Photo and video management like iPhoto

[Gene Arnold]

Hello FreeNAS world! Folks, I'm super brand new to the FreeNAS product. I'm currently trying very hard to replace local storage of my videos and photos from my laptop onto a NAS. FreeNAS sounds wonderful with all it's functionality and I'm excited to use it! I realize that there is a Plex plugin for FreeNAS but is that really like an iPhoto app to manage media? I think that is more for offering up media to share. What I need is a tool that will allow me to organize all my photos and videos. Tagging, GEO, face detection and things like that. I just want to make sure FreeNAS will handle what my goals are before I go head strong into it. Is there such a plugin for FreeNAS or should I be looking for a local app installed on my laptop that simply stores it's data onto FreeNAS? Thank you very much!

 

[pirateghost]

Freenas simply stores the files. Plex is nothing at all like iPhoto. You should be looking for an app for your computer, not freenas for managing photos

 

[Mirfster]

s there such a plugin for FreeNAS or should I be looking for a local app installed on my laptop that simply stores it's data onto FreeNAS?

Yep, application installed on your laptop which has a drive/share mapped to the stored data on FreeNas would be the recommended path.

Welcome, btw... :D

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

One option would be simply to move your iPhoto Library or Photos Library to your NAS.

 

[Gene Arnold]

Ok, thank you all. This is kind of what I was expecting to hear but wanted to confirm

 

[Robert76]

I think it is worth to refresh the topic after several months as I'm also looking for such solution but putting Photos Library (no matter what kind of) on NAS and keeping client application managing them is really very limited solution... why?

Let's see my goal is the ability to view my pictures from any device (TV, Laptop, computer, phone, tablet etc...) and any location (home/outside) and I'm keeping my photos and Library data (metadata) of PhotoShop Lightroom or Iphoto on NAS (e.g. FreeNAS)

However I can access my photos from any device and location on the condition I have access to NAS, the way I see photos depends fully on the client, I will not install iPhoto on Android device and Lightroom on TV etc.....

When comes to managing media like movies, TV shows, music plex is partially solving this as plex client works almost on everything, but the drawback is that management of photos is far away of what Lightroom and iPhoto can do and how it can present it...

So the question is whether there is any plugin or application that can be installed in jail that allows manage photos in sophisticated way... and present on any device.... could be also web application...

I did not check OwnCloud and NextCloud yet but I expect that thay have some interface for photos library, just do not know whether is is closer to plex or iPhoto capabilities.... but maybe there is something much more photos oriented solution I'm not aware of....

 

[Robert76]

what comes to my mind is Kodi client, but not working on all platforms and also management of photos is very limited in comparision to Loghtroom or iPhoto........ so at least in theory more limited than plex....

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You want Nextcloud ;)

I just finished a production installation in a VM in FreeNAS 11.1, you might want to consider using an iocage jail instead for less overhead. Anyway the product (Nextcloud) works great.

There's a FreeBSD port that installs almost all the necessary bits. You should have some experience in system administration to get it production ready. E.g. I use it with a reverse proxy for my single public IPv4 address and letsencrypt certificates for HTTPS, so I can run different applications in separate VMs on a shared address.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[icsy7867]

I use two products for my personal audio/video needs.

I use nextcloud in combination with Emby. I had to ditch plex due to some issues with Plex not working and I could not get them resolved.

In any case, I use NextCloud (Fork from Owncloud). I also use the App to automatically upload my person videos to a personal video SMB storage on Freenas. My Emby server also has a personal photo/video libraries that pulls from these directories so everything gets sent to Freenas through Nextcloud and gets backed up. So if I want to watch something I stream it through Emby, but the actually uploading is using NextCloud as a proxy.

I also recommend against the plugins. They actually do an okay job, but if you know your way through a bash terminal,you should setup Owncloud/Nextcloud/Plex/Emby manually. They are a little easier to customize this way and typically receive updates quicker.

As long as you have a public IPv4 or IPv6 address (Although ipv6 in my freenas jails has been a little wonky),you can set these up to be accessible from anywhere. I am not sure if plex, emby or nextcloud does geo-tagging, you will have to look into that.

 

[Robert76]

Thanks for answers, Actually for now I see plex is the best choice on the condition that one invest on plex paass which gives more features...

Definitely I'm going to give a chance to Nextcloud next days, so would be nice you point me to some manual better than offical Nextcloud documentation....

Especially I would like to hear from Patrick how it is done, step by step instruction would be more than great...

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

@Robert76, are you comfortable with system administration tasks using ssh and just a text editor?

Because if not, my step by step instructions won't be of much use ;)

Rough outline:

• create bhyve VM with 4 GB or RAM, a NIC and a disk device, add ISO image of FreeBSD 11.1 install CD
• boot, install FreeBSD
• setup IP, routing, DNS, NTP
• pkg install nextcloud
  
• pkg install mysql56-server nginx dehydrated redis pecl-redis
  
• enable nginx, mysql, redis
• configure nginx, leave out SSL for now, instructions here: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/12/admin_manual/installation/nginx.html
• create e.g. /var/nextcloud to use as the data directory
• cerate ZFS dataset outside of VM in FreeNAS, share via NFS
• NFS mount that dataset on /var/nextcloud
• create database and database user
• run Nextcloud configuration wizard
• configure your home router to forward 80 and 443 to your nextcloud VM
• setup DNS so the cloud is reachable under a friendly name
• setup dehydrated and generate certificate
  
• reconfigure nginx with SSL, restart
• enjoy :)

Took me a Sunday afternoon to implement this (my job is systems administration) - would take me at least twice the time to do a write up ...

