Installation on USB-drive
I used my servers’ IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface)/BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) connection to connect the FreeNAS-9.3-CURRENT-201503130047.iso to the console and booted the system via the CDROM interface.
After the iso has booted, it displays a grub menu to boot the FreeNAS installation. When you do nothing this option is chosen by default.
Then a text menu is displayed, see the FreeNAS documentation for the steps with pictures:
FreeNAS 9.3-STABLE Console Setup
1 Install/Upgrade
2 Shell
3 Reboot System
4 Shutdown System
<OK> <Cancel>
By pressing ’enter’ it will display a list of drives.
Choose destination media
Select one or more drives where FreeNAS should be
installed (use arrow keys to navigate to the drive(s)
for installation; select a drive with the spacebar).
[ ] ada0 WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82 -- 2.7 TiB
[ ] ada1 WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82 -- 2.7 TiB
[ ] ada2 WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82 -- 2.7 TiB
[ ] ada3 WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82 -- 2.7 TiB
[ ] ada4 WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82 -- 2.7 TiB
[ ] ada5 WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82 -- 2.7 TiB
[ ] ada6 WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82 -- 2.7 TiB
[ ] ada7 ST3000DM001-1CH166 CC27 -- 2.7 TiB
[*] da0 Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 PMAP -- 7.3 GiB
<OK> <Cancel>
In this list I choose the ‘da0 Kingston’ USB drive.
Upgrade this FreeNAS installation
Upgrading the installation will preserve your existing configuration.
Do you with to perform an upgrade or a fresh installation on da0?
<Upgrade Install> < Fresh Install >
This happend because I did a FreeNAS test before with the same USB-disk. I choose ‘Fresh Install’ to start from the beginning.
FreeNAS installation
WARNING:
- This will erase ALL partitions and data on da0.
- You can't use da0 for sharing data.
NOTE:
- Installing on flash media is preferred to installing on a hard drive.
Proceed with the installation?
< Yes > < No >
Of course I want to install it on the USB drive, so I choose Yes’.
Enter your root password; cancel for no root password
Password: ****
Confirm Password: ****
<OK> <Cancel>
I entered the password and then tab to get to the OK button to press enter. This will start the installation on the USB-drive.
When the installation is finished, it displays the following text:
The FreeNAS installation on da0 succeeded!
Please remove the CDROM and reboot.
< OK >
I disconnected the CDROM via de BMC and pressed enter, which brought me back to the first choice menu. There I choose 3 to reboot the system, but this returned me to the menu only the first choice would give me something other then the menu.
It seems you have to wait with disconnecting the CDROM after you have chosen option 3 to reboot the system.
Settings via the console
When the system rebooted and started the installed FreeNAS it will display a menu with the following options:
FreeBSD/amd64 (freenas.local) (ttyv0)
Console setup
------------
1) Configure Network Interfaces
2) Configure Link Aggregation
3) Configure VLAN Interface
4) Configure Default Route
5) Configure Static Routes
6) Configure DNS
7) Reset Root Password
8) Reset to factory defaults
9) Shell
10) System Update (requires networking)
11) Create backup
12) Restore from a backup
13) Reboot
14) Shutdown
No configured interfaces were found. Try to do it manually.
Enter an option from 1-14:
Because networking is not yet configured, it will display "ntpd_initres[…]: host name not found: X.freebsd.pool.ntp.org" during the setup. This might be confusing some times when it is printed when you are entering some text. Therefor, I setup the network and DNS first to get rid of this message.
Because my system has 2 network interfaces, I created a Link Aggregation by choosing menu option ‘2’.
1) Create Link Aggregation
2) Delete Link Aggregation
Enter an option from 1-2 (enter q to quit):
I have chosen ‘1’ to create the link.
1) failover
2) fec
3) lacp
4) loadbalance
5) roundrobin
6) none
Select a lagg protocol (q to quit):
I choose ‘1’, because I don’t have network equipment which can handle anything else.
1) igb0
2) igb1
Select an interface (q to quit):
Select ‘1’ to be the main interface.
1) igb1
Select an interface (q to quit):
Because only ‘1’ is left, choose that.
Select an interface (q to quit):
Since there are no other physical interfaces available, choose ‘q’. This will bring you back to the main menu. There I chose ‘1 (Configure Network Interface)’ to configure the Link aggregation.
1) lagg0
Select an interface (q to quit):
The only choice is ‘1’. The following code section contains the questions that were asked with my answers.
Delete interface? (y/n) n
Reset network configuration? (y/n) n
Configure interface for DHCP? (y/n) n
Configure IPv4? (y/n) y
Interface name [lagg0]: <enter>
Several input formats are supported
Example 1 CIDR Notation:
192.168.1.1/24
Example 2 IP and Netmask seperate:
IP: 192.168.1.1
Netmask: 255.255.255.0, /24 or 24
IPv4 Address: 10.0.0.56/24
Saving interface configuration: Ok
Configure IPv6? (y/n) y
IPv6 Address: 2001:1:2::3:56:1/64
Saving interface configuration: Ok
Next I choose option 4 (Configure Default Route).
Configure IPv4 Default Route? (y/n) y
IPv4 Default Route: 10.0.0.2
Saving IPv4 gateway: Ok
Configure IPv6 Default Route? (y/n) y
IPv6 Default Route: 2001:1:2::1
Saving IPv6 gateway: Ok
Restarting routing: ok
The last option to choose to get rid of the ntp messages is option 6 (Configure DNS).
DNS Domain [local]: andor
Enter nameserver IPs, an empty value ends input
DNS Nameserver 1: 10.0.0.2
DNS Nameserver 2:
Saving DNS configuration: ok
Reloading network config: ok
Backup
Now I wanted to create a backup of the configuration, so I chose option 11 (Create backup).
Hostname or IP address: perrin
Username: stefan
Password (leave empty to use key authentication): <password in plain text>
Remote directory: /var/tmp/
Backup data? (y/n) n
Backup data not selected
Compress data? (y/n) n
Comress data not selected
Are these values OK? (y/n/q): y
Status: Done
[________________________]
Press enter to exit.
It created a directory /var/tmp/freenas-backup-20150403-094318.
I didn’t want to backup the data, because there was no data yet.
Restore
Of course a backup is useless if it cannot be used to restore the information. Therefor I restored the backup after I made it. BE AWARE it might destroy ALL data, see FreeNAS documentation To do this I choose option 12 (Restore from a backup).
Hostname or IP address: perrin
Username: stefan
Password (leave empty to use key authentication): <password in plain text>
Remote directory: /var/tmp/freenas-backup-20150403-094318
Are these values OK? (y/n/q): y
No backups foundd in given directory!
Specify another directory or leave empty to abort: /var/tmp/
Found single backup in given directory:
Directory name: freenas-backup-20150403-094318
Created at: 2015-04-03 16:43:21
Created using FreeNAS-9.3-CURRENT-201503130047
Backup doesn't contain data
Restore whole FreeNAS installation from that backup? (y/n): y
Restoring database...
Destroying existing volumes (if any)...
Restoring volumes...
And then the server will reboot to use the backup.
As you can see you need to give the right directory to restore the backup.
In the next part the setup continues via the GUI.