[gentoo-user] TrueNAS not helping me now.

[Dale]

Howdy,

I took a old hand me down puter and put TrueNAS and some hard drives in
it a good while back.  Well, the drives are filling up.  I wanted to add
another drive to the pool but it appears you can't do that.  With LVM,
it is easily doable, in minutes.  So, TrueNAS, while a neat tool, isn't
going to work for how I end up doing things.  Time to get a better tool. 

I'm wanting to install something that I can use LVM on.  It's something
I'm already familiar with and it will serve me very well.  I'm thinking
about just installing a binary based OS that is lightweight.  The old
computer isn't super powerful.  It has 8GBs of memory and a 4 core CPU. 
About 15 years old I think.  I don't think I'll even need a GUI really. 
I figure I'll need NFS or something so I can mount it and LVM to manage
the drives and such.  I'll also need support for encryption.  I use
sys-fs/cryptsetup and whatever tools it depends on.

Since some on this list have used other distros and know what they
support, what would you recommend?  Ubuntu? Slack?  I do want something
that is fairly well maintained and will be around for a long time. 
While I could likely install something else and LVM still have my data,
I don't want to have to learn something only to switch and learn again. 
If there is a distro that has a light GUI, that would be fine too. I
don't recall using a GUI to use LVM or encryption tho.  Still, could
come in handy if it is really light.  Odds are, I'll only start the GUI
if I need it. 

Thoughts?  Alan, I bet you have some ideas.  :/  LOL

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[Igor Semyonov]

From what I understand, TrueNAS uses ZFS, not LVM.
You can, in fact, add a vdev to an existing zpool.
https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/8za4p1/adding_vdevs_to_pool_what_happens_to_the_existing/

As for other options, any of the ones you mentioned should serve file as a
NAS.
The ad#ntage of truenas is that it is built to be an appliance that you
don't need to think about much once it's set up. If that's what you need,
it's a good choice.
If you want the option to set things up yourself and don't mind a bit more
involvement, choose any distro.

Post by Dale
Howdy,
I took a old hand me down puter and put TrueNAS and some hard drives in
it a good while back. Well, the drives are filling up. I wanted to add
another drive to the pool but it appears you can't do that. With LVM,
it is easily doable, in minutes. So, TrueNAS, while a neat tool, isn't
going to work for how I end up doing things. Time to get a better tool.
I'm wanting to install something that I can use LVM on. It's something
I'm already familiar with and it will serve me very well. I'm thinking
about just installing a binary based OS that is lightweight. The old
computer isn't super powerful. It has 8GBs of memory and a 4 core CPU.
About 15 years old I think. I don't think I'll even need a GUI really.
I figure I'll need NFS or something so I can mount it and LVM to manage
the drives and such. I'll also need support for encryption. I use
sys-fs/cryptsetup and whatever tools it depends on.
Since some on this list have used other distros and know what they
support, what would you recommend? Ubuntu? Slack? I do want something
that is fairly well maintained and will be around for a long time.
While I could likely install something else and LVM still have my data,
I don't want to have to learn something only to switch and learn again.
If there is a distro that has a light GUI, that would be fine too. I
don't recall using a GUI to use LVM or encryption tho. Still, could
come in handy if it is really light. Odds are, I'll only start the GUI
if I need it.
Thoughts? Alan, I bet you have some ideas. :/ LOL
Thanks.
Dale
:-) :-)

[Alan McKinnon]

Post by Igor Semyonov
From what I understand, TrueNAS uses ZFS, not LVM.
You can, in fact, add a vdev to an existing zpool.
https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/8za4p1/adding_vdevs_to_pool_what_happens_to_the_existing/
As for other options, any of the ones you mentioned should serve file as a
NAS.
The ad#ntage of truenas is that it is built to be an appliance that you
don't need to think about much once it's set up. If that's what you need,
it's a good choice.
If you want the option to set things up yourself and don't mind a bit more
involvement, choose any distro.

