Hello, I recently (tried to and still trying) turned my Intel Mac Mini into a trueNAS server. The problem I am running into is that my network drivers un-installed. That means my ethernet port won’t work. Therefor the solutions I have found involved using the web interface, which I don’t have access to. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
I’m not sure I follow your diagnosis here. Off the cuff, it sounds more likely to me that you lost contact with a headless server for other reasons.
I’ve had TrueNAS SCALE running on a couple of 2012 Mac minis. My own frustration is that to mirror the internal drives, I find myself using large USB disks for boot pools.
I find that the built-in ethernet works. And that every USB-ethernet adapter that I’ve tried also works.
By default, TrueNAS will bring up the web interface on all interfaces. But it will only perform DHCP for one interface, so if you have DHCP enabled for the internal ethernet (as is the default) then an added interface would only come up using link-local addressing.
That means that you’d need to know how to find the new link-local IP in the dark. (And if you can do that, I suspect you’ll also track down your built-in ethernet at a new IP.)
Probably the best thing to do is to plug in a monitor and keyboard, and work from there?
Mini-PCs are poor choices for a NAS. A Mac mini, which makes it especially complicated to install drives, is an especially bad choice. Not to mention that most 2.5" HDDs are SMR, and not suitable for ZFS.
1 Like
Since no version of the Mac Mini has much in the way of internal storage, or suitable ways to connect external storage, this really doesn’t seem like a good plan. I’d recommend finding a different use for this machine, and/or finding different hardware to run TrueNAS on.
1 Like
One redeeming NAS feature for Minis is Thunderbolt 3 or 4, which could allow you to run a PCIe 3.0x4 bus to an external enclosure for hosting a bunch of disks. You are not going to be breaking world records with that kind of a restricted interface but it’s fast enough for a basic NAS.
However, per feature requests here, PCIe tunneling is not supported in TrueNAS Scale 24.10 while it was supported in 24.04. I’m not confident that tunneling would be included in 25.4 either.
Connecting to a external array via USB is also certainly possible but fraught with many risks, such as TrueNAS not being able to address disks directly the way it can via PCIe / Thunderbolt.
While the idea of a MacMini running a NAS is attractive - low power, pretty enclosure, just add a thunderbolt JBOD tower to hold all the disks, I doubt it’s as practical as finding a quality supermicro enclosure and going from there instead.
How did you verify that the drivers were “un-installed”?
If you connect a monitor and keyboard to the machine, what do you see?
It works just fine. Small boot time kernel parameter that is reuqired on ANY linux where you want to do this. Was a change to the kernel across multiple versions including LTS. The break was not from ix-systems. They just have no clue either way about thunderbolt (which is fine, not there target market)
Its the kernel that provides this functionality, not truenas - just like many of the unsupported features in truenas that have worked for years and tons of people use.
you are right about speeds
if anyone wants the setting they can DM me, i am not inclined to share it in a thread given how much the community made me feel unwelcome over the issue.
(or you can find it on the proxmox forum)
Cross-referencing without editorial; apparent backstory in link from @Constantin above.