that it said that the filesystem was UFS, just like before.
The second (little bit stupid
) thing was that I didn’t enable CIFS/SMB service. I did add the shares but without enabling it of course nothing is visible. I was about to throw something out of the window when I accidentally noticed there were no green check marks in the services/status page.
I’m glad you solved the problem and reporting back on what you’ve did. I’m sure this will help others in the future who experiences similar issues.
You know what’s the funny thing? Immediately after submitting my earlier comment, I was just browsing around the NAS4Free forum I’ve linked to and came across a thread mentioning SMB. It occurred to me that you could have the service disabled, hence you’re not seeing the shares. However, I immediately dismissed that idea because I specifically went over enabling the SMB service in my tutorial and since you followed the tutorial, there was no way that you could have missed that part! Anyways, thanks again for reporting back, especially on the disks issue.
Great article – clean and concise.
SO here’s the problem I have – how to install to a headless unit?
I have an ASUS TS Mini Home Server that came with original WHS – the OS is now not doing what I wan to with a mix of Android, Win8 and Apple unit connecting to the server.
I really like to look of NAS4Free (played with FreeNAS a few years back), but stumped on how to do an install. Only option I see is to put HDD into a standalone unit, install, reinsert HDD to ASUS headless, and then use RDC (or equivalent) to connect to the ASUS to finish off any setup (eg new drivers).
Thoughts/advice/comments really appreciated
Regards
Ron
Hey Ron. Thanks for stopping by and providing feedback on my article.
Your situation does present a problem, especially with the server you have. A quick look on Newegg shows that your home server does not have a CD-ROM drive. The good news is that you can definitely install and run NAS4Free off of a USB stick. Some users choose to use a simple 1GB USB stick, load NAS4Free onto the stick and run the OS from it. If you can somehow boot the server from USB, we might have a chance.
By default, NAS4Free will configure itself to use the IP address of 192.168.1.250 /24. If your home network is configured for a different subnet, then what you’ll have to do is boot from the USB stick on a different computer. Once loaded, you can reconfigure the network settings and the settings should be saved back to the USB stick. When you then boot back from your server, you should then be able to configure the NAS4Free server via the browser. Driver wise, I’m not exactly sure how that works with NAS4Free. I am assuming that due to the limited environment of the OS, you shouldn’t have to configure any new drivers on your own as the built-in generic drivers should work.
If you can’t boot from a USB stick, then yes, I can’t think of another method besides doing what you have suggested in first transferring the HDD to another unit, install/configure and then transferring it back. Hopefully someone will also chime in on this issue and help out!
Simon – I can either boot from USB or I have a USB CD which I can connect – I’m guessing that the CD would be the better option (?)
Either way – I’m guessing best option is to boo the unit and then do a remote connection to the box (thanks for the headsup re the default IP) – can I then install from the CD/USB to the HDD – assuming I have all of this correct, what software would you suggest for the remote connection – can I just use the Windows default RDC software.
Worst case – I can go for the move the HDD option
Cheers
Ron
Wait a minute…You’re able to do a remote boot of the server via CD? From what I saw, your server did come with a CD that you use to detect the server over your network and for configuration purposes. However, I don’t think you can use the NAS4Free install CD and do a remote boot to your server. At least that’s what I’m thinking.
Also, the Windows built in remote desktop client connects to other systems via the RDC protocol, which is specific to Windows. Therefore, I don’t think you can remote into your server with that client without some configuration on the server side first. That or use another remote client/server software like VNC. However, you don’t normally remote in to the NAS4Free server because there is nothing to configure besides the network configuration! Once that is done, you manage the server remotely via your browser from then on. You’re best option is still to just simply boot via USB or detach the HDD.
I hope this makes sense to you. If not, please let me know and we can continue our conversation via email instead.
Thanks dude!!
this tutor helped me a lot….^^
Your welcome! Glad you found it useful.
Of all the NAS4Free forums and tutorials I’ve seen, this post has helped me the most. THANK YOU, you’re FREAKING AWESOME. Aaaaaand blog bookmarked.
