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>

[mherger]

Yes, last night my FreeNAS did a first successful complete scan of my "collection" (only a bunch of albums in a virtual machine). I'm trying to get something up soon.

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.

I'd still recommend 256MB. FreeNAS would happily run in 128MB (the developers say 96MB). But SlimServer easily exceeds the 128-96=32MB.

The solution I'm aiming at won't be a modified FreeNAS, but rather an extension to it. Slimserver will _not_ run from the flash image for various reasons:

- as the whole image is copied to a ram disk at startup, adding Perl and SlimServer to the image would require some additional 40-60MB RAM

- no need for a custom image: let the FreeNAS developers do their work, we do the slimserver stuff independently

- easier updating: no need to update the operating system if you want to update slimserver (and vice versa) which brings along more complicated maintenance (updating slimserver or FreeNAS)

You could still partition a 128MB CF card (or USB stick) and use the first partition for the system, the second for SlimServer, and stock all data on the harddisks.

Stay tuned...

[boerner]

Michael:

Awesome...I saw a post from you on the FreeNAS lists and did not want to get my hopes up too much, but this news is great. My initial offer of contributing funds via PayPal still stands if your are interested. I can also offer some testing if you like.

I am looking to build my box based on this...

http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M300-LCD

[boerner]

Replying to myself...

Just saw your announcement on the FreeNAS list (duh..) and saw the contribute link on your website (double duh...).

I have made a donation. Please let me know if the transaction did not go through. Thanks again for your work on SlimCD and SlimNAS.

[mherger]

> I have made a donation. Please let me know if the transaction did not
> go through.

It did, thanks :-)

--

Michael

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