[GRLUG] NAS question

[Aaron M. Brummitt]

> I am working on trying to make a NAS out of a P3-933 w/512M.
>
> I have a pile of drives, a Promise Ultra100 and another controller that
> came with some maxtor drives that has dual sata and a pata port on it.
>
> I have been trying to find some lightweight distro that i can dedicate
> to this. i want to make it single use and the products out there seem weak.
>
> I tried FreeNas and FreeBsd seems to have issues with I815 Mobos.. as
> one guy said.. oh just turn off DMA in the bios ( i guess bsd will turn
> it back on later) but all it would do for me was panic on BTX load.
>
> anyone else tried this sort of thing with out making a full linux box
> running samba..
> Samba is the asnwer but the underlying OS is what i am trying to
> minimize.. i have been planning on installing it to a compact flash card
> and running it like DSL..
>
> I wasn't sure if anyone has seen a prebuilt thing like this vs. a role
> your own.
> Pizzabox was an option until i found they wanted 160$ for a license.
>
> thanks for any suggestions.
> -nick
>
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I personally haven't used it, but I have heard good things about
OpenFiler (http://www.openfiler.com).

>From their about page. (http://www.openfiler.com/about)

Openfiler is a powerful, intuitive browser-based network storage
software distribution. Openfiler delivers file-based Network Attached
Storage and block-based Storage Area Networking in a single framework.

Openfiler sits atop of CentOS Linux (which is derived from sources
freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise
Linux vendor). It is distributed as a stand-alone Linux distribution.
The entire software stack interfaces with third-party software that is
all open source.

File-based networking protocols supported by Openfiler include: NFS,
SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV and FTP. Network directories supported by
Openfiler include NIS, LDAP (with support for SMB/CIFS encrypted
passwords), Active Directory (in native and mixed modes) and Hesiod.
Authentication protocols include Kerberos 5.

Openfiler includes support for volume-based partitioning, iSCSI
(target and initiator), scheduled snapshots, resource quota, and a
single unified interface for share management which makes allocating
shares for various network file-system protocols a breeze.

/AMB