Post by Dale
Howdy,
I took a old hand me down puter and put TrueNAS and some hard drives in
it a good while back. Well, the drives are filling up. I wanted to add
another drive to the pool but it appears you can't do that. With LVM,
it is easily doable, in minutes. So, TrueNAS, while a neat tool, isn't
going to work for how I end up doing things. Time to get a better tool.
I'm wanting to install something that I can use LVM on. It's something
I'm already familiar with and it will serve me very well. I'm thinking
about just installing a binary based OS that is lightweight. The old
computer isn't super powerful. It has 8GBs of memory and a 4 core CPU.
About 15 years old I think. I don't think I'll even need a GUI really.
I figure I'll need NFS or something so I can mount it and LVM to manage
the drives and such. I'll also need support for encryption. I use
sys-fs/cryptsetup and whatever tools it depends on.
Since some on this list have used other distros and know what they
support, what would you recommend? Ubuntu? Slack? I do want something
that is fairly well maintained and will be around for a long time.
While I could likely install something else and LVM still have my data,
I don't want to have to learn something only to switch and learn again.
If there is a distro that has a light GUI, that would be fine too. I
don't recall using a GUI to use LVM or encryption tho. Still, could
come in handy if it is really light. Odds are, I'll only start the GUI
if I need it.
Thoughts? Alan, I bet you have some ideas. :/ LOL
Thanks.
Dale
:-) :-)

Hi Dale,

Yes, I have ideas, quite a few.

TrueNAS is FreeBSD+ZFS and it's totally what you want because ZFS is the
shizz and fixes all problems using storage, I use it myself.
Of course you can add more drives, the command is "zpool add" and the GUI
has all the right buttons.

NFS also works, you can use any old distro, they all have the tools. So
Gentoo or Ubuntu-12.04 or current Fedora, whatever.
Do the usual - PV all the drives, add them to a VG and create an LV.
For encryption, you must decide if you want LVM to do it, or the filesystem
- choice is yours.
I would advise not to put / in that VG. Rather boot off a small drive or
USB stick then all your drives are a full PV


Alan

[Dale]

On Wed, Sep 6, 2023 at 4:57 PM Igor Semyonov
From what I understand, TrueNAS uses ZFS, not LVM.
You can, in fact, add a vdev to an existing
zpool. https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/8za4p1/adding_vdevs_to_pool_what_happens_to_the_existing/
As for other options, any of the ones you mentioned should serve
file as a NAS.
The ad#ntage of truenas is that it is built to be an appliance
that you don't need to think about much once it's set up. If
that's what you need, it's a good choice.
If you want the option to set things up yourself and don't mind a
bit more involvement, choose any distro.
Howdy,
I took a old hand me down puter and put TrueNAS and some hard drives in
it a good while back.  Well, the drives are filling up.  I
wanted to add
another drive to the pool but it appears you can't do that. 
With LVM,
it is easily doable, in minutes.  So, TrueNAS, while a neat
tool, isn't
going to work for how I end up doing things.  Time to get a
better tool. 
I'm wanting to install something that I can use LVM on.  It's
something
I'm already familiar with and it will serve me very well.  I'm
thinking
about just installing a binary based OS that is lightweight. 
The old
computer isn't super powerful.  It has 8GBs of memory and a 4
core CPU. 
About 15 years old I think.  I don't think I'll even need a
GUI really. 
I figure I'll need NFS or something so I can mount it and LVM to manage
the drives and such.  I'll also need support for encryption. 
I use
sys-fs/cryptsetup and whatever tools it depends on.
Since some on this list have used other distros and know what they
support, what would you recommend?  Ubuntu? Slack?  I do want
something
that is fairly well maintained and will be around for a long
time. 
While I could likely install something else and LVM still have my data,
I don't want to have to learn something only to switch and
learn again. 
If there is a distro that has a light GUI, that would be fine too. I
don't recall using a GUI to use LVM or encryption tho.  Still,
could
come in handy if it is really light.  Odds are, I'll only
start the GUI
if I need it. 
Thoughts?  Alan, I bet you have some ideas.  :/  LOL
Thanks.
Dale
:-)  :-) 
Hi Dale,
Yes, I have ideas, quite a few.
TrueNAS is FreeBSD+ZFS and it's totally what you want because ZFS is
the shizz and fixes all problems using storage, I use it myself.
Of course you can add more drives, the command is "zpool add" and the
GUI has all the right buttons.
NFS also works, you can use any old distro, they all have the tools.
So Gentoo or Ubuntu-12.04 or current Fedora, whatever.
Do the usual - PV all the drives, add them to a VG and create an LV.
For encryption, you must decide if you want LVM to do it, or the
filesystem - choice is yours.
I would advise not to put / in that VG. Rather boot off a small drive
or USB stick then all your drives are a full PV
Alan
--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Is there a how to, since it is a GUI, pictures would be nice, that shows
how to add a drive?  If I can add a drive, that'll work.  My duckduckgo
searches turned up results that says I can't do that.  I found dozens of
them.  I can't find a single one that shows how to do it tho.  I'd like
to use the GUI if possible.  I've read that for TrueNAS, everything
should be done with the GUI because of the way it is setup.  I dunno.  I
just want to do it. 

