FreeNAS 8

FreeNAS is a popular FreeBSD-based operating system for network-attached storage (NAS). Thanks to the easy-to-use web interface, you don’t have to know anything about the FreeBSD base under the hood to share your files…

Pros: FreeNAS is an advanced NAS operating system with an easy-to-use web interface, especially if you love to use ZFS as your filesystem.
Cons: Due to the complete rewrite, FreeNAS 8 has lost some interesting functionality for home users, and upgrades from a previous FreeNAS release are not possible.
FreeNAS home

FreeNAS supports sharing your files using FTP, NFS, CIFS (Samba), AFP, rsync, iSCSI, and so on, and it also offers software RAID (0,1,5). With many advanced features, including Oracle’s ZFS file system, it’s the perfect companion to store files for your Linux desktop computers in a central place. Moreover, FreeNAS has very low system requirements, as it needs only 128 MB of RAM. This makes it attractive to blow the dust off an old Pentium 2 or 3 PC, put a couple of hard drives in it and make it a NAS. Of course, for high performance the machine still needs enough RAM and CPU horsepower, especially if you want to use ZFS, which needs a minimum of 4 GB RAM to offer some decent performance.

The installer is very basic, but extremely quick

The FreeNAS installer is bare-bones, but it gets the job done. Essentially, you only have to select the medium where FreeNAS will be installed. Note that FreeNAS needs a full disk for its own, so you can’t store any data on this disk. Therefore, it’s recommended to use a small disk (such as a USB stick or a CompactFlash device) for the operating system and add bigger disks to store your data. Installation is extremely quick, and after FreeNAS has booted for the first time, it shows you a simple menu in the console to set up your network configuration if this hasn’t already happened automatically. If the machine has been assigned an IP address (as you’re probably using DHCP on your home network), it also shows you the URL to access the web interface. Log in into this web interface with the username admin and the password freenas.

The web interface gives access to a plethora of information and settings. By default, you’re seeing tabs for system information, settings and some usage graphs. By clicking on the icons at the top or on the left, other tabs will be opened. The configuration settings give access to some really advanced features. For instance, the network settings even allow VLANs and link aggregation, and the iSCSI part in the settings is extremely comprehensive, allowing FreeNAS to act like a storage area network (SAN). All this can be done with a few clicks.

The new web interface gives access to all advanced features without becoming bloated


The central part of the FreeNAS configuration can be found in the Storage tab. The focus is on ZFS features, but you can still create UFS volumes if you don’t need the advanced features of ZFS or if your hardware is underpowered. If you select more than one disk when creating a new volume, FreeNAS automatically asks you if you want to group them as a mirror or a stripe. After this, you can replicate your ZFS datasets to a remote system, you can manually create snapshots of your data, and you can even schedule automatic periodic snapshot tasks, so you can always restore a previous version of a file.

FreeNAS 8 is a complete re-write of FreeNAS: the previous release was 0.7, which was based on FreeBSD 7.2 but had an architecture that was not flexible and modular enough to add new features. When the core developer announced that this led him to abandoning FreeNAS, the company iXsystems stepped in and announced it would take on FreeNAS development and give it the long-awaited re-write. This finally makes FreeNAS 8 a future-proof NAS operating system, based on FreeBSD 8. However, in the short-term this has some disadvantages, and you can see this clearly in this release: some functionality that was present in the previous FreeNAS release, such as iTunes/DAAP, BitTorrent and UPnP, has been taken out, and they will later be added as plug-ins in the FreeNAS 8.1 release. Also, it’s currently not possible to upgrade a FreeNAS 0.7 installation to the latest release, but the 8.1 release will get a migration utility that imports configuration settings and data volumes.

Periodically create ZFS snapshots to be able to restore previous versions of your files

Verdict: 4/5
iXsystems has turned FreeNAS 8 into a modern, modular and future-proof NAS operating system. The new web interface is really easy-to-use without hiding the advanced features. Unfortunately some features didn’t make it through the re-write, but they are promised to reappear in FreeNAS 8.1. All in all, this makes FreeNAS currently the most advanced NAS operating system for home networks.

BackTrack 5 : Great Exploit and Penetration Testing Distro

There are certain tools when you are a security consultant that are just crucial to your job. No matter how good you are, these tools will make you a lot better.