Having said that, I was wondering if you had some ideas about getting it available over the internet- i.e. remote access. I’d like to use OwnCloud on it, but don’t know how to get started with that part. The goal is to have a secure, personal dropbox-like cloud, and a secure local (got that part) and remote backup for multiple family computers. My parent’s computers are always time-bombs of data loss… I’m sure everyone can relate.
Again… This article is fantastic. I hope you have some more ideas!
Thanks for the positive feedback Austin! Much appreciated and I am glad that you enjoyed the article.
Getting access to your NAS4Free box at home from the Internet should not be that difficult. All you’ll need to do is configure SSH on both your NAS4Free box and home router. Then you can just use a simple utility such as Winscp to remote in to upload and download files from your box. I am considering doing an article to show just that. If you are in a hurry to get it set up, I’m sure you can find a ton of different articles around the web showing you how this can be accomplished.
It’s interesting that you mentioned OwnCloud. I’ve first heard of it via LifeHacker and it is there where I will point you to because they have an excellent tutorial showing you how to configure everything. However, I have no idea how you would intermix both NAS4Free and OwnCloud together. Is that your goal or are you planning on each being separate? Anyways, I will see if I can write a quick tutorial on getting remote access to a NAS4Free device. Since the server will most likely be powered on 24/7 anyways, I’m sure many users will benefit from having some type of remote access to it.
Below is the OwnCloud tutorial on LifeHacker:
http://lifehacker.com/5993596/how-to-set-up-your-own-private-cloud-storage-service-in-five-minutes-with-owncloud
Let me know if you have any more questions. =)
Here is a useful link that discusses OwnCloud on NAS4Free’s Webserver utility (I think thats how it works).
http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=32&start=0
That link references a second link for new 5.x versions of OC.
I’m piecing it together I think. Dynamic DNS still confuses me- I’ve kind of come across that I will need that service to reference my router’s WAN IP “via an easy to remember name”- sound right? I read pages 1 and 2 of your DNS explanation. That helped too. I just don’t know how to go about getting a free dynamic DNS that supports unlimited bandwidth/data transmission/anything else I need.
I am actually in the process of writing my article on how to configure a NAS4Free server for Internet access. I’ll take a look at the OwnCloud thing and to the link you’ve pointed me to but for the most part, I really don’t think I’ll be doing anything to that extreme anytime soon.
For the most part, yes, you’ve got the part about the dynamic dns name part correct. I’ll explain it a little better in the article. But as to you being confused, don’t be. The DNS name thing has nothing to do with unlimited bandwidth or data transmission. It is only there to help you reach your NAs4Free server back at your home no matter where you physically are in the world. You could physically be in Antarctica and your NAS4Free server back at New York. The name resolution service is there to just help you (in Antarctica) to “contact” your server in New York. That’s all there is to it. The bandwidth and data transmission depends on your actual Internet connection speeds via your Internet service provider and whatnot.
Stay tune for the next article and hopefully things will be more clear.
Will do! If I somehow get OwnCloud working I’ll pass along my notes.
Cheers!
Simon,
Thanks for a great article and simple write up. Here is one thing I’m doing to keep my shares simple and a little cleaner. Instead of creating one share for each user (Bob, Alice), you can force them directly into only their folder based on their login credentials.
On the SMB Shares page, I have a share called “Home”, in the Path, just add the variable %u where the username should go. For example, “Path” could be “/mnt/storage/homes/%u/”. When Bob connects to the server, he will then see two shares “Public” and “Home”, when he goes into home he only sees the contents of the /mnt/storage/homes/Bob/ folder.
This saves you the two steps of manually setting the permissions when you create the folders, and of manually creating a share for each user.
-Caleb Newville
Awesome tip Caleb! This is very similar to using the environment variable of %username% when configuring folder redirection within the Windows operating system. I will definitely link to your comment here in the article as your tip can potentially save a lot of time when a lot of user folders needs to be created! Thanks!
