Yes, I like Snapraid under OpenMediaVault quite a bit myself. I agreed there are other options, but Unraid and FreeNAS are the two bigshots.
So I do have a question, and ironically its probably the least technical question I can ask.
How do you actually find/buy media outside of buying DVDs or downloading them illegally.
Everyone keeps saying that you can store media on a media server. Wellllll thats great and all, but I own 2 dvds and all of my music is taken care of on a separate dedicated system.
So what good is a media server compared to hulu, netflix, amazon, etc.
If I use a media server, can I stay current with popular shows? How would I do that?
If the history channel has a random special documentary, how could I get it. Same goes for the discovery and travel channel.
I feel like so many people have cut the cord, but I haven’t seen any evidence that there is a legitimate way to get the same content on a personal media device.
Am I missing something. Am I just a special case that still needs to be patient as technology and media cooperations catch up. Or has there been a solution this whole time that has been smacking me in the face?
Does anything other than FreeNAS on that list use ZFS? If I were going to build a dedicated storage server, I would want it have ZFS.
Won’t FreeNAS as well? Their minimum requirements talk about 8 GiB of RAM, but you can find people talking about a working FreeNAS with only 2 GiB of RAM, with some in the comments saying they run ZFS with only 1 GiB of RAM.
I can’t find the actual minimum requirements for Unraid, but maybe they are also more than is actually needed?
Have you looked at MythTV for recording over the air TV station broadcasts?
It won’t help you with History Channel and other Cable-specific content, but it could help fill in the gaps.
@ryan @kreestuh at 9:25 you make a RAID 0 logical drive in the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays (ORCA) program; won’t this prevent ZFS from talking directly to the drive?
Me trying to find out more about this controller, “HP Smart Array P410” and its software:
- Controller support page at HPE
- Configuring Arrays on HP Smart Array Controllers - Reference Guide (pdf)
By the way, if find broken links in HP documentation, try changing the domain from hp.com to hpe.com in the URL.
As much as I like the video and the idea, it already has some massive disadvantages for an average geek. IMHO
Firstly, the lowest common denominator. You seemed to have started with a great premise of “it will run on RPi” but immediately jumped to a server. Massive, loud, power hungry, needs a wired connection. Pretty much a no no for an apartment dweller. Here is one thing that most people already have - an old laptop! Small, mostly quiet, power efficient, has built in wireless and doesn’t need to be stored in a basement. With some trickery you could mount it to the back of your TV. The biggest disadvantage of this approach that I see is extra HDD space, but that can be addressed as well. It is also a much better deal if your friends or family are looking for one of these solutions and you are willing to become their tech support slave.
Next, redundancy. It is really no crucial for media content to have a backup, but it is important for a general file storage/backup from other devices. Hope this will be addressed in future videos.
Lastly, it would be nice to see a low budget RPi or old desktop version of this build in parallel. I know it is some extra work, but it would be a much more “down to the ground” approach for general public.
Not hating, keep it. Hope this was constructive.
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While what you’re saying is perfectly valid, keep in mind this is a “how to build a media server” video/series, not a “how to build a bullet proof backup solution”, so not going with redundancy is - as you stated - perfectly reasonable.
Another thing that came to my mind though… How is FreeNAS (or ZFS in general I guess) handling differently sized volumes now? Last time you did a NAS series it was all “you need equally sized drives or the world is going to end”, but the video clearly shows non-equal drives.
Does that work properly now? Or does it just discard the remaining free space? It’s one of the reasons why I had doubts about FreeNAS as well.
I noticed, that in the browser’s address bar it says “freenas”. How does that work ?
add a dns entry in your local router or dns server that maps the local 192.168 ip to whatever name you like. way easier to deal with lot of devices on your network
your tv can be
teevee.yourhouse.local
Didn’t know you can do that with a router.
True, but Kreestuh also expresses a wish to backup some old photos in the video and Wendell talks about it as a gateway drug for other purposes. That’s why I mentioned it.
I liked the video but I didn’t really learn anything new. It went too fast. The software config was practically skipped so if I was building a media server this video wouldn’t help me.
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Routers are usually already doing something like that with router or modem even if they don’t tell you.
@wendell won’t .local interfere with Zeroconf/Bonjour/mDNS?
In what way? Maybe a name collision? But normally that stuff happens after DNS lookup fails
I record OTA broadcasts using Plex DVR and a HDHomerun, personally. And, like, you can buy and rip your own Blu-rays too!
Obviously piracy is a big incentive to build a home NAS, and I imagine that is why many people do it. That’s the elephant in the room nobody talks about on legitimate sites.
Im betting they either created separate pools or they created each disk in its own vdev
Wikipedia talks about it being reserved in RFC 6762, and some sort of issue with Windows as well as Linux systems resolving via mDNS before normal DNS.
Oh lol, Macs. Yeah, that’s I suppose an issue but internet registered internal domains leak information . In practice it works fine as long as there are no name collisions . Could substitute .internal for .local I guess if you wanted to be extra safe.
The docs waffle on whether or not it is a good idea but that stems from Macs wanting to look up .local with non dns technologies .
Hilariously without DNS freenas will work in a lot of cases as that will resolve over netbios/broadcasts lulz