[Tutorial] Installing MinimServer on FreeNAS or FreeBSD

[abooker]

I have been successfully running Minimserver 0.8.5.2 on FreeNAS for some time now thanks to Airflow's tutorial. With the introduction of Minimserver 2 though, I am now on borrowed time and so have been attempting a clean install of version 2 on FreeNAS.

The stumbling block seems to be Ohnet and the version compiled for BSD. The latest version available seems to be 1.17.2776.1 whereas Mininserver 2 is using 1.30.3937. The fix in the past when the correct version was not available was to rename the latest version of Ohnet to that used in Minimserver. This I have duly done and then replaced the Minimserver Linux version with it.

However, after starting Minimserver, it stops with a license error. The minimserver.log contains the following:

Code:

MinimServer 2.0.15 update 171, Copyright (c) 2012-2020 Simon Nash. All rights reserved.
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_252-b09)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.252-b09, mixed mode)
Platform default charset is UTF-8
System platform is linux-x64
Using platform default language English (en-US)
Current time is Sat Sep 12 15:58:47 BST 2020 in time zone Europe/Isle_of_Man
starting MinimServer[minimserver2]
License error 6a: 0ec47a740394
MinimServer error: now stopped, use 'restart' or 'exit'

Can anyone help? Is it that I am missing something obvious, or does the appropriate version of Ohnet need compiling for BSD?

[simoncn]

This error is not related to ohNet. As part of the license implementation, MinimServer 2 is issuing the command

cat /sys/class/net/*/address

Please try running this command on your FreeBSD system. If it is not working, this is the reason for the error message.

[airflow]

(12-09-2020 16:42)abooker Wrote:  Can anyone help? Is it that I am missing something obvious, or does the appropriate version of Ohnet need compiling for BSD?

I have not been aware yet that version 2 was already available for Unix. Thanks for bringing it to my attention - I will have a look at it.

Certainly I can and will compile the updated version ohnet for MinimServer 2. But as it seems, there is an underlying problem before I can do that. Simon pointed out that there is a certain command which has to succeed for the license implemention. As he already suspected, this fails on a FreeBSD-system:

Code:

root@build:/usr/local/share/ohNet-build4FreeBSD # cat /sys/class/net/*/address
cat: No match.

Simon, do you see a reasonable way to change this to another approach? Or add another method specifically for BSD-systems? What is the expected result here - a list of configured IP-adresses of the system? I then can try to find the corresponding command for BSD.

[simoncn]

If there is another command to show hardware MAC addresses (not IP addresses) for all active and inactive adapters that works on BSD as well as on all versions of Linux, I will look into changing the MinimServer code so that it uses that command.

Your other suggestion of adding code to MinimServer that is specific to BSD is a problem for me because I have no way to test this code or fix it if it there are any future problems.

[airflow]

(12-09-2020 22:11)simoncn Wrote:  If there is another command to show hardware MAC addresses (not IP addresses) for all active and inactive adapters that works on BSD as well as on all versions of Linux, I will look into changing the MinimServer code so that it uses that command.

Perhaps not the most elegant way, but what about

Code:

ifconfig -a | grep -ioE '([a-z0-9]{2}:){5}..'

[simoncn]

Unfortunately, Linux Docker containers do not have ifconfig. Also, some newer versions of Linux have replaced ifconfig with 'ip a'.

[abooker]

As a test, I created a couple of address files in the directory location minimserver is expecting to find the mac addresses and the Starter version now seems to start and function without issue:

Code:

a)    Obtain the two jail mac addresses:
ifconfig -a
b)    Create the following two 'address' files (and relevant directories if they don't exist) and add the corresponding mac address to each:
/sys/class/net/ether/address         (contains for example 0e:c4:7a:xx:xx:xx)
/sys/class/net/hwaddr/address          (contains for example 02:cc:01:x:xx:xx)

I will activate the trial license later and confirm whether it continues to work.

I hope I am not circumventing anything and that this is legitimate?

[abooker]

I have activated the trial license and can confirm that Minimserver 2 continues to work well on FreeNAS 11.3-U4.1

[simoncn]

Thanks, this is useful information.

[seanshankus]

I just came across Minim and this forum/thread. I'm running FreeNas 12.2 and am wondering how much variance i will find with this tutorial. I know i can set the version of a Jail backwards, but I think i will need to build the OHNet libraries, is this true? I'm not to afraid to do library builds, but i am a bit rusty (although seeing a Make files makes long for an earlier life). Is the library the only pitfall i might run into? I would think setting up the Jail, installing the Minim2 server would be fairly straight forward. so I think this library may be my only issue.

sean