FREENAS+XBMC

paradisiac · 20 Nov 2012 at 07:36

hey, thinking about installing freenas on a spare pc and using it for storage only (not bothered about backups at the moment). sharing on a home network seems pretty straight forward, and setting up SFTP doesn't seem to hard either from the tutorials. my question is, using no-ip, is there any way to share the hard drives/data remotely, so I can access music/pics using xmbc (or similar) whilst not on my local network? like drive mapping I guess, but using the no-ip address not the local ip address.

or failing that, would there be any way to do this in windows 8 (saves me having to install freenas then)?

ASE001 · 20 Nov 2012 at 08:13

You need to use NAS4FREE or FREENAS 7.x, FREENAS 8.x doesn't support uPnP which is needed for smart TV's streamining etc.

Not sure about XBMC how
you connect to media, I use MediaPortal which you just connect a networked mapped drive to access stored media. All versions of FREENAS support SMB (networked drives/shares).

I stream HD and SD content to my LG TV, PS3 and various other devices.
It's very easy to setup and there are plenty of YouTube tuturials.

paradisiac · 20 Nov 2012 at 09:42

yeh but that's for local only, I want to be able to have the drives mapped when I leave the house too.
have tried Hamachi, which is ok, but seems limited on security.

Uhtred · 20 Nov 2012 at 09:55

You can use Freenas 8, XBMC can simply mount a windows share or even NFS.

paradisiac · 20 Nov 2012 at 09:59

Uhtred said:
You can use Freenas 8, XBMC can simply mount a windows share or even NFS.

even over the internet?

ASE001 · 20 Nov 2012 at 17:34

paradisiac said:
even over the internet?

I'm bit out of my depth with this as I'm still researching, I'm looking to set something up to access shares over the internet. The method at the top of my list is to use pfsense (which I'm using as firewall) and set it up as a VPN server (youtube tutorials available). Then when I'm away I just open a VPN connection to my home network. I should then be able to access all my networked drives, NAS etc. The only issue is that your IP assigned to your router by your ISP does not change, in my case if I leave my router on all the time, so the IP never changes (Virginmedia).

paradisiac · 20 Nov 2012 at 18:35

ASE001 said:
I'm bit out of my depth with this as I'm still researching, I'm looking to set something up to access shares over the internet. The method at the top of my list is to use pfsense (which I'm using as firewall) and set it up as a VPN server (youtube tutorials available). Then when I'm away I just open a VPN connection to my home network. I should then be able to access all my networked drives, NAS etc. The only issue is that your IP assigned to your router by your ISP does not change, in my case if I leave my router on all the time, so the IP never changes (Virginmedia).

I have no-ip for this (although im not sure if it will run with FREENAS), im thinking it might be easier to just go back to using WHS2011

droyden · 20 Nov 2012 at 18:56

You can setup a VPN server to access stuff remotely, but the issue is upload speeds.

paradisiac · 20 Nov 2012 at 19:17

droyden said:
You can setup a VPN server to access stuff remotely, but the issue is upload speeds.

yeh, I don't really want to stream stuff, just have access to it really. im thinking WHS2011 is going to be the simplist option.

beavis · 21 Nov 2012 at 10:34

PlexMediaServer is worth a look if you want streaming.