Hi
Nice tutorial just wondering is it possible to change the amount of space a user has assigned
cheers tony
Hey Tony. I apologize but could you please explain your question more thoroughly? What space are you referring to? Are you talking about expanding the disks in your NAS4Free server? Or are you referring to the shares for a user?
Hi Simon
Referring to the shares for a user
Cheers Tony
Great link… thanks.
After loading winscp, i can’t login it keeps giving me a access denided… should I be using the pw that i setup in nas4free?
Just answered my own ?….
Hey Rutro. Glad you found the answer. If not, re-read the section “Assigning Permissions to Directories” on the second page. You basically need to enable the SSH service along with enabling superuser (root) access. The username is root and the password is the password you’ve set for NAS4Free login. If you’ve changed it and it doesn’t work, then try to use the default password of nas4free.
Just a quick followup.
Before I sussed how to re configure the IP addresses (with the help of your excellent article) *none* of my 10 NAS partitions were accessible from either my Win 7 desktop or my flatmate’s Win 8 box.
Now, even though I don’t have access to the management functions of the NAS server, all the partitions can be seen and accessed from our desktops so at least we can get on with our work.
Hi Noel,
I think this may be a subnetting issue?
Have you made sure the subnet mask of the NAS box matches that of your new router?
You should be able to set this through the console.
Your old router with ip 192.168.x.y probably used 255.255.255.0 which is /24 notation when configuring the router with a new IP.
Check the netmask of your router and make sure you use the appropriate /?? when configuring NAS4Free.
For info see here: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ip-subnetting-made-easy/6089187
Hope that helps.
Gary, thanks. That article helped a bit but I’m still having trouble finding out the netmask of the new router. However, as I wrote before, all the NAS partitions are visible and usable from our desktops and the laptop, so something must have gone right.
@Noel At first, I was a bit confused at the problem you were experiencing concerning the missing configuration options when you logged into the WebGUI management interface. Then it soon occurred to me that the most simplest of explanation is that the user account you used to log in to the management interface does not have the required access/permissions! I did a simple test and indeed, when logging on using just a standard user account, I only got the System, Advanced and Help menu options.
With Nas4Free, there is a built in administrator account that you should use to manage the NAS box. By default, the username for this super account is ‘admin’ with a password of ‘nas4free’. Try using that to log in to the WebGUI interface. If unsuccessful, then your nephew most likely have either changed the username and/or password for this account. The good news is that you can easily reset the password for this account as long as you have console access to the NAS server itself. Follow the instructions in the article below to reset the password back to its default. If the username itself has also changed, then you will need to do extra work. However, the easiest solution is to just ask your nephew for the username. Once you have both pieces of information, you can easily change it back to something of your choosing within the WebGUI interface.
http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0040
As for your new router, you can actually configure it to use back your old address scheme of 192.168.1.x instead of 10.0.0.x. These are considered private IP addresses and in most cases, it shouldn’t matter which addressing scheme you use. Like Gary said, you need to make sure your subnet information (among other pieces of information) is correctly configured. But my advice is to fix one issue at a time and I would definitely start off with getting back root access to your NAS box. In fact, since it seems as if you’ve gotten your new router to work with your NAS box and the computers on your network can actually see it just fine. Therefore, we’ll focus on getting you back admin access. Let us know your outcome!
Simon, spot on! As I wrote, I haven’t had to do anything with the NAS box for quite a while and I’d forgotten that there was an admin account!
As soon as I logged in to that account, all the menu options appeared as well as heaps of information about all the NAS partitions.
I’m particularly pleased that, even after all the messing around I had to do, NAS4Free maintained all the details of the disks, the users and the permissions that had been set up 15 weeks ago!
Thanks again for your help *and* your article.
Awesome! Glad everything worked out for you!