I do plan to replace that drive later tho.  I have a spare drive laying
around that I can put in for now.  Later, I plan to but a 14, 16 or 18TB
drive and replace it. I notice the 18TB drive prices are getting
reasonable.  Sort of.  Will I be able to add the larger drive then
remove the old temporary one later?  If I can't, I may as well switch
now.  I only have 4 slots, three already used I think.  I have little
wiggle room in that old rig.

If this falls though, sounds like Ubuntu is the tool.  It has been
around a long time and lots of people use it so don't see it going away
anytime soon. 

Thanks, to all, for the replies.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[Alan McKinnon]

Post by Dale
Is there a how to, since it is a GUI, pictures would be nice, that shows
how to add a drive? If I can add a drive, that'll work. My duckduckgo
searches turned up results that says I can't do that. I found dozens of
them. I can't find a single one that shows how to do it tho. I'd like to
use the GUI if possible. I've read that for TrueNAS, everything should be
done with the GUI because of the way it is setup. I dunno. I just want to
do it.
I do plan to replace that drive later tho. I have a spare drive laying
around that I can put in for now. Later, I plan to but a 14, 16 or 18TB
drive and replace it. I notice the 18TB drive prices are getting
reasonable. Sort of. Will I be able to add the larger drive then remove
the old temporary one later? If I can't, I may as well switch now. I only
have 4 slots, three already used I think. I have little wiggle room in
that old rig.
If this falls though, sounds like Ubuntu is the tool. It has been around
a long time and lots of people use it so don't see it going away anytime
soon.

On the left side pane, last item is "Guide" - docs are very thorough, they
tell you how to do it

[Dale]

Post by Dale
 
Is there a how to, since it is a GUI, pictures would be nice, that
shows how to add a drive?  If I can add a drive, that'll work.  My
duckduckgo searches turned up results that says I can't do that. 
I found dozens of them.  I can't find a single one that shows how
to do it tho.  I'd like to use the GUI if possible.  I've read
that for TrueNAS, everything should be done with the GUI because
of the way it is setup.  I dunno.  I just want to do it. 
I do plan to replace that drive later tho.  I have a spare drive
laying around that I can put in for now.  Later, I plan to but a
14, 16 or 18TB drive and replace it. I notice the 18TB drive
prices are getting reasonable.  Sort of.  Will I be able to add
the larger drive then remove the old temporary one later?  If I
can't, I may as well switch now.  I only have 4 slots, three
already used I think.  I have little wiggle room in that old rig.
If this falls though, sounds like Ubuntu is the tool.  It has been
around a long time and lots of people use it so don't see it going
away anytime soon. 
On the left side pane, last item is "Guide" - docs are very thorough,
they tell you how to do it
--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

OK.  I got it.  I now have extra space.  I'm still seriously thinking
about using Ubuntu and LVM tho. 

I actually clicked the option once before but a warning popped up so I
thought I was doing it wrong.  This time, I ignored the error since if I
went to LVM, I'd have to erase everything anyway.  Now when I get a
larger hard drive, I get to figure that out too.  :/  Oh, creating a
vdev was the trick.  Once that is done, expand the pool.  It's one of
those, once it is done, it seems easy.  ROFL  I guess vdev is like LVMs
pv, physical volume I think it is.  Crap, using two different things
that do the same thing different is confusing.  Even that is confusing. 
O_o

Mark, it did mention it is striped.  You nailed that good.  It also said
that if one drive fails, that's bad.  :-'

Thanks to all.  Still may play with Ubuntu.  I need to find someone
buying a new puter.  lol

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[Frank Steinmetzger]

Post by Dale
Oh, creating a
vdev was the trick.  Once that is done, expand the pool.  It's one of
those, once it is done, it seems easy.  ROFL

Note that people used to shoot themselves in the foot when lazily (or by
accident) adding a single disk to an existing pool. If that pool was
composed of RAID vdevs, then now they had a non-redundant single disk in
that pool and it was not possible to remove a vdev from a pool! That
single-disk vdev could only be converted to a mirror to at least get
redundancy back.

