Settings

The System → Settings tab, shown in Figure 4.7a, contains 4 tabs: General, Advanced, Email, and SSL.

General Tab

Figure 4.7a: General Tab of Settings

Table 4.7a summarizes the settings that can be configured using the General tab:

Table 4.7a: General Tab's Configuration Settings

Setting	Value	Description
Protocol	drop-down menu	protocol to use when connecting to the administrative GUI from a browser; if you change the default of HTTP to HTTPS, an unsigned certificate and RSA key will be generated and you will be logged out in order to accept the certificate
WebGUI IPv4 Address	drop-down menu	choose from a list of recent IP addresses to limit the one to use when accessing the administrative GUI; the built-in HTTP server will automatically bind to the wildcard address of 0.0.0.0 (any address) and will issue an alert if the specified address becomes unavailable
WebGUI IPv6 Address	drop-down menu
WebGUI Port	integer	allows you to configure a non-standard port for accessing the administrative GUI
Language	drop-down menu	select the localization from the drop-down menu and reload the browser; you can view the status of localization at pootle.freenas.org
Console Keyboard Map	drop-down menu	select the keyboard layout
Timezone	drop-down menu	select the timezone from the drop-down menu
Syslog server	string	IP address or hostname of remote syslog server to send FreeNAS® logs to; once set, log entries will be written to both the FreeNAS® console and the remote server
Directory Service	drop-down menu

NOTE: by default, logs are stored in RAM as there is no space on the embedded device to store logs. This means that logs are deleted whenever the system reboots. If you wish to save the system logs, either configure a remote syslog server, create a script to store the logs on a volume and add the script as a cron job, or use the FreeNAS-Change-Logging script.

If you make any changes, click the Save button.

This tab also contains the following buttons:

Factory Restore: resets the configuration database to the default base version. However, it does not delete user SSH keys or any other data stored in a user's home directory. Since any configuration changes stored in the configuration database will be erased, this option is handy if you mess up your system or wish to return a test system to the original configuration.

Save Config: used to create a backup copy of the current configuration database in the format hostname-version-architecture. Always save the configuration after making changes and verify that you have a saved configuration before performing an upgrade. This forum post contains a script to backup the configuration which could be customized and added as a cron job.

Upload Config: allows you to browse to location of a saved configuration file in order to restore that configuration.

Advanced Tab

The Advanced tab, shown in Figure 4.7b, allows you to set some miscellaneous settings on the FreeNAS® system. The configurable settings are summarized in Table 4.7b.

Figure 4.7b: Advanced Tab

Table 4.7b: Advanced Tab's Configuration Settings

Setting	Value	Description
Enable Console Menu	checkbox	unchecking this box removes the console menu shown in Figure 2.5a
Use Serial Console	checkbox	do not check this box if your serial port is disabled
Serial Port Speed	drop-down menu	select the speed used by the serial port
Enable screen saver	checkbox	enables/disables the console screen saver
Enable powerd (Power Saving Daemon)	checkbox	powerd(8) is used to monitor ACPI power control settings; this forum post demonstrates how to determine if a drive has spun down
Swap size	non-zero integer representing GB	affects new disks only
Show console messages in the footer	checkbox	will display console messages in real time at bottom of browser; click the console to bring up a scrollable screen; check the "Stop refresh" box in the scrollable screen to pause updating and uncheck the box to continue to watch the messages as they occur
Show tracebacks in case of fatal errors	checkbox	provides a pop-up of diagnostic information when a fatal error occurs
Show advanced fields by default	checkbox	several GUI menus provide an Advanced Mode button to access additional features; enabling this shows these features by default
Enable autotune	checkbox	enables the autotune script which attempts to optimize the system depending upon the hardware which is installed
MOTD banner	string	input the message to be seen when a user logs in via SSH

If you make any changes, click the Save button.