In the past couple of years one of the security tools that has risen to this rank is called Backtrack. It is a Linux based operating system that comes pre installed with a numerous amount of security programs on it.

It doesn't matter if you are a beginner or an expert you will find several tools that are installed on it that will help you.

In the past few weeks the newest version of the Backtrack operating system, version 5, has been released. There are several new things that the people who have used this operating system will love about the new release. There are also things about this release that will excite people who are new to the operating system as well.

In the following article I will discuss the Backtrack operating system in more detail and I will show how you can use it on your own system to secure it.

More details about the Backtrack operating system

As I said earlier this is a Linux based operating system that comes equipped with tons of security software that you might need. But there is a little more to it than that.

First of all, the software is not only installed but also optimized for the system. You will not have to worry about configuring the software to work on your system correctly.

The Linux installation that it is based on is known as Ubuntu. Ubuntu is known as being a very user friendly operating system. The installation also has several different UI configurations that you can use to get started. There is the gnome desktop interface and KDE interface.

If you are a new user then you might want to go with the Gnome interface since some people seem to think that it is easier. More advanced users might want to try the KDE version of the operating system. It gives you more options to configure the system.

There are several different aspects of the Backtrack operating system that allow it to be the tool of choice for security professionals. One of these is the amount of different categories of security that the operating system maintains software for.

These categories include information gathering, network mapping, vulnerability identification, web application analysis, Digital forensics, reverse engineering, and basic penetration.

So as you can see, no matter which part of the computer security field that you work in the Backtrack operating system should have you covered.

What is added with the number 5 version of Backtrack

When you install backtrack version number 5 you will find several things that are different compared to previous versions. The first thing that is different is that both KDE and the Gnome interface have been updated to the latest version.

Also you will find that the latest version of the Backtrack operating system is able to be installed in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors. More and more computers are now 64 bit and Backtrack has upgraded to reflect that reality.

Another aspect of the new version of the Backtrack operating system is the fact that all of the software that came with it before has now been updated. The whole purpose of this operating system is to allow you to use the software that you need without any configuration.

If you have to keep track of the updates of these pieces of software then that would defeat the whole purpose. Instead the Backtrack operating system will update them for you every time there is a new version that is available.

Of course, if you want the newest version of the software you can install it yourself but with this system it is not necessary.

But it is not only the software that you use directly that has been updated. It is the software that is behind the scenes that has been updated as well. The drivers that you will need to use the Linux based system have been updated to the newest versions, especially the wireless drivers.

In the past, the Backtrack operating system has had a problem with drivers for different wireless cards that were installed on the user's computer. While this problem hasn't gone away completely you will find that it is a much easier situation to deal with. There are more wireless drivers included in the installation than ever before.

In this digital age, security is a concern since there’s the presence of hackers in the web. I guess its timely enough forBacktrack 5 (BT 5) or better known as “Revolution” to be released (just a few days ago).

Backtrack as we know is a Linux-based security distribution group which assists security professionals in assessing purely native environments dedicated to hacking. It’s also based on the Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu (version 10.04 or Lucid Linux) and utilizes the 2.6.38 Linux Kernel.

According to its developers, the software was built from scratch and improvements were added during the process. In addition, it has already been tested on both Motorola Atrix 4G and Xoom tablet device (functionality of the latest versionof ARM was tested).

If you’d been asking how BT 5 works, the answer is that it has a number of testing tools that both user and administrator can use. Currently, there are over 300 penetration-testing tools in BT 5 that comes handy in terms of testing items from web applications to RFID systems. Some of these tools are LAN and WLAN sniffers, password crackers, vulnerability scanners and the Metasploit exploit framework.

For those who are interested on BT 5, it’s already available for download on the software’s website.

For SAP Basis like me, there is great tools on this Backtrack 5 release which is SAP Exploit tools. Have a nice testing.

In conclusion

You will find that if you are a computer security consultant that there is no better tool to use than Backtrack. It has all of your favorite tools in one place ready for you to use.

If you own a company that has to store important data then it is vital for you to have a tool like this. That way your security people can be sure that they are testing your network with the same tools that the bad guys are using.