

NAS Distribution Shootout: FreeNAS vs. NAS4Free - tesmar2
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/the-ars-nas-distribution-shootout-freenas-vs-nas4free/

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rahimnathwani
Has anyone here switched from either of these, to OpenMediaVault? It's Debian-
based, but didn't get much love when last posted on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6048534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6048534)

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euank
It appears to not support ZFS.

That's basically a no-go for me by itself.

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jonathankoren
Huh. I switched from FreeNAS to OpenMediaVault to avoid ZFS. The FreeNAS crowd
seems to have no interest in supporting SOHO setups and simple and effective
backups. When their SOHO offline backup solution is to build a second NAS,
instead of just support USB, I left and didn't look back. OpenMediaVault does
all the same things, but actually handles USB in a non-stupid manner, and has
a more friendly community.

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hengheng
I'm looking for something that lets me use my NAS as Wi-Fi accesspoint as
well. It's got double ethernet and USB WLAN, so it should be fine. Alas it's
not easy finding something that does both without setting everything up
manually. Can anyone help?

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mistertrotsky
You're probably not going to have a good time trying to use a USB WLAN dongle
as an access point. Even if you manage to track down a) if the driver supports
AP mode, and b) put together a whole hostapd configration, you're still
limited by the transmit power of the little thing, which I guarantee isn't a
lot. Another thing is that acting as an AP is a lot more taxing on a piece of
hardware than just acting as a client; there's a chance that the USB WLAN
thing will be extra flaky and maybe even overheat.

Instead... just get something that will run OpenWRT. Check out this list:
[http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start](http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start).
Running and configuring it at the command line is way more pleasant than you'd
expect, and the (optional) web GUI is functional if inconsistent.

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hengheng
I've worked with OpenWRT in the past (it's running at my parents' home, and
I've done some embedded development), but frankly I'd like to reduce the
amount of devices around me. If I can make my seldom-used linux pc my NAS
_and_ my Access Point, I'm fine. Transmit power shouldn't be a problem where I
live, it's just the software hassle that's keeping me from doing it.

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nasalgoat
I started with FreeNAS and switched to NAS4Free because of the poor hardware
support on the FreeNAS side - I couldn't get it to boot at all on a Dell R720.