The only proper solution was to destroy the pool and start from scratch. By now there is a partial remedy, in that it is possible to remove mirror vdevs from a pool. But no RAIDs:
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/solved-how-to-remove-vdev-from-zpool/192044/5
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/performance-when-removing-zfs-vdevs-with-zpool-remove.1481148/post-40491873
And you get some left-over metadata about the removed vdev.

Post by Dale
I guess vdev is like LVMs pv, physical volume I think it is.

Haven’t we had this topic before? At least twice? Including the comparison between
the three layers of LVM with their equivalent in ZFS land. ;-)

ZFS is more meant for static setups, not constantly changing disk loadouts
of varying disk sizes.

[William Kenworthy]

Post by Frank Steinmetzger

Post by Dale
Oh, creating a
vdev was the trick.  Once that is done, expand the pool.  It's one of
those, once it is done, it seems easy.  ROFL

Note that people used to shoot themselves in the foot when lazily (or by
accident) adding a single disk to an existing pool. If that pool was
composed of RAID vdevs, then now they had a non-redundant single disk in
that pool and it was not possible to remove a vdev from a pool! That
single-disk vdev could only be converted to a mirror to at least get
redundancy back.
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/solved-how-to-remove-vdev-from-zpool/192044/5
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/performance-when-removing-zfs-vdevs-with-zpool-remove.1481148/post-40491873
And you get some left-over metadata about the removed vdev.

That's good to see.  I'll bookmark those links for the future.  At least
this is doable.  If I do mess up, I could just start over.  It only
takes about 10 days to copy over again.  o_O

Post by Frank Steinmetzger

Post by Dale
I guess vdev is like LVMs pv, physical volume I think it is.

Haven’t we had this topic before? At least twice? Including the comparison between
the three layers of LVM with their equivalent in ZFS land. ;-)
ZFS is more meant for static setups, not constantly changing disk loadouts
of varying disk sizes.

We may have but being more familiar with LVM, I try to sort of make it
make sense to me.  Honestly, ZFS doesn't really make sense, yet.  My
understanding, it has two layers instead of three.  I think.  If there
was a NAS thing like TrueNAS that used LVM instead, I'd be all over it.
I likely would have never used TrueNAS at all.  If I found one, I'd
switch faster than a lightning strike.  Even if it is done in GUI I'd
switch.  Command line would be fine by me.  Honestly, once set up and a
network is working, all I need is for it to boot, let me enter the
encryption password and me able to mount the thing from my main rig.  Of
course, shutdown when done as well.
Then it may be best for me to consider other options. I'm always adding,
swapping out or otherwise moving things around.  That is one thing I
like about LVM.  The only thing I try to avoid, shrinking a file
system.  I use ext4 so it is doable as long as there is enough space but
still, I try to avoid it.  I may have done that once, maybe.
At least I got it done now.  Updating my backups went faster than
expected.  Already done and drives are back in the safe.  Since I have
three drives in the little cage and little room for air flow, I added a
fan to the drive cage.  They got up to the 40's C pretty quick.  Can't
have them getting hot.
Thanks to all.
Dale
:-)  :-)

Hi Dale,

if you are feeling bored, google "gentoo NAS" and start reading.
Example: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/Home_server

Home brew is the only way to go!

BillK

[William Kenworthy]

Oh, forgot to mention the "this could be you" photo in that link

:)

BillK

Post by Alan McKinnon

Post by Frank Steinmetzger

Post by Dale
Oh, creating a
vdev was the trick.  Once that is done, expand the pool. It's one of
those, once it is done, it seems easy.  ROFL

Note that people used to shoot themselves in the foot when lazily (or by
accident) adding a single disk to an existing pool. If that pool was
composed of RAID vdevs, then now they had a non-redundant single disk in
that pool and it was not possible to remove a vdev from a pool! That
single-disk vdev could only be converted to a mirror to at least get
redundancy back.
The only proper solution was to destroy the pool and start from
scratch. By now there is a partial remedy, in that it is possible to
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/solved-how-to-remove-vdev-from-zpool/192044/5
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/performance-when-removing-zfs-vdevs-with-zpool-remove.1481148/post-40491873
And you get some left-over metadata about the removed vdev.

That's good to see.  I'll bookmark those links for the future. At least
this is doable.  If I do mess up, I could just start over.  It only
takes about 10 days to copy over again.  o_O

Post by Frank Steinmetzger

Post by Dale
I guess vdev is like LVMs pv, physical volume I think it is.

Haven’t we had this topic before? At least twice? Including the comparison between
the three layers of LVM with their equivalent in ZFS land. ;-)
ZFS is more meant for static setups, not constantly changing disk loadouts
of varying disk sizes.

