FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users - Part One - Installation Happy Holidays
Dec 24

FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users - Part Two - Configuration

on December 24th, 2007 - FAQs -TutorialsAdd comments

You can find my FreeNAS posts/Tutorials here:

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:

logon 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. general
3. Click the Password tab. password
4. Enter the old password and then the new password in the dialog - the new password is entered twice. pw_change

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. disk_mgt
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.
 drive_save
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.
 mount1
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”.
 smb
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.

 share
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”.
 nfs1

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:

browse

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.

written by rob


*** Random Post ***

One Year Ago: Google Search - it can get a lot smarter, Iran greets sanctions with defiance, Holiday wishes...

32 Responses to “FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users - Part Two - Configuration”

  1. FreeNAS Tutorials | FreeBSD - the unknown Giant Says:
    January 2nd, 2008 at 11:19

    [...] Part Two - Configuration [...]

  2. Shannon Whitley Says:
    January 5th, 2008 at 02:36

    Worked like a charm. Thank you for the amazing set of instructions.

  3. rob Says:
    January 5th, 2008 at 09:33

    @Shannon - thanks for letting me know it worked for you!

  4. FeroS Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 07:47

    CIFS/SMB does not work for me.
    FreeNAS need name/passwd (or guest !!! / passwd).
    But User in the Group/User is not accepted.
    No problem with “FTP”. It works fine.

  5. rob Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 10:56

    @FeroS - Sounds like you don’t have CIFS/SMB authentication set to anonymous. My tutorial doesn’t cover user authentication - my LAN is secure, and I assume those within my LAN are trusted.

    Set the authentication to anonymous and try it again.

  6. FeroS Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:24

    I have added my IP in CIFS/SMB / Shares / path / Hosts allow. And it works.
    It does not work in Anonymous or Local user mode without my IP address.
    I think there is problem of the longtime Windows user with UNIX reality :))

  7. rob Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:28

    @FeroS - did you put your local subnet into NFS|Authorized Networks? I put my subnet in there and leave the CIFS/SMB/Share/Hosts allow set to ALL.

  8. FeroS Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:44

    Yes. Now it is O.K. Thank you :)
    There are several people with the same problem on the SourceForge FreeNAS forum.

  9. rob Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:46

    @FeroS - I’ll review my tutorial and make sure I make that step very clear.

  10. UNIX Coding School » Blog Archive » unix tutorial [2008-01-21 22:00:55] Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 16:13

    [...] Comment on FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users - Part Two … By FeroS I have added my IP in CIFS/SMB / Shares / path / Hosts allow. And it works. It does not work in Anonymous or Local user mode without my IP address. I think there is problem of the longtime Windows user with UNIX reality :)) Comments for STUFFLEUFAGUS - http://lagesse.org [...]

  11. rob Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 20:32

    @FeroS - I covered this NFS setting in step #13 ahead. Do you think I need to change it, or is the step written clearly?

  12. Marvin Vanosdall Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 22:39

    I have tried every way I know how along with going through this tutorial and I cannot access my shares using Cif. It always pops up the window for a guest user and wants a password. My authentication is set to anonymous, I added my network in NFS as well as in cifs but still no luck. Running the latest version of FreeNas.

  13. rob Says:
    January 25th, 2008 at 22:41

    @Marvin - can you save your configuration and send it to me (email is in upper left). I’ll see if I can figure it out.

  14. Arturo Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 01:18

    Rob, Netmask should be set to 24 on NFS service.

  15. Ehron Says:
    February 21st, 2008 at 18:34

    I had to manually add the “read only = no” value to the share I created in the smb.conf file in order to write to the Samba share using version 0.686.

  16. Adi Graham Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 18:08

    I had the same issue and added a share to the Data directory.

    Path Name Comment Browseable
    /mnt/Data/ Root Data Root No

    Then went to \\nas\root

    Then i created my folders then pointed the shares to it.

  17. Tony Says:
    March 30th, 2008 at 19:51

    I was having the same issues as the rest regarding the setup of CIFS shares. The rest of your tutorial works like a charm except for the section where I had to do a bit of Unix hacking to get it to work. In my particular situation I was unable to create new folders inside the mount points that I created in NFS and in CIFS. The work around that I used was to do the following from the console on the freenas server:

    1. From “Console setup” select “6) Shell”
    2. cd /mnt to get to the mount points in your freenas server
    3. ls -la to get a directory listing and permissions of the items in the /mnt directory
    4. Issue the command chmod 777 data or whatever the name of the directory is that you want to change the write permissions.

    You should now be able to write files to the share that you created. You will need to do this going forward for any new directories that you create in freenas.

  18. rob Says:
    March 30th, 2008 at 19:55

    @Tony - thanks for the additional information. I wonder why you ran into this and I never have? I’ve installed FreeNAS dozens of times and have never had to issue a single command via the shell. Odd - but do appreciated the added knowledge!

