Install and Setup Truenas Core: Mastodon
Install and Setup Truenas Core: Mastodon
https://www.youtube.com/embed/E-wQwC4bDgc
We'll be taking a small series adventure into the world of TrueNAS. I'll be starting with TrueNAS
core (formerly FreeNAS). If you've never heard of TrueNAS(or FreeNAS), then let me explain a bit.
Truenas is a self hosted Network Attached Storage solution. It is based on BSD Unix (I know the
BSD folks will hate that I included Unix in there, but it's simply for a bit more clarity).
TrueNAS has been around for years, and in it's BSD form provides an extremely powerful, and very
stable NAS platform. If you have been looking for a good way to consolidate your data and
storage, then this may just be a free, open source, self hosted project you'll love.
When I first started looking at NAS storage wayyyyyy back in 2012 and 2013, most systems were
massively expensive, closed source, and required you to buy very expensive hard drives that were
all perfect size matches and the same make, model, spindle speed, and so on. Something not
Then, along came FreeNAS (now known as TrueNAS Core). FreeNAS, while still having fairly high
RAM requirements was something attainable, allowed you to bring your own hard drives of varying
sizes, and actually use them to their fullest potential by incorporating ZFS for the RAID storage
solution. Don't worry, you don't need to know too much about ZFS these days to use TrueNAS
Today, let's get through the install and some basic setup of TrueNAS Core, then we can get into
Etcher. Feel free to use whatever software or method you prefer to get the Image to an run-able
Next, plug in your drive to your preferred machine, and boot it up. You'll need to know what
hotkey to use to get to your system's boot menu. On my machine it was F11, but it can be F9, F10,
ONce you get to the boot menu, select your flash device. In my case it was a Sandisk Cruzer Blade.
I chose the regular boot (bios) option. There will be a UEFI option as well if you prefer using UEFI,
Once you start the boot process, it will take anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute or so, then
you'll be prompted with an option list. This is where the install starts. You'll have four options, so
1. Install / Upgrade
2. Shell
3. Reboot System
4. Shutdown System
Next, it's going to identify your hard drives, so be cautious and choose the drive you intend to
install it on. Make sure it's hhighlighted, then press SPACE to put an * next to it, and then ENTER to
Next, you'll be asked to Upgrade or Install, so choose Install, then press ENTER.
After that, you'll be asked if you want to Install in a new boot environment (new partition), or
Format the Boot Device. You need to select Format the Boot Device.
WARNING!!!!! This will completely erase all existing data from this device. So make sure you
Enter a root user password two times. Then tab to "Ok", and press ENTER.
Now, select how you want to boot. If you prefer to boot UEFI, then select that, otherwise select
Finally, depending on the size drive you are using for the operating system, choose whether you
want Swap space. I suggest swap if you are using a large enough SSD (greather than 128 GB).
Now press ENTER one last time, and the OS will begin to install.
When it's been completely installed, you'll be prompted to reboot and remove the install media
(flash drive).
I also cover creating a storage pool (1 or multiple disks) and the basic options of the pool creation.
Finally, I create a couple of data segments in the pools, and create a couple of users that I then
give permissions to those shares so that they can store data on those shares.
I highly recommend watching those portions of the video, even if you skip the overview of the
settings.
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