Hello FreeNAS users!

It’s been a bit of a bumpy ride, but FreeNAS 9.2.1.5 is finally out. Slowly but surely, we’re getting there. Read on to find out how you can be a part of the next release, and as always, we’ve got some tutorials and pointers in this edition for you as well. A big thanks to everyone who’s been involved in the development of FreeNAS so far. We couldn’t have done it without all of our dedicated beta testers and community members. Here’s to greater things ahead!
Cheers,
The FreeNAS Team

How Heartbleed Affected FreeNAS

A few people have asked about this and well, the short answer is: it didn’t. We are happy to say that FreeNAS was completely unaffected by the Heartbleed vulnerability because the current branch of FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD 9.2, which uses OpenSSL 0.9.8. Please be advised that users of FreeBSD 10 and FreeBSD 10-based systems like PC-BSD 10 Joule Edition were affected by the bug. To test your own server for the bug, try out this nifty tool.

FreeNAS 9.2.1.5 – RELEASE

FreeBSD 9.2.1.5-RELEASE is now available for download. It fixes more bugs in the 9.2.1.x series. We’re currently working on another point release to squash out the last of the remaining bugs in the 9.2.1-BRANCH, but we’re taking our time with the 9.2.1.6-RELEASE because we’d really like it to be good. That being said, we
need your help!
If you have some spare hardware, care about making sure that FreeNAS 9.2.1.6 will be the release everyone wants it to be, and are willing to put a little time and effort into testing the latest nightly builds, we’d like to invite you to join our newly re-launched freenas-testing@lists.freenas.org mailing list.
The 9.2.1.x series has been a bit rocky for us, partially because we bit off more than we could chew with the Samba 4 upgrade and partially because, well… we just couldn’t seem to stop breaking things in our attempt to fix other things. We are now attempting to learn from our mistakes.
We know that the community would obviously like 9.2.1.6 to be really good too, shipping with all the bugs from 9.2.1.5 fixed and no new bugs introduced. So if you would like to be a part of making that happen, please subscribe to the mailing list and follow the updates from the release engineering and QA teams as things progress.

FreeNAS Mini Review

One of the FreeNAS forum users recently reviewed the new FreeNAS Mini. You may have heard of cyberj0ck – he’s a pretty prolific forum contributor. He recently utilized his FreeNAS expertise and examined the FreeNAS Mini in depth. For his review, he detailed the hardware specs and ran a series of performance tests to see how well it stacks up. His conclusion?
“All of the hardware in the new FreeNAS Mini is awesome. No complaints. The hardware is solid and the hardware is definitely capable of doing what almost all of us could ever do with it… Overall I can’t find any faults at all. The concern that the CPU might not be a good fit for a small home server is clearly unfounded. It passed every one of my tests.”
Thinking about getting a Mini now that it’s been vetted and approved by cyberj0ck? Send us a quote request here and we’ll be happy to help you out. Remember, every purchase helps support the developers of FreeNAS so we can keep making improvements to the project.

BSD Now – Interview with John Hixson

The folks over at BSD Now recently interviewed John Hixson, a senior developer for the FreeNAS project. It’s a pretty insightful look at how one of our own got his start in the world of FreeBSD and the work he’s currently responsible for. He also talks about the direction FreeNAS is taking and explains how people can get involved and help out. For a look inside the FreeNAS project, especially from a
developer’s perspective, give the video a watch.

Setting Up Your First NAS with FreeNAS by Ben Milman

Ben Milman gave a talk at Linuxfest Northwest 2014 to a room full of people who were eager to learn. His talk covered installation, volumes, datasets, users, permissions, and shares with a demo and a short Q&A session afterwards. The slides and a recording of his presentation can be seen on the iXsystems blog. A recap of the event and pictures from Day 1 and Day 2 are also available online. Be sure to check it out if you’d like some pointers on the basics of setting up and configuring your first FreeNAS
system.

Upcoming Live Events

We’ll be at the following conferences. If you’re in the area, drop by and say “hi”!
May 13-15 – FOSE in Washington DC (booth 1130)
May 14-17 – BSDCan in Ottawa, ON, Canada
June 13-14 – Texas Linuxfest in Austin, TX
June 20-22 – Southeast Linuxfest in Charlotte, NC

Tech Tip #6

Build your storage pool for future capacity needs – getting it right the first time is easier and cheaper than starting over later.

Links of the Month

An Example of Front End Build (feat. Raspberry Pi) via DIY Tryin
Let’s Get RAID via BSD Now
FreeNAS Mini Unboxing Video via Gerard van Essen

Need a Job? We need people!

If you’ve been reading about all the great things we’ve been up to and thought to yourself, “Hmm, I wish I could be a part of that”, well…now you can be!
iXsystems, the company that sponsors FreeNAS, is looking for a few good developers to join our team. We offer competitive salaries, health benefits, stock options, 401k, and access to a fancy-schmancy coffee maker as some of the benefits. We’re a very prominent company in the world of FreeBSD; in fact,
we employ more FreeBSD developers per capita than anyone else you can think of.
Interested? The full job descriptions can be found here. If this sounds like your cup of double-shot espresso, email Jordan Hubbard at jkh@ixsystems.com with your resume. Cover letters appreciated but not required.

Send Us Your Content

Got a FreeNAS hardware build you’re proud of? Come up with a tech tip while tinkering around in the GUI? Have a link or picture you think we should see? As long as it’s not something you wouldn’t send to your boss, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at FNsubmissions@ixsystems.com. We’re always on the lookout for FreeNAS and storage related content to feature in the newsletter and on our social media channels.

Connect with Us

If you need help with your FreeNAS setup or would like to show off your configuration, share your plugins, or just talk with like-minded people, join the conversation on our community forums. For video tutorials, check out our YouTube channel.
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