Building a FreeBSD NAS Part 2: Hardware assembly
In Part 1 of this series I already explained my goals building a new NAS. In this post I show how I assembled the hardware in order to ensure reliance and redundancy.
Building a FreeBSD NAS Part 3: System setup
FreeBSD is the ideal system to use when building a server. It’s reliable and rock-solid and it’s file system ZFS not only offers anything you would expect from a file system but is also easy to set up and to maintain. This is why I chose it to power my NAS. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series I already described my intentions and the hardware assembly. Now it’s time to bring it to life.
Building a FreeBSD NAS Part 4: Service deployment
In Part 3 of this series I described how to install FreeBSD and set it up properly. Now that the base system setup is complete, we can start providing services…
FreeBSD: iTunes media server using forked-daapd
forked-daapd allows you to set up an iTunes Media server that hosts all music, podcasts and audiobooks and shows
up in iTunes like a shared library. While other daapd implementations don’t work anymore with the current iTunes
versions, forked-daapd does.
FreeBSD: Time Machine backup server with netatalk
While building my new NAS, I came across the question how to provide a Time Machine backup solution for my OS X clients.
As I run OS X on all my machines I want to back up all data to my NAS. netatalk allows to create file shares for OS X
to provide a simple solution for system backups.
Building a FreeBSD NAS Part 1: Concept & Hardware selection
After a long while I finally decided to build a new NAS / home server for my various needs. Though there are many solutions available, I chose to build one on my own as I want as much flexibility as possible. So I set out to buy all components needed for the system with upgradability and budget in mind.
OS X: Automated provisioning using Homebrew and Cask
I’m changing my hardware quite frequently as I often end up unsatisfied with my current setup. Setting up a computer from scratch is a pain in the a** but restoring a backup implies carrying around configuration files, useless software and other stuff for years. So I’ve decided to create a script that would set up a new computer from scratch and configure it the way I want it to be.
FreeBSD: Send mails over an external SMTP server
FreeBSD is shipped with sendmail as the default MTA, which is configured to local delivery on a vanilla installation. Therefore many people don’t even recognize one of FreeBSDs great features for system administrators: FreeBSD sends system status emails through periodic(8)…
OS X: Run any command in a sandbox
Beside the pre-configured profiles, OS X’s sandbox wrapper command sandbox-exec provides a flexible configuration
syntax that allows one to create a customized sandbox that either blacklists or whitelists specific abilities of the
application executed within.
rsync over SSH
rsync as a very important tool in a system administrators’ toolbox. It allows to synchronize files and directories and is preferred over cp by many, especially when operating on a large file base because it allows to resume copying in case it is canceled. But rsync can do so much more… For example syncing files and folders over SSH, like scp copies files and folders over SSH but again, with some advantages.