The free software for setting up a Network Attached Storage (NAS) FreeNAS (from "free NAS") has been released in version 8.2.0. It can be installed on both 64- and 32-bit systems and brings as the most important new feature (besides all kinds of bugfixes and improvements) the possibility to run plugins in PBI format in a separate jail (so that the actual NAS functionality should not be affected by the plugins.
As of today there are plugins minidlna (to set up a DLNA server), transmission (a bittorrent client) and firefly (an iTunes server). These functions could already be used with FreeNAS 8.0.4 multimedia but with 8.2.0 it has become much easier.
I'm going to use my NAS (consisting of a HP Proliant Microserver N36L with four 2 Terabyte HDDs in RAIDZ) probably at the beginning of next week, unless significant bugs are reported. In that case, you will also find an update regarding the upgrade process from FreeNAS 8.0.4 to FreeNAS 8.2.0 as well as new benchmarks how Samba, AFP and iSCSI performance has developed. If you want to upgrade immediately or start a new NAS project, you can find the downloads at Sourceforge here:
- FreeNAS 8.2.0 x64 RELEASE Download
- FreeNAS x64 Plugins Download
- FreeNAS 8.2.0 x86 RELEASE Download
- FreeNAS x86 Plugins Download
I have summarized in a separate article what you can and should consider better with the minidlna configuration: FreeNAS 8.2.0: Add media directories to minidlna.conf
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finally configured my N36L for Freenas.
but currently I cannot get the plugins to work. MiniDLNA appears as media server, but the files from the MediaDirectory are not listed.
and with firefly i currently have the problem, that he also can't scan the music. when i am on the firefly webinterface, there are 0 musicfiles after the scan.
do you have any idea what my problem might be?
Yes, the media directory has to be mounted into the jail, I have described this in a contribution to minidlna: https://www.tech-blogger.net/2012/07/freenas-8-2-0-minidlna-conf-media-directory/
Hello,
have you done the update to 8.2 yet? How does the performance look like?
Ciao
Enrico
Yes, my FreeNAS is already running 8.2 - so far I am quite satisfied, I don't notice any real difference. But I don't move many files all the time either.