Has anyone set Slim Server up on FreeNAS?

[RickL]

Hello all,

I have been researching file server options and would also like to run Slim Server. A very small footprint version of FreeBSD I found that is interesting is FreeNAS. I was wondering if anyone has had experience running Slim Server on a FreeNAS?

I will be using an old PIII 550Mhz with 128MB-256MB of RAM and hopefully use a Compact Flash IDE drive to run the software and then either do a software RAID or use a RAID controller for the Storage drives.

[notanatheist]

I've just run across that project again. Will look into it. It'd be nice to have the entire OS w/ apps on a 64MB CF card and the data on a RAID array.

[boerner]

I too wondered about adding Slimserver to FreeNAS, and someone on the mailing list already beat me to it:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.p...orum_id=507589

Basically, the developer noted that adding Slimserver meant adding Perl, and that would add 10 megabytes to the size.

As a result, someone mentioned the excellent SlimCD as an alternative.

[[IDC]Dragon]

Hello Board,

I'm building a home server which should do file serving and be a SlimServer. I use a brand new Epia EN15000 board. It's a bit overpowered, but the first to have SATA and gigabit ethernet. The box should boot from a CF card, power up the disk only when accessing the files. Plus, I'd like to be able to take the disk away and connect it to Windows boxes, have no Linux "clutter" on it then. I should note that although software developer by profession, I'm a Linux newbee.

Interesting, these days I just found FreeNAS and SlimCD, too.
Both have issues:

FreeNAS happily boots from a CF, but can't mount FAT32 partitions larger than 128GB, a FreeBSD limitation. I'd like to use FAT32 because of the Windows plugability. NTFS is supported read only, as you probably know. It might be a PITA to add SlimServer, at least it's beyond me. At the moment, I can't get FreeNAS to use my ethernet, but it was working once. Strange.

SlimCD is based on DSL (damn small linux), using a 2.4 kernel. I don't know if it's the kernel's fault, but it doesn't find my ethernet port. The larger brother DSL-N uses kernel 2.6 and happily finds my network. So I'd need a SlimCD based on DSL-N, plus get the samba/nfs part working.

[notanatheist]

Acting as a fileserver is also my interest in the project. Surely the PERL that is needed can be done in less than 10MB. Look at the Linksys NSLU2. It can run slimserver. What's nice about FreeNAS is support for hardware RAID controllers and a web interface! Boot from CF or really small hard drive, mount the RAID 5 array, happily stream music, video, and backups.

[Robin Bowes]

notanatheist wrote:
> Acting as a fileserver is also my interest in the project. Surely the
> PERL that is needed can be done in less than 10MB. Look at the Linksys
> NSLU2. It can run slimserver. What's nice about FreeNAS is support for
> hardware RAID controllers and a web interface! Boot from CF or really
> small hard drive, mount the RAID 5 array, happily stream music, video,
> and backups.

I had a quick look at the project and posted to the thread.

Basically, as it's FreeBSD based then it shouldn't be too hard to add
perl through the FreeBSD ports system.

R>

[notanatheist]

I offered in for the bounty. I like the idea of web management for my shares since my box would be more than just a Slimserver. When I have it ready it's going in a dark cool corner of the garage. Once a 16 port Gigabit switch is reasonable it's going in too.

All those interested should pop over to sourceforge, create an account and let your voice be heard. This'll increase the chance of it being done! For those not in the know head to http://www.freenas.org

[Robin Bowes]

notanatheist wrote:
> I offered in for the bounty. I like the idea of web management for my
> shares since my box would be more than just a Slimserver. When I have
> it ready it's going in a dark cool corner of the garage. Once a 16 port
> Gigabit switch is reasonable it's going in too.
>
> All those interested should pop over to sourceforge, create an account
> and let your voice be heard. This'll increase the chance of it being
> done! For those not in the know head to http://www.freenas.org

I could take the FreeNAS source and build an installation that includes
slimserver. It would have to be a fork of FreeNAS - how about SlimNAS?

Anyone interested in this?

Offers of bounty would make it happen more quickly...

R.

[[IDC]Dragon]

@Robin: all my cheers to this!

Currently I'm poking around DSL-N, since that 2.4 kernel of DSL and SlimCD doesn't work for me. But being a noob, this is very tedious, no real progress yet. I have to check FreeNAS again, iirc it had problems to detect my ethernet adapter, but worked (only) once.
FreeNAS has that sexy web interface which makes it so much nicer for a headless unattended box. An extra button could link to the SlimServer web frontend...

The author rightfully doesn't want to add SlimServer or uPnP, stating that this would be a different project. At least I managed to point the author to the MSDOSFS_LARGE kernel option, he will include that in the next release. So we'll be able to mount >128GB FAT32 partitions.

[boerner]

Count me as interested...

Since my original post on the FreeNAS list did not seem to gather that much interest from the developer, I would throw in :-)

You took the name out of my mind though..SlimNAS

As a side note...I found this piece of hardware that may be of use:

http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/ca...it.A/id.443/.f

Nice small, plain enclosure with a VIA based Mini-ITX board. Built-in compact flash reader for booting, and space for two 2.5inch hard drives. I called the company and they said shortly they will be offering a version that holds two 3.5inch hard drives.

Really nice thing is, according to the specs, a Squeezebox3 should fit just right on top (dimensionally that is).