We may have but being more familiar with LVM, I try to sort of make it
make sense to me.  Honestly, ZFS doesn't really make sense, yet.  My
understanding, it has two layers instead of three.  I think.  If there
was a NAS thing like TrueNAS that used LVM instead, I'd be all over it.
I likely would have never used TrueNAS at all.  If I found one, I'd
switch faster than a lightning strike.  Even if it is done in GUI I'd
switch.  Command line would be fine by me.  Honestly, once set up and a
network is working, all I need is for it to boot, let me enter the
encryption password and me able to mount the thing from my main rig.  Of
course, shutdown when done as well.
Then it may be best for me to consider other options. I'm always adding,
swapping out or otherwise moving things around.  That is one thing I
like about LVM.  The only thing I try to avoid, shrinking a file
system.  I use ext4 so it is doable as long as there is enough space but
still, I try to avoid it.  I may have done that once, maybe.
At least I got it done now.  Updating my backups went faster than
expected.  Already done and drives are back in the safe.  Since I have
three drives in the little cage and little room for air flow, I added a
fan to the drive cage.  They got up to the 40's C pretty quick. Can't
have them getting hot.
Thanks to all.
Dale
:-)  :-)

Hi Dale,
if you are feeling bored, google "gentoo NAS" and start reading.
Example: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/Home_server
Home brew is the only way to go!
BillK

[Mark Knecht]

<SNIP>

Post by Dale
Is there a how to, since it is a GUI, pictures would be nice, that shows

how to add a drive? If I can add a drive, that'll work. My duckduckgo
searches turned up results that says I can't do that. I found dozens of
them. I can't find a single one that shows how to do it tho. I'd like to
use the GUI if possible. I've read that for TrueNAS, everything should be
done with the GUI because of the way it is setup. I dunno. I just want to
do it.

Post by Dale
I do plan to replace that drive later tho. I have a spare drive laying

around that I can put in for now. Later, I plan to but a 14, 16 or 18TB
drive and replace it. I notice the 18TB drive prices are getting
reasonable. Sort of. Will I be able to add the larger drive then remove
the old temporary one later? If I can't, I may as well switch now. I only
have 4 slots, three already used I think. I have little wiggle room in
that old rig.

Post by Dale
If this falls though, sounds like Ubuntu is the tool. It has been around

a long time and lots of people use it so don't see it going away anytime
soon.

Post by Dale
Thanks, to all, for the replies.
Dale
:-) :-)

Dale,
You've gotten good advice from everyone. However there are some issues
around how you set up the pool originally as to what you can do now.

I am leaping to the conclusion that you put in multiple hard drives and
chose 'Mirror' and not 'Stripe'. If you chose to mirror multiple drives then
adding another drive to the mirror (read RAID) isn't going to make it
larger. If you chose stripe then it will. (TTBOMK)

If you are mirrored and have a larger drive you want to add, but don't
have either a physical slot to put it in OR don't have another controller
port then you can fail/dismiss/remove 1 drive from the mirror, install your
larger drive physically and then add it to the mirror and TrueNAS will do
the formatting and data copying. However ensure you are NOT using a
shingled drive.

I ran TrueNAS for a couple of years and it worked fine, but I did have
problems with a couple of their updates not applying correctly, or at least
leaving me with error messages. I never had an operational problem but
the error messages hung around and I got tired of not knowing how to
eliminate them.

That said I eventually decided that for my simplistic home needs I was
better off with Ubuntu Server and NFS. I don't use LVM but it's supported.

If you want to manage your server with a graphics front end look into
NetData. The free version gives me pretty much everything I liked about
the TrueNAS front end and it's HTML based so I can view the server
from any of my machines.

Best of luck,
Mark

[Mark Knecht]

I have two drives and it sees them as one larger drive. No RAID or
anything. At least not that I know of anyway. To be honest, I know
very little about RAID. Read threads on it but never used it.
Basically, I took two drives, I think they are 8 and a 10TB but may be
something else, and it sees them as one 18TB or something like that.
I'm wanting to add a 6TB or something to that until I can get larger
drives, maybe a better plan too.

OK, you chose striped. That gives more space but no redundancy. If
one of those drives goes bad you probably lose everything. Better to
choose mirrored if you want your data to be safe, assuming you don't
have a second TrueNAS box or some way to back it up.

Anyway, a simple NFS server with LVM sounds like it would make
you happy, and happy is or should be what life is about, so go make
yourself happy! ;-)

But learn about and use RAID or you're dancing on the head of
a pin for reliability.