Hi folks,
I have searched for a couple of days for a solution to my problem. It appears to be common to an extent but none of the solutions have worked so far (about to give up). I have followed the above guide to a T, hopefully (thanks for it). I can access my NAS ip no problem. I can even see my NAS in the Network folder on Windows 7 HP, Windows 7 Pro, and Windows XP. I cannot access my shares. I receive “Windows cannot access” “Error code 0×80070035 The network path was not found” in Windows 7. Windows XP is same message different wording. Again I have tried half dozen or more tweaks on the windows side found online and none have worked. I am using an old IBM 512MB memory P4 2.66 running NAS4free off of 4GB usb. shares created according to the above on a 2TB internal hard drive. Any more ideas. Thanks.
Additionally, I can access files on all my other compters (3 laptops). I can also see and access the media server I setup on my NAS on all the compters. No files yet because I cannot access the folders/shares.
Thanks
Also discovered that when I enable “yes” Local Master Browser in CIFS Nas4Free computer disappears from Windows machines Network folder. When disabled “No” Nas4Free reappears in the Network folders for Windows Machines.
Hey Brett. From my recollection, I had this very same problem when I first mucked around with NAS4Free while writing this article. It turns out that I hadn’t configured the shares correctly. I remember having to create a folder within my /mnt/Storage directory and then creating a share that maps back to this folder. Is this what you did as well? At the moment, I don’t have the time to rebuild my NAS setup but I will be able to do so later on in the day. In the mean time, here are some things you can perform to see if it helps solve the problem:
- Temporarily disabling your firewall and antivirus solution
- Try to access your NAS server via IP address instead of its host name. Open a run command box and type two backslashes (\\) followed by the IP address of your NAS server.
- Try to give your shares Anonymous access.
It would also help to know of the solutions you have tried so far so that we don’t waste each other’s time in repeating the same information. Also, I would recommend to leave the Local Master Browser setting to its default.
Hi Simon, Thanks for the ideas and guide. I tried all the ideas you mentioned and then some, mostly dealing with Windows 7 Networking issues. Nothing worked. What did work was a reset of the NAS to “factory defaults” in the webgui. After that I started with only trying to be able to access an unsecured hard drive. It worked. then I began adding users, directories, permission, etc. It is up and running. I have copied 1.5 TB of data to the drive and have been streaming music, pictures, and video to all my devices, including my Dish Network Hopper. Thanks again for your guide and time. I’m not sure what went wrong on the first try.
I’m glad you solved the issue Brett. I had a chance the other day to rebuild the simple NAS4Free setup as described in the article. At first, I also had some issues as you being not able to access the shares within NAS4Free although the server was visible on the network. What did work however was specifying the IP address of the NAS4Free server rather than host name, which is what accessing the server within File Explorer will do. This immediately lets me know that something is wrong with name resolution. Usually, this doesn’t happen often as computers located on the same local area network can find each other via broadcast. In very weird scenarios, this doesn’t happen.
If you find that the other computers on your network still cannot access the NAS4Free server over the network within File Explorer, I urge you to read up on how NetBIOS name resolution works and manually placing an entry within the LMHOST file for your server. This is something new to learn (and read) but I figured since you’ve already dedicated a huge amount of time and effort into making NAS4Free work, then reading up on something new shouldn’t present too much of a problem.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-netbios-name-resolution-really-works/5034239
Excellent advice Simon. I will read up on NetBIOS name resolution. I always felt like I was a click or two away from having this thing running. I really appreciate your guide and advice. It is great to re-use really, really old computer parts for something as cool as a NAS.
Simon, I hope you might be able to help me or perhaps some of your other readers. Last November my nephew set up a NAS4Free server for me, grafting it into my home network so that it allowed me and my flatmate access to a selection of hard drives. Everything went happily until a couple of days ago when our router died and had to be replaced – with an entirely different router (that might sound silly, but the old one used IP addresses like 192.168.x.y, whereas the new one uses 10.0.0.x.
As someone else had done the initial setup for me and then I hadn’t had to touch anything for months, I was completely at sea trying to add the NAS box to the “new” network created by installing the new router.
