FreeNAS is a task specific operating system designed to be used in Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. It’s built using FreeBSD as the underlying OS which lets it have some fairly low power hardware requirements. For example the Dell I used is an old Pentium 4 1.7 GHz with 512 MB of RAM and it runs like a charm, granted I don’t put a lot of demand on the box in the way of concurrent transfers or running processes. It’s worth mentioning that the recommended way to install FreeNAS is to install to, and boot from a USB thumb drive. This is the recommended method so it can save as much hard drive space for data storage, but even though it looked like I could boot from the thumb drive like a hard drive in the BIOS I had trouble getting it to boot so I installed the OS to the 160 GB hard drive with partitions for the OS and data. Here’s the parts list with some specifics after the jump.
Parts List:
- Old Dell Dimension 4400 – bought at university surplus sale, $5
- Various old IDE hard drives I had sitting around – two ~20 GB; one 160 GB, probably cost me something at some point…
- USB thumb drive – “borrowed” from family, free
Continue reading Setting up a FreeNAS Box Part 1: The Install
I upgraded my Linksys WRT54GL with the DD-WRT firmware a while ago and used it as a wireless bridge for internet access in my bedroom where there aren’t any ports (yet). I was using an old D-Link wireless router as the main router, but wanted the upgrade in functionality that DD-WRT provided. So I reset it back to “Factory” default and set it up as my main wireless router. This is mostly for my reference if needed later, but if it helps anyone who happens to stumble upon it later than even better. Continue reading My DD-WRT setup
I was wanting to get more use out of my current library of video games, as part of a personal justification to buy a new game system (why do I need an X-box 360 when I have a stack of games for my current systems that I haven’t even played though yet). So I’ve been slowly but surely making my way though some of the games that I already own with the intention of selling/trading them when I’ve finished. Now granted this approach doesn’t work for everyone; for example, I have a friend who plays through an older Zelda game about once a year, by his account, because he likes the story. I’m the kind of gamer that usually plays through games once and then I can be on to the next one. Video games that I keep around are more of the high re-playability games and group “party” games like, for me, the guitar hero series, Mario Kart, Wii Sports, etc… So I will make a page with this list that I will hopefully keep updated with my progress, but for now check below the fold for the current list of systems/games and where they all stand.
Continue reading Gaming with what you’ve got…
I’ve decided I’m going to take this site in a new direction. Instead of trying to strictly work on write ups for here I’m going to use this more as a kind of status report for my many ongoing projects that I always seem to be working on. I’m thinking that this will hopefully motivate me [...]
I like most people have quite a few music files laying around on various places on my hard drive, and not all of it is in what could be called the best “shape.” After doing some playing around trying to get things fixed up, I think the best solution that I’ve come across so far is [...]
There are a ton of good reasons to have your computer as a dual-monitor setup, there’s the added productivity of being able to have applications open in each monitor to work with at the same time. You could also have one monitor dedicated to goofing off, but we won’t tell the boss about that one… There also the fact that they are cool and get plenty of attention, if you’re like me you will have to explain almost daily how just because you have two monitors you don’t have two computers.
Continue reading Easy way to add a second monitor.
KeePass, along with KeePassX and KeePass Portable, is software that safely and securely stores username and password information. One big advantage of KeePass over lots of other methods of storing passwords is the ability to setup groups and subgroups of passwords along with keeping your password database encrypted using AES or Twofish encryption algorithms. So lets get started by going through how to set up and use a database as well as some useful options in the program.
Continue reading How-To use KeePass to Store Password and Other Sensitive Information
