Hy guys!
I've been trying to get into freenas and all that stuff, thanks to the guys on the channel and I've started to understand a little bit of the stuff.
I've been using synology units for a while and as you know they're not bad (214+) but are not exactly powerful. I wanted to build a proper freenas machine and I've been playing with an old pc for a while, but its hardware is really to old to cope with anything but simple NAS work, and what I really want is a private hosted cloud and a plex server all in one, plus the nas drive thing.
I've been diggin around a lot on the net and I can't seem to find ANYONE telling how's the experience of runnig owncloud in freenas, either with the plugin or manually installed in a jail, using it with android and pc clients. The synology OS is not as versatile and it's linked to horrible hardware, I'd really like to switch, but that would mean buying 'new' hardware and so on so I'd like to info before committing.
SO, does any of you run OWNCLOUD and PLEX on your freenas pc? How does it work? Do you find that it is as simple as dropbox for the end user? How is it on mobile?
Thanks!
I just started using ownCloud on FreeNAS. I've been running a FreeNAS box for about 2 years. The specs are in my profile. The best place to get advice on it is the FreeNAS Community forum ( http://forums.freenas.org/). There are tonnes of people there that can give advice. You have several choice to choose from. The plugin version uses Apache 24 and sqlite. I used that at first and it was pretty easy to secure with SSL but Apache is really resouce heavy for what I use it for so I did a custom install with a standard jail using Lighttpd as the web server instead of Apache. I used DrKK's guide and his video on YouTube for this, but it's important to read through the entire thread first because some things have changed since the guide was done. If you install the ownCloud app on a pc, it works just like dropbox. You only need to take the proper steps to harden the web server. There's also a guide for installing owncloud with NGINX, PHP-FPM, and MySQL if you want a more robust installation that can handle syncing to multiple machines with large amounts of files. I haven't used the mobile app so I can't comment on it. The app only has 2 star rating in the apple app store. Maybe it's better on android but I'm not sure.
I've been using PLEX for several years, even before I had a FreeNAS box. I've stuck with it because it is updated often on FreeNAS and its has a pretty simple interface so I've had little reason to try another media server. It scans the library and picks up changes pretty quickly with few mismatches. The only problem that I've had recently is that a small number of files tend to buffer a lot during play back and I haven't figured out the bottleneck net yet.
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THANK YOU!
I read DrKK guide, but I really wanted to know if the plugin was good enough. I've noticed the bad reviews for the app, I've also found an alternative on the play store.
Thank you again for your feedback!
I haven't had any problems with the custom installation. I still have both the plugin and custom setup installed because I wanted to test both. I updated the plugin recently and it wiped out all my security settings so that's something to be aware of if you plan on using the plugin and opening it up to the internet. I didn't feel like going back through it again so I turned it off for now. Of course, you don't have to worry about that stuff if you install OpenVPN and use it to access FreeNAS when you aren't on your local network. The custom installation was pretty simple to update. Owncloud and lighttpd have to be updated separately and it's better to do it from CLI. The owncloud web GUI will tell you that an update is available but I got tons of permission errors when I tried to update through the GUI. Worked perfectly from CLI though.
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Fantastic! I'll give it a try with the older hardware, if I get it to work, I'll build a proper nas.
Thanks!