Pfsense RRD Summary for Q1 2022

March was kind of a big month…?

I’m currently working on a graphically pleasing option, spreadsheet-wise, to show historical data over time to get a more accurate picture of what usage looks like. Getting my data-science on! 🙂

5 year mark

In 78 days I will hit the 5 year service mark with my Plex server! Incredibly exciting time. I’ve had plexpy, now known as Tautulli installed since day 1 so I will also get to review 5 whole years worth of viewing stats 🙂 Data science is fun and a major reason I started this whole project in the first place.

Here are the Play Totals (58 months)
Here is Play Count by media type (1747 days)

I’ll try to mark this milestone with a salute to Plex, self hosted media server enthusiasts and the FOSS community (long live open-source!) so stay tuned!

Remote NFS Mounts in Jails

*Quick note: the text inside <> is console derived, either output or commands

Scenario: Two TrueNAS hosts; inside of a jail, hosted on Server1, mount an NFS share residing on Server2.
– Server2 exports </mnt/dozer/test> as an NFS share
– Created mount point in jail <mkdir -p /mnt/nfs>
– Tried <mount -t nfs Server2:/mnt/dozer/test /mnt/nfs> in jail

I’ve tried for quite some time now to accomplish this but to no avail… UNTIL TODAY! I sat down, thought about it good and hard and then had a crazy idea; What if I mounted that NFS share from Server2 on Server1 (proper) first then created a mount point in the jail configuration for that path?

On Server1 (proper): <mkdir -p /mnt/nfstest> then
<mount -t nfs Server2:/mnt/dozer/test /mnt/nfstest>
In jail on Server1:
<mkdir -p /mnt/nfstest> then
<mount -t nfs Server1:/mnt/nfstest /mnt/nfs>

But that didn’t frickin’ work so I thought about it some more, for about 5 seconds, then I began Google Fu’ing. With new key words in mind from the crazy idea experiment I was able to find at least a dozen posts/articles outlining the solution I’ve been searching for!

Now, this is NOT supported by iX or the TrueNAS project BUT it’s totally doable and it works exactly as it should. I had the first part right, SSH to Server1 then using the console, mount the NFS share from Server2. Here are the missing pieces;

  1. When mounting the share on Server1, do it inside of an existing dataset instead of creating a new mount path (/mnt/dozer/nfstest vs /mnt/nfstest).
  2. An NFS share on Server1 has to be created via the webUI, using the new console-mounted directory from above.

Finally, via the webUI on Server1, create a new mount point in the jail configuration using mount path from missing piece #1 as the source and wherever you want the destination to be inside the jail ( I used </mnt/test> ).

  • Using console on Server1: <mkdir -p /mnt/dozer/nfstest> then
    <mount -t nfs Server2:/mnt/dozer/test>
  • Using webUI on Server1: Create an NFS share using the path </mnt/dozer/nfstest>
  • Inside jail on Server1 using console: <mkdir -p /mnt/nfs> then
    <mount -t nfs Server1:/mnt/dozer/nfstest /mnt/nfs>

And there you have it… remote NFS mounted storage inside of a jail. 🙂

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