Initial setup consists of moving through all of the menu choices and tabs, and filling in the fields presented on each of the selected pages. The following paragraphs simply begin by showing the menu selections as a path, separated by slashes (e.g. "System/General/General" means choose the "System" menu item, followed by the "General" menu item, followed by the "General" tab). The choices that should be made are listed next. Notes are interspersed as full paragraphs or in parenthesis on the individual field lines. When you see the setup pages, you'll figure it out.
System/General/General (Setup)
Hostname: (you probably want something different than "nas4free") Domain: (the default is "local") IPV4 DNS servers: (if you set the NIC up from the console, you only need to add your second DNS server, if you need one) Time zone: (Eastern Time is GMT+4 or maybe GMT+5, in the winter) Enable NTP: checked (if you have a local or networked NTP server) NTP time server: (local or networked NTP server -- the default works OK)
System/General/Password
Set new password (default password is "freenas")
System/Advanced/Advanced
Console screensaver: checked (if you wish) Blank time: 300 seconds (5 minutes) seems about right. Enable Zeroconf/Bonjour to advertise services of this device: another bad idea whose time has come. You may want to turn it off. MOTD: (may want to include the machine name in the welcome message)
System/Advanced/Email
From email: temporarily start out by entering your to email address (that's intuitive) Outgoing mail server: your SMTP server (probably, an IP address is best) Once you've tested the connection to your SMTP server by clicking the "Send test email" button, you should then set the "From email" field to the address you want to use henceforth as the sender's address for delivering mail (e.g. "NAS4Free.NASBox"), so that all email messages will be sent with this from address. Note that, as of NAS4Free 9.1.0.1.636, clicking the "Send test email" button sends an inscrutable test message with a bogus UTF subject (hey, what's wrong with ANSI for the test message), the sender's address the same as the recipient's and a body that reads, "This email has been sent to validate your email configuration." If you see an email that looks like this in your in-box, you're in business.
System/Advanced/Swap
If you installed NAS4Free using one of the options that create a swap file, you must enable it first before it can be used by the system. The install should have given you instructions about how to do it. In case you didn't write them down, begin by checking the "Enable" box. Type: Device Device: /dev/ada2s3 (or whatever device name you were given by install) If you really didn't write down the swap device name when install told you what it was, you can go to the system console, open up a shell and enter the following command: ls -1 /dev/ada* Note that the flag, above, is a one, not the usual el. You should see all of the hard drives listed. The system drive will be the one that looks like this: /dev/ada2 /dev/ada2s1 /dev/ada2s1a /dev/ada2s2 /dev/ada2s2a /dev/ada2s3 The swap partition is the third partition listed (e.g. /dev/ada2s3 in this example).
Disks/Management/Management
If you installed the system with one or more UFS DATA partitions on the system disk, you can enable it or them now. Begin by clicking the "Plus" button at the right. Disk: ada2 (or other appropriate disk -- read the description of the disk until you see your system drive or SSD) Description: (you should provide a description -- we like to use something like "Data partition on System disk") S.M.A.R.T.: checked Preformatted file system: UFS Click the "Add" button at the bottom of the page. The disk will show up as "Initializing". Click the "Apply changes" button to make the disk available. The disk will show as "ONLINE".
Disks/Management/S.M.A.R.T.
Begin by checking the "Enable" box. Power mode: Standby Informal: 50 (most disks run in the 35-45 degree range) Critical: 60 (now, we're cookin') Email Report: check Activate To email: (put your to email address here) Click "Apply Changes" If you want to run any additional SMART tests (we like to do the Long Self Test once a week at 5AM for each disk, picking a different day for each disk), click the "Plus" button at the right of the "Scheduled self-tests" section. Click "Save and Restart" when you are all done.
Disks/Mount Point/Management
If you installed the system with one or more UFS DATA partitions on the system disk, you can mount it or them now. Begin by clicking the "Plus" button at the right. Type: Disk Disk: ada2 (or other appropriate disk) Partition type: MBR partition Partition number: 2 (or other appropriate partition number) File system: UFS Mount point name: System (or some other descriptive name). This name will appear under /mnt in the file system tree, e.g. /mnt/System. Description: (a description would be good -- we like "Data partition on System disk") File system check: checked If you really didn't write down the data device name when install told you what it was, see the notes in the System/Advanced/Swap section above about how to list the disk partitions. The data partition is the second partition listed (e.g. /dev/ada2s2 in this example). Click the "Add" button at the bottom of the page. The partition will show up as "Initializing". Click the "Apply changes" button to make the partition available. The partition will show as "OK". [You just never know where Martin Van Buren is going to turn up.]