Uncle Fester's Basic FreeNAS 9.10 Configuration Guide

This guide has been written with complete beginners to FreeNAS in mind (although some general computer knowledge is assumed).

Therefore, depending on your level of knowledge and experience, you probably won’t need to read all the sections.

Please note: This guide was written for FreeNAS 9.10. The current release is FreeNAS 11. Though there are significant changes under the hood, the user experience is very similar. If you notice significant differences or errors, please contact danb35 on the FreeNAS forums. Or sign up for an account and fix it, if you like and are able to.

There is some Fester humour throughout the guide (or what passes for humour in Fester’s very strange world). It is there to try and keep the user of this guide going until they reach the end. This is a very boring document. The humour will not be to everyone’s taste. If you find it offensive just ignore it and move on; Fester means no harm.

Download a PDF copy of this guide by clicking the following link: Export namespace "fester:" to file UncleFester9.10.pdf

This guide is for people who want or need to set up FreeNAS as quickly as possible with a minimum of fuss.

The aim is to provide all the information you need in one place to set up a basic FreeNAS server.

• It is not intended to teach or educate.
• It is no substitute for learning and understanding the FreeNAS OS.
• It is no substitute for the excellent official guide that accompanies the FreeNAS OS.
• It is my attempt to give something back to the FreeNAS community.

It is my hope that others will contribute, augment, update and completely replace parts of this guide so it can be a useful resource to all FreeNAS beginners . To more easily enable this, the guide is highly sectionalised and released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

This guide has been written by a FreeNAS complete beginner for complete beginners.

Proceed at your own risk. I will not be held responsible for anything that happens to your system, you, your hair, the real wood veneered floor, your prostate gland or the world in general. I take no responsibility for anything (just ask anyone who knows me).

1. Hardware Recommendations
   1. General Hardware Recommendations
   2. Specific Hardware Recommendations
2. Building Your Server
   1. General Build Guide
   2. Why No Specific Build Guide, Fester!
3. Getting Your Preliminaries Handled
   1. Prerequisites
   2. Modem/Router Configuration
   3. Barrier Methods of Protection (Personal Firewalls)
   4. Getting Past the POST
   5. Configuring the BIOS
4. Hardware Validation
   1. Processor Validation
   2. Memory Validation
   3. HDD/SSD Validation
5. Final FreeNAS Installation
   1. Creating a Bootable FreeNAS Installer
   2. Installing FreeNAS 9.10 From a USB Stick
   3. Configuring FreeNAS 9.10 (the Essentials)
      1. Changing the "root" Super User Password
      2. Configuring a Static IP Address
      3. Settings for System -> General
      4. Network Global Configuration
      5. NTP Server Configuration
      6. Creating a FreeNAS Volume
      7. Email Notifications
      8. Configuration of the FreeNAS SMART Monitoring Service
      9. Scrub Schedules
      10. SMART Test Schedules
      11. Creating a Periodic Snapshot Task
      12. Enabling Console Messages in the Footer of the Web GUI
      13. Setting up an SSH Console
      14. Creating Certificate Authorities and Certificates for FreeNAS
6. Shares
   1. Fester's Very Basic One User/One Dataset Experimental Starter Share
7. Jails
   1. Global Configuration of Jails
   2. Plex Media Server
   3. Transmission
8. Additional FreeNAS Configurations to Consider
   1. Backup the FreeNAS Configuration File Nightly
9. Misc. Topics
   1. Writing an Image File to a USB Stick
   2. Mounting an ISO Image File via IPMI