FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part Two – Configuration

December 24, 2007 By Rob 70 Comments

You can find my FreeNAS posts/Tutorials here:

FreeNAS – switching back. About my decision to move back to FreeNAS from Windows Home Server.
FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part One – Installation – installing the FreeNAS server onto a PC. (this post)
FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part Two – Configuration – configuring FreeNAS and Windows File Sharing.
FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part Three – Upgrading – Upgrading your FreeNAS Server.
Using Microsoft SyncToy 2 with FreeNAS – Automating your backups – for free.
FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part Five – XBOX 360 – Using FreeNAS with your XBOX 360
FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part 6 – Adding another drive

In Part One we installed FreeNAS onto our server. In this section we configure FreeNAS to allow Windows File Sharing and network browsing.

1. Open a browser and type in the IP address of your server (in our example from Part One the IP address was 192.168.1.250. A Logon Dialog will appear:

The login name is “admin” and the password is “freenas”. Enter this and click enter.

2. The main configuration screen appears as below. There are MANY options here – but most users will only need to change a few of them. The first thing we will do is change the default password. On the left hand navigation click “General” under system settings.

3. Click the Password tab.

4. Enter the old password and then the new password in the dialog – the new password is entered twice.

5. Click back to the General Tab.

Here you can rename your server. The default name is freenas, and that works for me. Feel free to change it. I haven’t played with this so I would stick with a single word with no spaces or odd characters.
If you are on a domain you can change the default. I’m just on a Workgroup, so I’ll leave this as local.
For added security you can change the admin name to something else.
Change the time zone so it reflects your location.
Click the Enable NTP checkbox to allow the server to update the clock over the Internet.

6. Before configuring anything else we will reboot the server and make sure that we can still login with our new credentials. On the left navigation under system click on Reboot, then click on Yes.

7. The system will only take a minute or so to reboot. Refresh your browser window and type in your new credentials. Next we prepare the shared drive.

8. From the Navigation Menu select Management under Disks. In the screen displayed click the circle with the plus in it to add a new disk.

9. There are three things to change on this page:

First, select your hard drive in the “Disk” drop-down. If you had only one drive this should already be selected.
Second, let’s save some power and allow the hard drives to power down. I set my hard disk standby time to 20 minutes.
Third, set the Advanced Power Management – I set mine to minimum power use with standby.
Click the ADD button.
Your changes are complete, but not applied. Click the Apply Changes button.

10. Now we need to set the mount point. Under Disks select mount point.

Click the circle with the plus in it.
On this screen “Disks: Mount Point: Add” we will leave the Type as disk. Then select your drive in Disks the drop down box.
Change the Partition drop-down to “2″.
Leave the file system as USF.
Name the mount point. I’ll call mine data.
Enter a description (example – “Backup data”)
Click on Add
Now click on Apply Changes. Make sure the Status reads “OK”. If it doesn’t delete the mount (circle with the X in it) and go back to the beginning of step 10 and try again.

11. Now we set up sharing. On the Navigation Menu select CIFS/SMB from the Services menu.

Click the enable tick-box (highlighted in the image above).
Change the NetBiosName if you would like. I call mine “freenas”. (I have a vivid imagination)
If you are on a workgroup, enter the name here. My workgroup is “LAGESSE”, so that is what I typed.
Now enter a description. Again, I used my imagination and typed in “File Server”
Ignore everything else on this page. Scroll to the bottom and click “Save and Restart”.

12. Now on the CIFS/SMB page click the “Shares” tab up top

Click the circle/plus to add a share
We’ll create a share called Data. Type Data in for the name.
Enter a comment (My Data works for me).
Click the box with the three dots to the right of Path.
In the pop-up click on the folder name (in my case, data). Then click on OK.
I turn on the Recycle Bin. Your choice.
Click on Add then Apply Changes.

Almost done! One more thing to set up.

13. Under Services click on NFS.

Click the tick-box For Enable.
Click the circle with the plus in it to add an authorized network.
In the next screen type in the IP Address of your network. Example – if your server’s IP address is 192.168.1.250 type 192.168.1.1 in here. In any case, just make the first three parts of this the same as your server and make the last part a 1.
Click Add
Back at the Services: NFS screen click on Save and Restart”.

That’s it! As you can see there are a lot of settings we didn’t mess with. You may want to, or need to change some of these. That is beyond the scope of this simple tutorial.

So let’s go test our new server!

First, the browser test. In your web browser type \\servername and press enter (since I called my server freenas, I type \\freenas\ into my web browser and the following dialog appears:

As you can see – this is a standard Windows Explorer view showing my server and the share I created, Data. There is no printer installed on my server, and I haven’t played with that option, but the printer icon shows as well.

Now I can map a network drive using the UNC of \\freenas\data.