This tab also contains the following buttons:

Rebuild LDAP/AD Cache: click if you add a user to Active Directory who needs immediate access to FreeNAS®; otherwise this occurs automatically once a day as a cron job.

Save Debug: used to generate a text file of diagnostic information. In the screen shown in Figure 4.7c, check the box(es) for the information that you wish to generate then click the Save button to be prompted for the location to save the generated ASCII text file.

Firmware Update: used to Upgrade FreeNAS®.

Figure 4.7c: Save Debug Screen

Autotune

FreeNAS® provides an autotune script which attempts to optimize the system depending upon the hardware which is installed. For example, if a ZFS volume exists on a system with limited RAM, the autotune script will automatically adjust some ZFS sysctl values in an attempt to minimize ZFS memory starvation issues.

The "Enable autotune" checkbox in System → Settings → Advanced is unchecked by default; check it if you would like the autotuner to run at boot time. If you would like the script to run immediately, reboot the system.

If autotuner finds any settings that need adjusting, the changed values will appear in System → Sysctls (for sysctl.conf values) and in System → Tunables (for loader.conf values). If you do not like the changes, you can modify the values that are displayed in the GUI and your changes will override the values that were created by the autotune script. However, if you delete a sysctl or tunable that was created by autotune, it will be recreated at next boot. This is because autotune only creates values that do not already exist.

If you are trying to increase the performance of your FreeNAS® system and suspect that the current hardware may be limiting performance, try enabling autotune.

If you wish to read the script to see which checks are performed, the script is located in /usr/local/bin/autotune.

Email Tab

The Email tab, shown in Figure 4.7d, is used to configure the email settings on the FreeNAS® system. Table 4.7c summarizes the settings that can be configured using the Email tab.

NOTE: it is important to configure the system so that it can successfully send emails. An automatic script send a nightly email to the root user account containing important information such as the health of the disks. Alert events are also emailed to the root user account.

Figure 4.7d: Email Tab

Table 4.7c: Email Tab's Configuration Settings

Setting	Value	Description
From email	string	the From email address to be used when sending email notifications
Outgoing mail server	string or IP address	hostname or IP address of SMTP server
Port to connect to	integer	SMTP port number, typically 25, 465 (secure SMTP), or 587 (submission)
TLS/SSL	drop-down menu	encryption type; choices are Plain, SSL, or TLS
Use SMTP Authentication	checkbox	enables/disables SMTP AUTH using PLAIN SASL
Username	string	used to authenticate with SMTP server
Password	string	used to authenticate with SMTP server
Send Test Mail	button	click to check that configured email settings are working; this will fail if you do not set the To email address by clicking the Change E-mail button for the root account in Accounts → Users → View Users

SSL Tab

When you change the Protocol value to HTTPS in System → Settings → General, an unsigned RSA certificate and key are auto-generated. Once generated, the certificate and key will be displayed in the SSL Certificate field in System → Settings → SSL, shown in Figure 4.7e. If you already have a signed certificate that you wish to use for SSL/TLS connections, replace the values in the SSL certificate field with a copy/paste of your own key and certificate. The certificate can be used to secure the HTTP connection to the FreeNAS® system (enabled in the Settings → General Tab).

Table 4.7d summarizes the settings that can be configured using the SSL tab. This howto shows how to manually generate your own certificate using OpenSSL and provides some examples for the values shown in Table 4.7d.

Figure 4.7e: SSL Tab

Table 4.7d: SSL Tab's Configuration Settings

Setting	Value	Description
Organization	string	optional
Organizational Unit	string	optional
Email Address	string	optional
Locality	string	optional
State	string	optional
Country	string	optional
Common Name	string	optional
Passphrase	string	if the certificate was created with a passphrase, input and confirm it; the value will appear as dots in the GUI
SSL Certificate	string	paste the private key and certificate into the box

NOTE: FreeNAS® will check the validity of the certificate and key and will fallback to HTTP if they appear to be invalid.