Introduction :
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key. The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.
Procedure :
[Note] : The hard disk on which you need to install FreeNAS must be clean without data. FreeNAS will erase all the data from all the partitions on this disk.
Change the boot priority in the BIOS setup and set CD-Rom as first Boot Device. Now start your computer and insert the CD in the CD-Rom. You computer will now boot from CD and you will be presented with this boot menu :
Here press “1” or it will automatically select the first option as it’s the default option. The time set for this menu is 5 seconds. Once you select “boot” from this menu, you will get to console setup screen like this :
Now on this screen, press “9” to install FreeNAS on your hard disk. Once you past this screen by pressing “9” you will have this screen asking you what to do :
Now, here, select the 3rd option saying “Install ‘full’ OS on HDD + DATA + SWAP Partition” and press Enter. Now you will get a confirmation screen where you have to select “OK” and press Enter :
After pressing Enter for “OK” option, you will get a new window asking you to select your CD-Rom, from where you will install FreeNAS. It will look like this :
Now here select your CD-Rom and press Enter to continue. Then a window will appear, asking you to select your hard disk :
Select your Hard Disk and press Enter. All data from this Hard Disk will be erased. Then you will have to enter the size which the OS must take, minimum is 64MB. This screen looks like this :
Now after entering the size and pressing Enter, you will get a screen asking you if you want to use a swap partition. This window should appear like this :
Now here it is suggested to select yes and then press Enter. Now FreeNAS will install on your machine and you will get this screen :
Installation will take few minutes. After FreeNAS is installed you will be requested to press Enter to complete the setup and the screen will look like this :
Now the system will reboot, you can remove the CD from the CD-Rom and let the computer boot from hard disk. Again you will be presented with this boot menu :
Now again select “1” and press Enter or let the system do it on its own. This is the same screen as first boot option. Now the system will start loading form the hard disk and you will have a screen similar to this :
Once the system had loaded, you will again get a console setup screen similar to the previous one, that would look like this :
Now again select “1” to select network interface, Once you’ve done that, you will get this screen :
Now select your interface and press Enter. If you have more then one interface, then select auto-detect. Then you will be presented by the following screen on which you have to select “none : Finish and Exit Configuration” and press Enter :
Now, after selecting the interface, you will be on this screen which will ask you to confirm that the LAN connection you selected, here select OK and press Enter :
Then you will be again presented by the console setup screen :
Now on the console setup screen press “7” and press Enter to Reboot the system to save the configuration change made to the system. You will be then presented by this screen :
Confirm Reboot by selecting “Yes” and then press Enter. Your system will reboot. After reboot again select “1” and reach to console setup menu. Then press “2” to assign IP Address and Press Enter :
Now It will ask, if you want to get an IP Address from DHCP server, Here you can select yes. If you have a DHCP server, then your configuration ends here. If not then continue reading. The screen will appear like this :
For manual IP setting, select no and press Enter. Now you will have this screen :
Here Enter your IP address and press Enter. You will then land to this screen :
Here Enter Subnet Mask in the slash “/” notation. Like : 255.0.0.0 =8, 255.255.0.0 = 16, etc. After entering the subnet mask, press Enter. Then you will get this screen :
Here Enter the gateway for your computer, and then press Enter, then you will get a screen which will appear like this :
Here enter DNS server for your interface and then press Enter, Then you will get a screen which will ask you if you want to configure IPv6. This screen should appear like this :
I select no over here and press Enter, Then after selecting no you will get to this screen :
This screen tells you that you are done with the CLI based configurations and you FreeNAS is ready for GUI config. You need to press Enter to reboot the system for changes to take place. Then on reboot I will be at this saome console setup screen :
On this screen, select 3 and press enter to reset the WebGUI password. After pressing Enter I will get this screen :
This screen tells, that the default password is “admin” and it will be changed to “freenas”. Select yes and press Enter to confirm. Now You will get this screen :
This screen will show you the acknowledgement that your password has been changed now press Enter. Now you will be returned to the console setup screen :
Now, here, type 7 and press Enter to reboot so that the changes made could be saved. Now The reboot progress will be show :
Now FreeNAS is installed on your system, If you are good enough will the commands you can select the shell from console setup menu to configure the rest of the settings from CLI. If you want Setup the remaining settings from GUI, you will need a computer with any operating system on the network. From the network computer, open a web browser and type in the IP Address of your FreeNAS PC along with port like in the example it is : http://10.10.10.119:80. Also if you want to configure your FreeNAS machine from an external router you can port-forward port 80. That’s it.
