Learn FreeNAS

The second release candiate for FreeNAS 8.0.1 has been released that includes an updated version of Django which addresses several security vulnerabilities recently found.

Highlights include:

• iSCSI target works with VMWare ESXi 5.0
• New email backend that provides interop with a range of mail servers (including gmail)
• Improvements in selecting iSCSI file extents
• Update to django 1.3.1 to address security issues in django
• Fix a bug that was preventing ldap over tls from working.
• Some machines panic with the usb 3.0 driver, move this from the kernel to a
• module so it can be disabled.
• Support mixed tagged and untagged vlan traffic on a physical interface.
• Added a “save debug” button which will save a tech dump of the freenas box.
• If the webgui is bound to an address the system no longer has listen on 0.0.0.0

The 64 bit version can be downloaded from here:

http://websvn.pcbsd.org/downloads/FreeNAS-8r7765-amd64.iso

There is now news yet on the 32 bit version or if this release will make it into the 8.0.1 repository on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/FreeNAS-8.0.1/.

Warner Losh of iXsystems has been kind enough to let me know that the first Beta of FreeNAS 0.8 is imminent, he was also kind enough to give me a sneak peak of what is coming… So I have installed this pre-Beta and made some screenshots of what we can expect in the 0.8 Beta.

Brian Adeloye of Tenable Network Security has found a vulnerability  in all versions of FreeNAS before  0.7.2.5543. With this vulnerability root acccess can be gained via the web GUI without authentication.

There are two solutions:

1) Upgrade to the latest stable version of FreeNAS – 0.7.2.5543:  https://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/stable/0.7.2/

2) Restrict web GUI access to trusted IP addresses only.

For most people using FreeNAS in their homes behind a firewall this shouldn’t be an issue, but it is worth upgrading anyway just to be 100% sure.

FreeNAS has been listed in the top ten at Best Open Source Software Awards (BOSSIE) 2010 in the networking tools category. Other winners are the Hyperic HQ and OpenNMS monitoring solutions, the Vyatta router Linux and Cacti, another monitoring application.

See FreeNAS listed here: http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/bossie-awards-2010-the-best-open-source-networking-software-153&current=5&last=10#slideshowTop

Related links: Best Open Source Software Awards 2010

Yesterday iXsystems released another internal/experimental snapshot of FreeNAS 0.8. I was able to download the source and build this latest developer preview version and now I am able to post the first screenshot of the new FreeNAS 0.8 web user interface:

Obviously there is more work to be done, but iXsystems and the team there are working hard to get FreeNAS 0.8 finished.

Warner Losh from iXsystems has kindly send me a disk image of the first FreeNAS 0.8 developer build. The guys at iXsystems have done a great job so far and the core of FreeNAS has been successfully ported to FreeBSD 8.1.

A basic web GUI is up and running and things are starting to take shape. I am working with Warner to try and get some screen shots for you.

If the current rate of progress continues there should be a more general preview build available in the next couple of weeks with the ability to configure the network, disks, filesystems, NFS and SAMBA from the web GUI.

Warner is hoping to do weekly snapshots and I will try and blog about the updates as then come.

iXsystems has uploaded a snapshot of their new FreeBSD 8.1-based FreeNAS.

This snapshot is for developers only. It is not functionally complete yet, and there are likely many rough edges.

If you are interested in playing with it you will need to download the code and build it yourself. You can find the code in SVN and here is the accompanying README.

The new FreeNAS is based on nanoBSD and builds for 32 and  64 bit machines, but building a 32 bit image on a 64 bit installation is currently broken.

Related links:

FreeNAS: iXsystems’ FreeNAS snapshot

‘yoyojazz’ has posted a review of the Learning FreeNAS book on Amazon.com.

In it he says:

I picked up Learning FreeNAS book about 6 days ago and I could not put it down! The book wastes no time and gets to the point fast!
Gary has an amazing ability to explain things clearly. I had no trouble being able to do some of the most complex configurations after the first read! (By day 3 I had a confidence in FreeNAS and a strong understanding of the technology that would oftaken me weeks to acquire!)

What is evidently clear from the book is that Gary has a passion for FreeNAS technology and he explains it so well. The book is well divided so information was placed in the perfect sections and with his website all the latest developments within FreeNAS are reported.

Some more details are starting to emerge about what will appear in FreeNAS 0.8:

Planned major features:

• Development on FreeBSD RELENG_8. Release, depending on timeframe may be based on a RELENG_8 snapshot or 8.1-RELEASE
  
• Migrate off m0n0wall
  
• Migrate GUI to django
  
• Add support for ada and ahci SATA drivers
  
• Add optional SoftUpdates + Journaling support to UFS2 filesystems
  
• Migration path/tool for previous releases and configurations
  
• Preservation of all existing features of the current FreeNAS release
  
• Refactor FreeNAS build system to allow building FreeNAS without affecting the host environment
  
• Non-Blocking Features
  

Possible other features

• FreeNAS package support. Binary one click installs that modify the GUI dynamically.
  

I am sure this list will evolve and you can keep an eye on the current developments here: http://freenas.org/roadmap

Recently I wrote about the plans to move FreeNAS from FreeBSD to Linux. The reception was mixed, some saying it didn’t matter, some mentioned that the lack of ZFS support was a real problem.

Today Olivier Cochard-Labbé has made a great announcement, FreeNAS will live on and production ready ZFS support will be added with the upgrade to FreeBSD 8.0. At the same time a new Linux version of FreeNAS will be created called OpenMediaVault!

Olivier explained it like this: FreeNAS needs some big modification to remove its present limitations (with one of the biggest being the lack of support for add-ons/plugins). We think that a full-rewrite of the FreeNAS base is needed. Therefore, we will take 2 different paths:

1. Volker will create a new project called “‘OpenMediaVault” based on a
   GNU/Linux and use all his experience acquired with all those nights and week-ends spent improving FreeNAS during the last 2 years. He will still
   continue to work on FreeNAS (and try to share his time with these two
   projects).
   
2. And, a great surprise: iXsystems (http://www.ixsystems.com/), a company specialising in professional FreeBSD systems has offered to take FreeNAS under its wing as an open source community driven project. This means that they will use their professionals FreeBSD developers to better FreeNAS! Their manpower will permit a full-rewriting of FreeNAS.
   

Olivier also added that he will personally come back to actively working on FreeNAS and begin to upgrade it to FreeBSD 8.0 (which is “production ready” for ZFS).

This is brilliant news all round and I think Volker and Olivier should make sure that the two projects share as much code as possible. Also I think iXsystems should be congratulated for their support of FreeNAS.