FreeNAS

• FreeBSD
• NAS4Free
• ZFS

FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-distro that provides network sharing.

There are a few cavaets related to OS X clients and Samba.

FreeNAS won't create an Avahi service entry for Samba, so you will need to run one on another box. Here's what a service file would look like. Make sure to use port 445 and not the default 139.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<!-- See avahi.service(5) for more information about this configuration file -->
<service-group>
<!-- Customize this to get a different name for your server in the Finder. -->
<!-- <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h Gentoo AFP Server</name> -->
<name replace-wildcards="yes">nas</name>
<service>
<type>_device-info._tcp</type>
<port>0</port>
<!-- Customize this to get a different icon in the Finder. -->
<txt-record>model=PowerMac</txt-record>
<host-name>nas.local</host-name>
</service>
<service>
<type>_smb._tcp</type>
<port>445</port>
<host-name>nas.local</host-name>
</service>
</service-group>

When connecting to nas, add the user and password to Keychain, so that it can automatically connect. If you don't do that, you will get an error as it tries to reconnect as a guest.

I ran into a few issues when trying to add new users, and get them recognized in Samba. The workaround was to stop Samba, then add/edit a user, and start Samba.

When running off a USB, any changes you make to the filesystem will not be saved. Only the changes you make in the frontend are persistent.