Finally I got to the stage where I could access the NAS GUI from my desktop browser, but when I login, the menu bar at the top of the screen shows only:
System Advanced Help
instead of:
System Network Disks Services Access Status Diagnostics Advanced Help
Have you any idea why I’m missing those options, what I might have done wrong when I reconfigured the IP address info and what I can do to get it all back to normal?
First of al thank you for the great article. I was struggling with the instructions given on the Nas4Free wiki but following the steps in your article made it very easy. My desktop is very busy copying files to it at te moment.
Unfortunatly I’m having some issues mounting the second disk that’s in my NAS. I’ve setup the first disk that’s in my NAS which is the same disk as where N4F is installed. So when I mounted the disk I choose partition 2 (just like in your example). When I want to mount the second disk I’m getting the following error:
*Wrong partition type or partition number.
*/dev/ada1s3: Can’t get UFS ID.
dumpfs: /dev/ada1s3: could not find special device
I’ve tried to number the partition 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 but I always get the same error. Can someone tell me what it is that I’m doing wrong?
Edit:
I was able to mount it by changing ‘Partition Type’ to ‘GPT partition. So far it seems to be working fine and I’ve managed to add a new share to my network.
Although I was wondering whether changing it from USF to GPT will cause any problems in the future?
Hey Tinus. Glad you found the article helpful. I’m also glad you found a solution to the problem because honestly, I’m not an expert at all when it comes to NAS4free. From my recollection, UFS is a file system, not GPT. GPT is a partition style and defines how partitions and volumes are created on the hard disk. The file system on the other hand is how a disk actually manages your data within those partitions.
Try checking the configuration for your second disk again. The file system should be UFS and not GPT. If you wish, you can back up all important data on your second disk and completely reformat it to start from scratch. You can use the article below to help you out:
http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=documentation:setup_and_user_guide:setup_drives
Had to re-install yesterday because I miscalculated on the number of drives I have. My Nas4Free install is now on the 750 GB drive and I bought two new WD Red disks for all my data. After formatting those disks, I wanted to mount them but again I got the same error. Because this were new disks that were never formatted NTFS or anything else I wanted to look further into the problem.
You’re right about UFS and GPT. Apparently when you format a disk with UFS file system it automatically chooses GPT as the partition system. That’s probably why GPT is the default partition type @ Disks/Mount Point/Add/Partition Type.
Also when you format a disk the file system option says:
‘UFS (GPT + Soft updates).
Yups, when in doubt, just backup and reformat! I’m taking everything is in working order now?
To the writer, a gateway address is needed, it not advisable to skip it, as mentioned in this thread I started:
http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2533&p=13353#p13353
The problem was that the nas server wasnt visible on windows 8 file explorer, but with the gateway address specified, it works.
Thanks for the heads up Gio. Technically, a gateway address routes packets between different networks. Because my NAS4Free server was located on the same network segment as my PS3 and home computers, no default gateway was needed. However, there is definitely no harm in adding one and seeing that it solves a problem you’ve been having, I’ll revise the article to reflect your findings.
Simon,
I just built a NAS server using the following hardware:
ASUS C60m1-1 MB with AMD APU C-80 CPU, Coolermaster Glite 120 case w Coolermaster Glite 400w PS 8 GB Kingston Hyperx Blue of DDR3 RAM,
8MB memory stick and a 1TB Seagate 7200 HD. I didn’t know which OS I should use, I found NAS4Free, installed it on a USB memory stick and go it up and running without any problems. The problem I had was, I needed a better step by step tutorial to set up my users, groups and CIFS/SMB shares for my home network. I searched around and found your blog. I found your tutorial to be easy amazing, it was easy to follow and I got my NAS shares up and running the way I wanted them in no time at all. This setup is a test until I get my new hard drives. The 1 TB drive will be replaced by 3 x 3 TB Wester Digital Red drives in the next few months. I wanted to thank you for making by NAS softwware build succesful. I will also be installing PHP, MySQL and a few other packages once I get my new drives. I will let you know how those projects turn out. Thanks again! Keep up the great tutorials.
