On today’s holiday episode of TrueNAS Tech Talk, Kris and Chris have an early holiday gift - a preview of the upcoming WebShare feature coming to TrueNAS 26.04! We’ll walk through some of the features enabled, from photo viewing with location integration, to sharing files with users directly over HTTP without a TrueNAS login. Handle ZIP files directly, and even do simple document editing - all this and more coming to the next version of TrueNAS.
Note: There will be no T3 episodes over the holidays. See you all in the new year, and thanks for tuning in!
To say it with the words of one of my favorite video game charakters:
When you started i was like weee, but then you mentioned truenas connect so i became wooo
Unfortunately TrueNAS Connect doesn’t work at all for me (bug was reported long ago). So it is dead in the water for me regardless. At least until the connectivity issues with connect are sorted. Only then can I test out the features.
This I can see actually making sense, mainly because it’s the only way I can see of doing it that’s both easy and (potentially) secure–and it’s something much of the competition can do, and it’s a frequent request here. Sure, we can install Nextcloud (or Opencloud, or Seafile, or whatever), configure it appropriately, put it behind a reverse proxy, port-forward 80/443 to that reverse proxy, and set up dynamic DNS, but that’s a good bit of work that’s beyond the technical skill of many users. Running this through a public web service that iX is already running removes most, if not all, of that complexity.
It also means that iX was once again lying to us about giving us a GUI file manager in TrueNAS, but I guess you can’t have everything.
I feel like I’m missing something. Up until the end of the video, I thought this was a GUI file manager that runs directly in TrueNAS.[1] Rather than use something like mc, you get to use a legitimate GUI to manage, copy, and view folders and files without having to go through SMB, NFS, or other client-roundabout methods.
I was confused when they brought up TrueNAS Connect and certificates as a requirement. Why would I need a TC account and a working certificate just to browse and manage files on my local server?
A built-in feature, without the need to use the Apps subsystem or install a third-party app. ↩︎
Because iX wants to push users to their subscription service, obviously. Never mind that they promised years ago that they’d include this feature in TrueNAS itself.
Edit: I’ll admit I haven’t watched the video–not a fan of watching 40 minutes of video to learn what I could have read in 4 minutes or less. But Kris has already said elsewhere that the web file manager would require TNC, and I’m assuming from the name that “WebSharing” lets you share/manage contents of the NAS to folks outside your LAN. If it does that, that’s at least some justification for requiring TNC. If not, well, it’s an obvious (and pretty egregious) case of subscription lock-in.
I was so excited to use TrueNAS connect. I have two systems logged in. I opened up a ticket on November 4th about how TN Connect does not email critical notifications from either system. One response saying they’d follow up. Nothing yet. I hope they work out the bugs. I’d also like to see remote management features because right now it’s locked down the the local network.
It’s complicated to use WebShare, you have to use TrueNAS Connect, but they don’t mention it in the video that you have to connect to be able to use Webshare!
You seem to get a lot of value out of this free, open-source software, yet nearly every time you post here it’s just another complaint about TrueNAS or iXsystems. At some point it stops being “constructive criticism” and starts looking like you’re simply here to complain.
iXsystems has been very clear about the direction they’re taking the product. You don’t have to like every decision—but endlessly criticizing the company and its staff on their own forum doesn’t add anything useful to the discussion.
If you’re genuinely this unhappy with the project and the people behind it, maybe the most productive thing to do is stop posting the same grievances and go use a different open-source solution that better matches what you want.
The guys made it clear in the video that WebShare features requires setup in TrueNAS Connect. It great simplifies the set-up and support as we add functionality (e.g certificates and external sharing). Connect also enables us to provide (limited) enterprise features to free TrueNAS CE users.
If Connect is too difficult for you.. then create a thread in the TrueNAS Connect channel. We want to make it easy and there is a free version.
I do indeed, and I also believe I give a great deal of value in forum support, documentation, and other support for the product.
That’s based, charitably, on a very selective reading of my posts. My complaints about the software are relatively few and far between. But iX have been repeatedly and thoroughly dishonest, and I’m getting tired of pretending otherwise.
I’ll be sure to give the rest of your tone-policing comment the attention it deserves.
If you’ve already decided the project and its maintainers are acting in bad faith, then there’s nothing left to debate. Continuing to post here doesn’t change the software or the company — it just prolongs an argument you’ve already settled in your own mind.
The obvious solution is to move on and invest your time elsewhere.
