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FreeNAS 0.8 to Switch to Linux; Bye Bye FreeBSD

21 November 2009 2 Comments

FreeNAS Disk ManagementHarryd has blogged about the future of FreeNAS and it looks like the future is Linux not FreeBSD.

Harrdy has gleaned this information from this forum thread

In short… FreeNAS 0.8 will be based on Debian GNU/Linux! Volker (the core developer) started an intermediate project called CoreNAS. FreeNAS 0.8 will be based on that.

Here is a short list of pros by Volker:

  • Text and graphical installer that can be customized. This means no hand written install scripts anymore which causes some problems in FreeNAS
  • WOL works in Linux
  • lmsensor – A WORKING sensor framework which is a really needed feature in FreeNAS to check the CPU/MB temps and fan speeds
  • Better Samba performance
  • Ability to implement HA features
  • System can be updated via ‘apt-get’ or any other deb package manager
  • Better driver support
  • Maybe ‘ZFS’ over FUSE (there is already one commercial product available that uses this feature)
  • NFS4

ZFS
The really big problem is ZFS… If it is Linux under the hood or FreeBSD it really doesn’t make that much different to the end user, but and it is a big but, Linux doesn’t have (and can’t have due to licensing issues) ZFS and really running ZFS under FUSE is not a real option.

Is it time for someone else to take up the development of FreeNAS where 0.7 and Volker left off?

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2 Comments »

  • mato said:

    hi,
    i see there are some issues but they might not be that big, at least not big enough to justify the switch. there are already a couple of installers in bsd world that could be customised. there is a working sensor framework in openbsd and it was already ported to freebsd, though not officially. samba’s getting better, though it’s still not optimal. i’m not sure what is meant by HA here. updates are easy in all bsds, even in distros like pc-bsd. sure, there are always less drivers than in linux but usually in multimedia domain which shouldn’t be an issue here. zfs is stable, performant and production quality. the same goes for nfs4 which is shiny new (rewritten) in freebsd 8.0.
    m.

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