Patrick

 

[Robert76]

@Robert76, are you comfortable with system administration tasks using ssh and just a text editor?

Because if not, my step by step instructions won't be of much use ;)

Rough outline:

• create bhyve VM with 4 GB or RAM, a NIC and a disk device, add ISO image of FreeBSD 11.1 install CD
• boot, install FreeBSD
• setup IP, routing, DNS, NTP
• pkg install nextcloud
  
• pkg install mysql56-server nginx dehydrated redis pecl-redis
  
• enable nginx, mysql, redis
• configure nginx, leave out SSL for now, instructions here: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/12/admin_manual/installation/nginx.html
• create e.g. /var/nextcloud to use as the data directory
• cerate ZFS dataset outside of VM in FreeNAS, share via NFS
• NFS mount that dataset on /var/nextcloud
• create database and database user
• run Nextcloud configuration wizard
• configure your home router to forward 80 and 443 to your nextcloud VM
• setup DNS so the cloud is reachable under a friendly name
• setup dehydrated and generate certificate
  
• reconfigure nginx with SSL, restart
• enjoy :)

Took me a Sunday afternoon to implement this (my job is systems administration) - would take me at least twice the time to do a write up ...

Patrick

thanks a lot Patrick, no issue with coding/scripting, I will follow your guide definitely and let you know how it went....

Wysłane z mojego EVA-L09 przy użyciu Tapatalka

 

[adrianwi]

Would it not be easier to set this up in a jail rather than a FreeBSD VM?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Possibly. I'm currently using VMs for everything. There were no jails in Corral, the old Warden based jail system is doomed and iocage while we use in production for our hosting still has some way to go for my needs. Examples:

• no /dev/bpf, so no way to run a DHCP server in a jail
• no IPv6 autoconfiguration
• no resource limits
• ...

I currently run these VMs on my FreeNAS:

• DHCP, DNS, reverse-proxy with SSL
• MineOS for junior
• Nextcloud for our world-wide scattered family and friends
• Atlassian Confluence on Ubuntu for a not-for-profit org I preside
• Windows once a year for the tax declaration ;)

Kind regards,
Patrick

 

[adrianwi]

My approach tends to be 'if I can run it in a jail, I will' so have DNS, reverse-proxy with SSL, ownCloud, emby, Calibre, WordPress, OpenVPN and more running in Jails with a couple of VMs running CentOS/CrashPlan and Ubuntu/OnlyOffice and others I can spin up to play with stuff.

No wrong way to do it, but I suspect a Jail is a little more lightweight than a full VM.

 

[nightshade00013]

Same, almost everything runs in jails except for one VM and it is only that way as I wanted to GamePanelX and see if it was something I would like using for some personal gameservers and I could not get it to work correctly in a jail.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

No wrong way to do it, but I suspect a Jail is a little more lightweight than a full VM.

Of course it is. That's why we base our hosting on jails:
https://youtu.be/o8njS6lk5yE

The FreeNAS is just my private server. Corral did not have jails and now I keep the VMs because I can ;) Waiting for the dust around the new UI and iocage to settle ...

Kind regards,
Patrick

 

[Evertb1]

I am using FreeNAS for a while now. And mostly for its intended use: storage. And for that it is doing a great job. However, at a certain point I needed functionality that was a bit beyond what FreeNAS can offer. Some of the software products I want to use are only available for the Windows platform. I am a home user and one server running 24/7 is about enough in my household. So I decided to convert my FreeNAS box in to an all-in-one server with ESXi. I am in the process of doing that. So I will run FreeNAS, Windows and Linux on VM's. Running FreeNAS on a VM is generally not advised but there are actually some good experiences with that on ESXi. As always it comes with some costs. I needed to buy some extra hardware (like a SLOG, more memory etc.) but it was not to bad. I was able to find some things second hand for a small price.

 

[Robert76]

I am using FreeNAS for a while now. And mostly for its intended use: storage. And for that it is doing a great job. However, at a certain point I needed functionality that was a bit beyond what FreeNAS can offer. Some of the software products I want to use are only available for the Windows platform. I am a home user and one server running 24/7 is about enough in my household. So I decided to convert my FreeNAS box in to an all-in-one server with ESXi. I am in the process of doing that. So I will run FreeNAS, Windows and Linux on VM's. Running FreeNAS on a VM is generally not advised but there are actually some good experiences with that on ESXi. As always it comes with some costs. I needed to buy some extra hardware (like a SLOG, more memory etc.) but it was not to bad. I was able to find some things second hand for a small price.

Why just not install windows and Linux on 2 FreeNAS vms????

Wysłane z mojego EVA-L09 przy użyciu Tapatalka

 

[Evertb1]

Why just not install windows and Linux on 2 FreeNAS vms????

Wysłane z mojego EVA-L09 przy użyciu Tapatalka

I have already played around with plugins and jails on FreeNAS (Plex) and was not 100% satisfied. I also need a Windows server (or Workstation acting as a server) for running specific software. And a Windows VM on FreeNAS is not a good idea at the moment. I am advised by several sources within the FreeNAS community that Bhyve is not reliable at running Windows VM's. I trust those sources and have no need for experiments. And as I am already making use of ESXi VM's at my work (with pleasure I can say) it was not a hard decision for me to choose for ESXi. It is a bit involved, but well within my capabilities (with a little help of course :) )But that is just it. The only use case that counts is your use case.