That’s all there is to it. You can go and add additional shares to point to subdirectories in Data – I created folders called Music, Pictures, Movies, Videos, and Users (where I created folders for me and my kids). You can also set up users and groups and limit access to these shares based on the user/group.

There are a ton of features I haven’t even discussed. This tutorial just focused on getting the Windows File Sharing and Browsing set up. The FreeNAS Knowledgebase has a ton of additional information.

Share and Enjoy:

Comments

Gray (newbie) says:

May 31, 2010 at 09:13

I have followed the tutorial although i am using FreeNAS 0.7.2 (Sabanda):
everything seems to be fine until i get to the end and type my \\servername.
I get the freenas page instead of the Windows Explorer view.
any help please

Newbie says:

May 23, 2010 at 10:25

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, I’ve managed to get the write permissions granted now, however now I have a more fundemental problem.

I can now create files, however the machine is made up 3 drives, 1 flash drive where the FreeNas runs from and 2 HDD’s (not in a RAID array). During set up I added the 2 HDD’s via the disk management, then I’ve gone in and created a share with the path set to \mnt, however files I created copy etc to the share seem to be going to the flash drive and not the HDD’s, am I missing something massively obvious here? (probably).

My first thought is to do with the path being set to \mnt but I dont know what to change this to, sorry if I’m being an idiot, just failing to see the obvious here.

Thanks

- Newbie says:
  
  May 23, 2010 at 10:35
  
  ignore me, I completely missed out the above bit about mount points!!!!!
  
  Sorry and thanks.
  
Newbie says:

May 22, 2010 at 15:08

Hi,

I’m a total newb to this, I’ve managed to set up FreeNas (0.7.1), I’ve created the share (CIFS\SMB) and my windows machine can access it, however when I to and create a file on the share I get permissions denied, I’ve check the ‘read only’ setting on the share and all appears good, any idea’s? It’s driving me mad!

- Ananymous says:
  
  May 23, 2010 at 06:10
  
  Just a guess, but make sure the drive in the freenas setting is write enabled.
  
  - Mike Morrow says:
    
    May 26, 2010 at 15:26
    
    I found the problem (a very esoteric bit of trivia about mount points and space and privs) but FreeNAS is WAY too broken to use for commercial production. It falls over in SO many ways and I quit trying some months ago after wasting about two months and some cash with it. You can safely ignore my thread. In two words: FreeNAS SUX!
    
    End of line.
    
    - Jack says:
      
      June 5, 2010 at 22:30
      
      Mike, if you quit months ago, why are you still here whining? Moreover, since FreeNAS _is_ used quite a bit in commercial production, your problems were most likely of the PEBCAK variety.
      
      - Rob says:
        
        June 5, 2010 at 22:46
        
        Jack, thanks for jumping in. I’ve had several detractors make rude comments in the years since I initially wrote this post. (It seems a lifetime ago). I just tend to ignore them. The ones that don’t drop the f-bomb every other word, I publish. The others perish
        
        I’m amazed how many page views this old post still gets. I hope that means it is still helpful.
        
        As much as I would like to update it, I just don’t have the time.
        
        If anyone wants to create a similar, more contemporary series, I will certainly link to it from here.
        
        I just really hate it when people ask questions I can no longer answer!
        
        Thanks again,
        
        Rob
        
      - Mike Morrow says:
        
        June 7, 2010 at 01:19
        
        When people write to me, I answer. That seems easy enough to understand. I asked questions here and elsewhere and got few reasonable answers or more likely NONE at all. So where are all these people with this junk in production? As far as I counted there are NONE! I used all the patience I had, waited and tried and implemented the miniscule answers I got and, still, after it was running, it would let me load it up and then fail before I could move it to production. I hear defenders but have heard exactly ZERO people who use this, currently, in production. I would love to work with someone who is a pro and list the exact steps and see where the problem is. Well, less now than before, I used something else to get the functions I need. After (lost count of) months of waiting, STILL, something useful has NOT happened. Yes, I had a lot to learn and did. And then tried to use it and it would not continue to run more than a couple of days, maybe up to five and then, that was it. Start over! And this was with disparate HDs and CPUs, Power Supplies, etc. No common point of failure. I am not stupid. I have been working with computer for over 30 years. I can tell junk when I see it and that is what I saw.
        
        If you don’t want me to answer, don’t mention my name or refer to my posts. Simple? Seems so. Does that answer your question? Hope so, jack. I will not mention where you can put your PEBCAK, whatever that is…
        
    - pool says:
      
      June 27, 2010 at 19:52
      
      you sir, suck!
      
      - Phil says:
        
        July 29, 2010 at 21:33
        
        thanks for this tuto! my freenas work great now!!!!
        
        thanks again!
        Phil

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FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users – Part Two – Configuration

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