View Single Post
Unread 06-23-2009, 11:41 AM   #1
micr0
Cooling Neophyte
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Sacramento
Posts: 8
Default FreeNAS on Snap Server 110 / 210

I thought I should start out by saying that I had been lurking within these forums for a couple of days and came to the conclusion that without another Snap Server unit on hand, I won’t success in reimaging my unit.

I had acquired a Snap Server 210 as a form of payment for a favor in doing some computer work and didn’t think that without any drives, this unit would have been almost useless to me. From what all the wiki and post about the GuardianOS, it seems like there’s no way around the whole ‘reimaging’ process.

So just last night, I completely striped the unit down to the board. Apparently, this board is used in both the Snap Server 110 and 210. What I also notice was there were two jumpers on the board. One closes to the bios battery and a second one closes to the SATA connectors.

Before all of this, I read that some of folks on here had success in installing FreeNAS on there units, but not particular on these units. I proceed to put an unused harddrive in my system and installed FreeNAS. I also configured FreeNAS with a static IP that I would know I should hit.

I took the harddrive out and popped in the Snap Server and seeing if this had any affect. Gave it a minute, pinged the unit and also ran an IP scanner just for the heck of it, nothing. It was about this moment that I saw the jumpers and wonder would happen if I pulled one of them off.

Judging from the jumper closes to the bios battery was most likely a CMOS reset, I pulled the one closes to the SATA connectors. It was from this point that the magic started to happen. The harddrive status light started to blink and there were additional LED lights close to the bios that also started to flash like status lights. (I’m not sure what the leds by the bios are indicating, but it seems like they could be used for debugging of some sort).

After a minute or two, I pinged the IP and used my IP scanner. Apparently I started to get some feed back. I opened up Firefox and ‘bam’, there it was, FreeNAS config screen with all it’s glory. Apparently I had found some sort of way for these units to act almost like mini computers and just boot directly in the hard drive.

For those with these units (Snap Server 110 / 210) and don’t have drives or images, this is a work around to having the GuardianOS.
micr0 is offline   Reply With Quote