Navigation

22. FreeNAS® Support Resources

FreeNAS® has a large installation base and an active user community. This means that many usage questions have already been answered and the details are available on the Internet. If you get stuck using FreeNAS®, spend a few moments searching the Internet for the word FreeNAS with some key words that describe your error message or the function that you are trying to implement.

The rest of this section discusses the following resources which are available to FreeNAS® users:

22.1. Website and Social Media

The FreeNAS® website contains links to all of the available documentation, support, and social media resources. Major announcements are also posted to the main page.

Users are welcome to network on the FreeNAS® social media sites:

22.2. Forums

Another information source is the FreeNAS® Forums which contain user-contributed tips and guides which have been categorized, making it an ideal resource if you wish to learn more about a certain aspect of FreeNAS®. A searchbar is included should you wish to search by keyword; alternately, you can click a category to browse through the threads that exist for that topic.

The following categories are available under Forum Information:

  • Forum Guidelines: read this first before creating a forum post.
  • Announcements: subscribe to this forum if you wish to receive announcements about new FreeNAS® versions and features.

The following categories are available under Help and Support:

  • New to FreeNAS?: post here if you are new to FreeNAS® and are unsure which category best matches your question.
  • Feature Requests: for the discussion of upcoming features.
  • Bug Reporting: use this forum if you think you have found a bug in FreeNAS® and want to discuss it before creating a support ticket.
  • Hardware: for the discussion of hardware and tips for getting the most out of your hardware.
  • User Authentication: LDAP and Active Directory.
  • Sharing: AFP, CIFS, NFS, and iSCSI.
  • Storage: replication, snapshots, volumes, and ZFS.
  • Networking: networking hardware, performance, link aggregation, VLANs, DDNS, FTP, SNMP, SSH, and TFTP.
  • Installation: installing help or advice before performing the installation.
  • Plugins: provides a discussion area for creating and troubleshooting PBIs.

The following categories are available under Development:

  • FreeNAS: general development discussion.
  • nanobsd: the embedded operating system FreeNAS® is based upon.
  • Django: the web framework used by the FreeNAS® graphical administrative interface.
  • Dojo Toolkit: the javascript toolkit used to create widgets and handle client side processing.

The following categories are available under How-To Guides:

  • Hacking: undocumented tricks for getting the most out of your FreeNAS® system.
  • Installation: specific installation scenarios (hardware and/or software).
  • Configuration: specific configuration scenarios (e.g. software or client configuration).
  • Hardware: instructions for setting up specific hardware.
  • Useful Scripts: user-contributed scripts.

If you are looking for tips on how to test and increase the performance of your system, check out the Performance forum.

The following categories are available under Community Forum:

  • Off-topic: want to discuss something of interest to FreeNAS® users but which is not necessarily related to FreeNAS®? This is your place.
  • Resources: blogs, reviews, and other sources of FreeNAS® information not listed at freenas.org.
  • Introductions: FreeNAS® Community meet ‘n greet - introduce yourself and let us know who we are chatting with.

The following language-specific categories are available under International, allowing FreeNAS® users to interact with each other in their native language:

If you wish to ask a question on the forum, you will need to click the “Sign Up Now!” link to create an account and login using that account.

When asking a question on the forum, it is important that you:

  • First check to see if the question has already been asked. If you find a similar question, do not create a new thread. Instead use the “Reply” link at the bottom of the post to add your comments to the existing thread.
  • Review the available categories to see which one is most closely related to your question. Click on that category and use the “Post New Thread” button to open the editor. After typing your post and before you click the “Create Thread” button, make sure the “Watch this thread...” box is checked. If you want to be notified by email, also check the “and receive email notifications” box. That way you will be notified whenever anyone answers your question.

22.3. IRC

If you wish to ask a question in real time, you can try the #freenas channel on IRC Freenode. Depending upon the time of day and your time zone, a FreeNAS® developer or other FreeNAS® users may be available to assist you. If you do not get an answer right away, remain on the channel as other users tend to read the channel history in order to answer questions as they are able to.

Typically, an IRC client is used to access the #freenas IRC channel. Alternately, you can access the webchat version of the channel from a web browser.

To get the most out of the IRC channel, keep the following points in mind:

  • Do not ask “can anyone help me?”; instead, just ask your question. If someone knows the answer, they will try to assist you.
  • Do not ask a question and then leave. Users who know the answer can not help you if you disappear.
  • Do not take it personally if no one answers or demand that someone answers your question. Maybe no one who knows the answer is available, maybe your question is really hard, or maybe it is a question that has already been answered many times in the other support resources. Try asking again in a few hours or research the other resources to see if you have missed anything.
  • Do not post error messages in the channel as the IRC software will probably kick you out. Instead, use a pasting service such as pastebin and paste the resulting URL into the IRC discussion.

22.4. Mailing Lists

Several FreeNAS® mailing lists are available which allow users and developers to ask and answer questions related to the topic of the mailing list. To post an email to a list, you will need to subscribe to it first. Each mailing list is archived, allowing you to browse for information by date, thread name, or author.

The following mailing lists are available:

  • Freenas-announce: this is a low-volume, read-only list where major milestones, such as new releases, are announced.
  • Freenas-commit: this is a read-only list. As code changes in the FreeNAS® repository, the commit message is automatically sent to this list.
  • Freenas-devel: FreeNAS® developers are subscribed to this list. Technical questions about the current FreeNAS® release can be posted here.
  • Freenas-docs: this list is for discussion regarding FreeNAS® documentation.
  • Freenas-testing: FreeNAS® developers are subscribed to this list. Technical questions about the upcoming FreeNAS® release and feedback on testing snapshots can be posted here.
  • Freenas-translations: this list is for discussion regarding FreeNAS® localization and translating FreeNAS® documentation.

Note

the mailing lists were migrated from SourceForge to Mailman in December, 2013. Archives of the SourceForge mailing lists are available at Gmane.

22.6. Professional Support

In addition to the freely available community resources, iXsystems offers professional support packages. iXsystems’ development team works hard to improve new and current versions of FreeNAS®, providing them with the insight to provide expert FreeNAS® support and consultation services. Their Professional Services team can also configure your FreeNAS® hardware and software to deliver the highest levels of performance, stability, and security. See the iXsystems support page to request a quote.

Table Of Contents

Previous topic

21. Alert

Next topic

23. Command Line Utilities

This Page

Navigation

© Copyright 2011-2015, iXsystems.