Initial Setup

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.]