  19. FreeNAS Tutorial: Upgrading FreeNAS | FreeBSD - the unknown Giant Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 06:29

    [...] Part 2 - Configuration [...]

  20. Ken Says:
    August 23rd, 2008 at 14:22

    I have a computer on my network that is usually logged into a domain and therefore is not in the same workgroup as the rest of my PCs. All the other PCs that are in the workgroup can connect to the freenas server and view the CIF/SMB shares. However if I point the computer that is in the domain at the shares I get a guest logon (where guest is grayed out) and password prompt. Nothing works. How can I get this computer connected to the shares? Thanks.

  21. Julian Says:
    September 2nd, 2008 at 12:22

    Rob, thank you. You’ve got me out of hole. The installation guide of the FreeNAS website did not include the bit about adding Shares to the CIFS/SMB configuration.

    The part of your tutorial that is not like the webGUI I have is the setup of NFS. On the version I have got - 0.686.4, the latest stable version - there is also a ‘Shares’ tab where the authorised network is added, rather like the CIFS/SMB setup. It was common sense and all your other instructions worked a dream.

    Thanks for a great set of tutorials.

  22. rob Says:
    September 2nd, 2008 at 17:15

    @Julian - thanks - glad they helped. At some point I’ll catch up in this new job and I’ll re-do the tutorials with the latest version of FreeNAS :) - Rob

  23. Bjoern Says:
    September 4th, 2008 at 07:45

    Hello, I also had problems mounting the FreeNAS SMB share from a Windows PC connected to a domain. It always poped up asking for password for the NetBIOSName/Guest user. My problem was that I had not set up FreeNAS with the same DNS server as the windows pc and the domain. The second problem I encounterd were that I typed a mount folder that was not yet created on the shared drive under the SMB/CIFS Shares. I created the folder with 777 rights from shell on the freenas and once I had set the first DNS on freenas the same as the windows pc it worked fine to access the share anonymnous.

    bJøRn

  24. Anthony Says:
    September 5th, 2008 at 08:40

    Help needed to properly setup FreeNAS to work with Win XP.

    Win XP can see freeNAS but cannot make a directory or write data.
    Is there a common misconfiguration that causes this?

    Can someone walk me through FreeNAS setting to get it fully operational with
    Win XP?

    FTP services from WinXP to FreeNAS is fine however.

    Please help me. I am totally lost. Any clues appreciated. Thank you in advance.

    PS. Your help pages are great.

  25. rob Says:
    September 5th, 2008 at 22:48

    @Anthony - if you create the directory on FreeNAS, can WinXP see it, read from it?

  26. poswer Says:
    September 30th, 2008 at 04:47

    i have install freenas seprate mox now it is working fine i am via IE http:\\172.16.0.10 on windows box everything working fine i want to know how to configure NFS server on freenas.

    i try enable the nfs option and setting , services enable map the all user root -> YES
    path how to give ( already fedora7 box is there i am configure nfs i give that box ip or freenas machine ip and after path default /mnt) pls any one help me

  27. Harry Samuel Says:
    October 16th, 2008 at 23:40

    What is the guest password? help

    I have tried every way I know how along with going through this tutorial and I cannot access my shares using Cif. It always pops up the window for a guest user and wants a password. My authentication is set to anonymous, I added my network in NFS as well as in cifs but still no luck. Running the latest version of FreeNas.

    Sound familiar, all I did was cut and paste the problem. I have reinstalled to start clean several times.I want away from Microsoft. I ran my Novell server for 15 years or so. freebsd is next, if I can get freenas running.

    Its 12:30 am - will look for an answer. Thanks Harry

  28. Jeff Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 12:15

    Had the same problem. Make sure that the share NAME appears at the end of the PATH. For example NAME = data, PATH = /mnt/NAS_SHARE/data or you could just leave PATH as /mnt/NAS_SHARE, but would be limited to configuration options. NAS_SHARE appeared by default under the /mnt point when I installed. Originally had it as /mnt/data, but would prompt for user name and password. Once I corrected as mentioned above, the user prompt went away. All I did after that was map a drive to \\freenas\data.

  29. rob Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 20:46

    @Jeff - thanks. As much as I love FreeNAS, I have been neglectful of this thread. I am *so* pleased to seeing you helping each other!

    Rob

  30. Menggunakan Microsoft SyncToy 2 untuk FreeNAS Server « DD 6663 BA Says:
    November 10th, 2008 at 19:31

    [...] FreeNAS Tutorial for Windows Users - Part Two - Configuration - configuring FreeNAS and Windows File Sharing. [...]

  31. humanform Says:
    November 13th, 2008 at 00:00

    Worked great. I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out before coming across this. Thank you so much!

  32. Rob La Gesse Says:
    November 13th, 2008 at 20:38

    @humanform - thanks. I’m glad the post helped, even if it is becoming a bit outdated now.

Leave a Reply