Hey, I just built a LAN rig, which I thought would be cool to use as a server inbetween LANs, Wondering what would be the best for the job? Want it to run XP for the LANs, and then also have a linux install or whatever for the server part Ideally I will have all my media on there, and so then can just ssh in or whatever, and watch a film kinda thing Will FreeNAS do this? Or would I have to download the file to the local comp if I wanted to watch it? Also atm there is only room for 1 HDD, (got a 2tb F4), so was thinking of around 200gb for XP, and then the rest for the server. Then boot FreeNAS off of a USB, would FreeNAS cope with that fine? The HW I'm using is: i5 670 cooled by H70 GA-H55N-USB3 4gb 2000mhz cas 9 9600GSO 2tb F4 450W Silverstone SFF PSU Lian Li PC-Q08 Thanks
yeah freenas would work fine for that, just write the image onto a usb stick and boot from that. when setting up the mount points and shares, just don't assign anything to your xp partition. you won't want to assign that as there are severe issues with writing to ntfs via freenas, so best to leave it alone. i streamed media files from freenas all of the time when i was using it, never had any issues with watching movies or listening to music off it.
Ok cool, will do Anyone had any experience with XBMCbuntu? AM looking at installing that on the laptop to which the projector is hooked up to, and then set my server as the source for the media stuff Anyone see any problems with that? only issue so far is that once I've installed mini ubuntu, I can't boot up with it, just gives me a black screen with a flashing terminal like cursor typing thingy Anyone tried this before? Or can anyone recommend an alternative that can preferably run off of a USB stick (hdd in laptop seems to be dying) Thanks Edit: (as in, tried installing it on laptop hdd atm, but if possible would prefer it on a usb. also want xbmc regardless, was merely asking whether a different OS would be better?)
You can install xbmc-live onto a USB stick and boot from it with no need for an underlying operating system just google it and you get a link I've only ever used it on a virtual box but I'm planing on using it for a HTPC for my self quite soon! Best of luck with it let me know how it's goes!
Can't believe I missed that! Will try that later, looks perfect for what I want. Only issue now is home's pathetic internet connection, but one step at a time Any I just realised, while this is all fine when everything is on the same network, is it possible to have a similar (identical ideally) setup when on different networks? (so my family at home can access the media on my server at uni)
theoretically you could probably allow remote access via dyndns or similar service unless its disallowed by the uni. the only thing that may be a concern is uplink speed. if its low it may not be ideal for streaming movies and such over the internet. they could always download it to local and then playback though.
Got FreeNAS running on the PC, assigned a LAN interface and got an ip, however, if I try to access that ip from another computer on the network, it just says can't access the address? Anyone got any ideas? :/
have you added your shares? i know i was a bit confused the first time i set up freenas as you have to set a mount point, THEN set up shares on those mount points in the samba section. i know i missed that my first go around and was having the same problem. you might also review your user privileges as well. as that can be another source of not being able to connect to shares.
My problem was that I couldn't even get to the webgui, so couldn't setup shares etc Redid it with a different image file, can now access the webgui, have just added a HDD, and am formatting as we speak. Not sure where you can upload files to it? (I'm presuming you can?) Atm, I've just got CIFS/SMB enabled What would you guys recommend? FTP for basic upload/download of files? And do you use the 'quixexplorer' to actually access the files? And on that note, how do you for instance stream a video from your freenas? I can use filezilla or something similar to up/download files, but how do you stream?
What media player are you going to be using to stream the files from the FreeNAS server? Usually it is a simply share (CIFS/SMB) on FreeNAS which you connect to via your media player.
Trying to use xbmc, Added the source, (which worked with the user logon rather nicely) However it couldn't play the file, so I'm now trying to find the log file.
Just checked the log file, I can see the file no problem yeah. In the log it looks like it can't access the file? Maybe it's my user settings, might not have given proper access. And it can't (shouldn't) be a codec issue, since xbmc can play a local copy of the file no problamo.
Been playing around with it this evening, can't work out why it can't open the file :/ Tried making the user 'Family' a member of different groups (including admin), but it all had the same resul, could see the file no problem, but couldn't play it. Also found out I couldn't SSH in, it would connect, say welcome ec, then log me out straight away saying the user wasn't available? :/
Figured it out, After it suddenly lost it's ip address and then whenever I tried to get a new one it just gave me 0.0.0.0..... I reset it fo default, and then set it all up again. (leaving ip as 192.168.1.250) Then after more frustration at it not working, I made a new group called Family, and made the login Family a member of it, and then I could play the stuff aswell as see it Even works streaming 720p over the wireless flawlessly (so far), so happy it's working Now just need to look into doing it over the interwebs so the family can atleast try streaming stuff from it when I'm at uni.
good that you got it sorted. some of the set up can be a little odd at first. i found to avoid some fuss, to set up accounts with the same usernames and passwords as the ones from windows and it automagically logs in when you connect to the shares. which is also convenient when giving some people access to your nas as you can limit their activities, give them read only, access to certain folders only.
While it is now sorted I can' select Local User authentication for CIFS :/ Whenever I do, I can see the files etc, bu can' access any of them. And thats why me logging in as Family, with Family being a member of Family, and the Group and Owner of the share is Family :/ Any ideas? To try and make it a bit safer, I've disabled browsing, so you'll have ot know it's there and what it's called to access it, and also limited access to my ip. However I'd rather get the user accounts working properly :/
Wouldn't it be easier to buy another harddrive just for your XP install, then have FreeNAS have the entire 2TB or the 2TB and boot from USB for FreeNAS.
That is how I've got it setup, freenas boots from usb, with the whole 2tb drive as a share. then xp will be installed on a 500gb WD drive.