Hi,
I have almost exactly the same setup as yours! Same mb, same case, 16 gb ram, and a bunch of odd HDs. For me the deal breaker for N4F was the media streaming. Try as I might, I could not make streaming work smoothly with my PS3. The other thing – not so much a problem but annoyance – is RAID. I wanted to utilize the odd sized HDs that I already had. NAS4Free does not have the ability to pull odd sized HDs into one storage pool. Not only they have to be identical but they also have to be empty or re-formatted, plus adding new disks to the RAID is a pain in the #%*. With regret, I had to abandon N4F in favour of ubuntu – happily running PS3mediaserver and SnapRaid.
Thanks for the feedback Thel and your welcome! I look forward to hearing about your future project with NAS4Free. Although I personally don’t use it at home, I love to hear how other users can benefit from it.
@Ella
I’m glad you found something that works for you!
No problem Simon!
Thanks Ella!
teriffic. just what i was looking for keep it up..
Sounds to me like you are booting it up straight from the LiveCD.
Can you confirm you have installed the OS to a harddrive(if installing the full version) or a Compact Flash card connected through an IDE converter (if installing the embedded)?
I like how easy nas4free is. However after 2 days of using it I’ve restarted 3 times for various reasons only to have it boot back up and lose all my settings/disks/users etc. Is there any reason it won’t retain any of that?
Sorry ason, I have no idea why that is happening! That certainly has not happened to me during my testing phase with NAS4Free. Please check out this forum page as it was the only one that resembled a situation such as the one you have described. You can also consider starting a thread in that forum and see if the users there can help you solve the problem.
http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1018
Ason,
at the very begenning you have to decide where the nas4free will be installed. If you run live(CD/USB), your configuration is not stored/saved anywhere. If you reboot, your configuration go to the hell.
I am using USB for the nas4free OS (not for data nor swap etc). I was going this way:
- start from the liveCD/USB
- wait till the Console setup apears
- configure network IP address to DHPC or to the fixed IP (option 2)
- start “the installation” (option 9)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16029746/251-300/282%20Installoptions.png
- plug the USB flasy memory to the one of the USB ports on you NAS
- wait few seconds to see the USB flash was recognized
- then the option 1
- remove the liveCD/USB and reboot
HTH
Petr
The nas4free was a pain from the start. UNable to dlete files from external login such as windows or linux even though non read only and not on /mnt above /mnt every time. 41tb of data nearly lost taking this advice. Luckily zfs though diificult and non user friendly in any way….is transferable to good free source software such as http://WWW.NAPP-IT.COM….if you aren’t a PHD and dont want to spend weeks configuring things out……stay away form nas4free…or freenas……as NAPP-it nips it all in the bud with no pain in the rear.
Why would you risk 41TB of your precious data on a hardware/software product that you have no experience on? I agree that both NAS4Free and FreeNAS can be a pain. I remember struggling during the writing of this article. I was halfway done and it didn’t make sense to quit there and so I stubbornly stumbled on until I found the solution. However, I’m sure NAS4Free is very popular and many people are looking for an easy way to implement it on their Windows network as this article is getting hundreds of hits each day and that doesn’t happen too often for my articles!
I really wanted to love nas4free but after trying it for my media server – see the comments below – I gave up, and ended up with ubuntu 12.04 server. Very happy.
Simon says: “Luckily zfs though diificult and non user friendly in any way”
Not sure what ZFS you’ve been using but to call it non-user friendly in anyway? Can’t be the one I’m using…
“.if you aren’t a PHD and dont want to spend weeks configuring things out……stay away form nas4free…or freenas”
Smacks of “a poor workman blaming his tools”, – it’s a poor effort to just flame a product which you didn’t understand and blame it for your own short comings…my recommendation would be to start with the basics…spelling and grammar.
This alone may get you much further with your next product and it’s consequent review.
This is a great article. I was looking for something like this all over the internet. Your setup is exactly what I’m hoping to do with my NAS/media server box – no RAID of any kind, just plain bunch of disks on an extremely light weight box, running 24/7 mainy for streaming media and downloading torrents.
Now, if you could do a tutorial on how to setup bittorrent client and how to stream media to PS3/Xbox etc, it would be wonderful.
Thanks for the feedback Ella. At the moment, I got the Bittorrent client configured within Nas4Free but I’m struggling a bit with the UPnP service to work with my PS3. I’m still trying to get it worked out so if I do, I will gladly write up the full article! If you really want a quick tutorial on how to configure Bittorrent with Nas4Free, please let me know and I’ll write about that part first while I try and resolve the streaming issue.
In the meantime, there are other ways to easily stream media from a computer onto your PS3. I wrote an article talking about this subject in details which you can find below. It’s not a NAS solution obviously so I’m not sure if it’s going to be of any help in your situation. I don’t have an Xbox anymore (both suffered from the red ring of death) so I can’t test it on that system.
http://www.anotherwindowsblog.com/2009/06/stream-media-to-tv-with-ps3.html
It would be great if you can publish article about setting up the BitTorrent.
I’ve been using PS3 Media Server on Windows 7 x64 for years. It works exceptionally well. The problems with this solution are 1) I have 5 external HD – no room in the chassis – the mess and the power consumption are staggering 2) I’d like to run headless, low power system 24/7 without breaking the bank to pay the electricity bills, have a centralized access to my TBs of media, and tidy up my desk at the same time.
My options are 1) to build new Windows box with new motherboard (old does not have enough SATA ports or expansion slots) and much larger case or 2) to build small NAS/Media Server running lightweight OS. No. 1 is out of the question – too expensive and a resource hog, and too large to fit in my small space. So, no. 2 it is. Now, I need to decide which OS. I’ve looked at FreeNas, OpenMediaVault and NAS4Free. All would fit my specs except the media streaming. It seems that neither has an easy way to do that. If worse comes to worst, I’ll install Ubuntu server. At least Ubuntu supports natively PS3 Media Server, XMBC and the likes, and is a bit less resource hungry than Windows.
I just published the tutorial on how to get BitTorrent configured within NAS4Free! You can read it from the link below.
The good news is that I have finally found a way to stream media from my NAS4Free box to my PS3. The bad news is that after having read your comment above, the solution I used doesn’t allow for NAS4Free to transcode media to your PS3, which I assume you might need since you already am aware of the PS3 Media Server software which does excellent transcoding on the fly. If the media sitting on your NAS4Free box isn’t already compatible with your PS3 or Xbox 360, then I’m afraid it won’t be playable. Nonetheless, I will still write up the article so hope you’ll read it as well. Enjoy.
http://www.anotherwindowsblog.com/2012/11/configuring-bittorrent-support-in-nas4free.html
Hi
Great post, was looking for it since long.
thanks and kindly keep it up
Your welcome! Glad you liked the article.
aha…now you point it out, it’s as clear as day.
Problem was I was skimming…alot of text to take in when you know something on the subject.
Only thin I could recommend is to have the pagination next to your url rather than under the comments.
Not sure as that would help the likes of me with attention span of nano secs.
2nd page is also great write up.
Thanks for the suggestion and feedback. Unfortunately, I’m not an expert at WordPress customization so while I have tried to move the pagination numbers to show right at the end of my articles, one of my other plugin actually has priority and bumped the numbers below it making it harder to see. That is why I manually created the hyperlink to the next page. Anyways, I understand your situation about the attention span as I can be like that as well when visiting new websites.
Great post, very well laid out and comprehensive except for the part, suggested by your title, where it connects to a windows network.
You’ll need to setup a CIFS/SMB share for this drive to become available to a windows machine.
Hey Gary:
The part where I talked about setting up a SMB share is on the next page of the article! I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong because this is not the first time it has happened where a reader thought my article was at an end even though I have clearly placed a link at the end of the post signaling that the article continues on the next page! If you or anyone else is reading this, do you have a suggestion on how to make this more clear? What would cause you to miss the next page link at the bottom? Too small text size? The text not standing out from the rest the article? No page numbers?