Cheers,
Mark

[Mark Knecht]

Post by Mark Knecht

I have two drives and it sees them as one larger drive. No RAID or
anything. At least not that I know of anyway. To be honest, I know
very little about RAID. Read threads on it but never used it.
Basically, I took two drives, I think they are 8 and a 10TB but may be
something else, and it sees them as one 18TB or something like that.
I'm wanting to add a 6TB or something to that until I can get larger
drives, maybe a better plan too.

OK, you chose striped. That gives more space but no redundancy. If
one of those drives goes bad you probably lose everything. Better to
choose mirrored if you want your data to be safe, assuming you don't
have a second TrueNAS box or some way to back it up.
Anyway, a simple NFS server with LVM sounds like it would make
you happy, and happy is or should be what life is about, so go make
yourself happy! ;-)
But learn about and use RAID or you're dancing on the head of
a pin for reliability.
Cheers,
Mark

If you say so. Sounds right. ;-) Those drives are my backup. Some
important things I have three copies of. Most stuff, my copies I work
with on my main rig and then the backup copy. Odds of both failing
should be small. After all, the drives spend most of their time
unplugged and locked in a fire safe. A couple really important things I
may not can replace, like family pictures, those I also have copies on
DVD or something. It's not 100% fool proof but it is better than
nothing at all.
I hooked the drives back up. I'm going to try adding that drive again,
if I can figure out how it is done. I feel like I'm looking at the
option but don't know that is it. :/
Dale
:-) :-)

You should be able to add a drive to an existing striped pool.

IIRC, because I'm not using TrueNAS at this time, you want to
look at your pool, then choose the three dots in the upper right.

In a general Google search I would start with

TrueNAS add drive to existing striped pool

I see a number of reasonable looking pages but I've never
used a striped pool so YMMV.

As for the Ubuntu Server / LVM question, why do you want
to partition a storage pool? Why not just leave it as one large
drive, place different data in different directories, and then
mount the directories over NFS as needed?

You can still do backups of each directory and you have
no restrictions on data other than running out of disk space.

Good luck,
Mark

[Mark Knecht]

Post by Dale
Howdy,
I took a old hand me down puter and put TrueNAS and some hard drives in
it a good while back. Well, the drives are filling up. I wanted to add
another drive to the pool but it appears you can't do that. With LVM,
it is easily doable, in minutes. So, TrueNAS, while a neat tool, isn't
going to work for how I end up doing things. Time to get a better tool.
I'm wanting to install something that I can use LVM on. It's something
I'm already familiar with and it will serve me very well. I'm thinking
about just installing a binary based OS that is lightweight. The old
computer isn't super powerful. It has 8GBs of memory and a 4 core CPU.
About 15 years old I think. I don't think I'll even need a GUI really.
I figure I'll need NFS or something so I can mount it and LVM to manage
the drives and such. I'll also need support for encryption. I use
sys-fs/cryptsetup and whatever tools it depends on.
Since some on this list have used other distros and know what they
support, what would you recommend? Ubuntu? Slack? I do want something
that is fairly well maintained and will be around for a long time.
While I could likely install something else and LVM still have my data,
I don't want to have to learn something only to switch and learn again.
If there is a distro that has a light GUI, that would be fine too. I
don't recall using a GUI to use LVM or encryption tho. Still, could
come in handy if it is really light. Odds are, I'll only start the GUI
if I need it.
Thoughts? Alan, I bet you have some ideas. :/ LOL
Thanks.
Dale
:-) :-)

With TrueNAS I believe you can add new disks to an existing pool, but
if your pool was RAID1 I think you're just getting more RAID1, not more
space.

The more typical TrueNAS disk change is to rotate to a larger drive, where
you decommission a 3TB drive, physically remove it, add a new 6TB drive,
then go through the same process for your second/third/fourth drives. That
process grows your space.

If you're looking for a bog simple NFS server try Ubuntu Server. It will
take you maybe 20 minutes to install and after adding the NFS stuff should
do everything you want. I do that for my Plex and NFS needs. Ubuntu
server does not include X but you can add it later if you want.

Updating Ubuntu is more or less a two command process:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

The first command where it understands what's new, and the second
where it installs it. kernel updates typically add a new kernel but
keep the current kernel as a fallback in case something goes wrong.

Adding a new program is generally a one command process, such as:

sudo apt install nfs-kernel-server

See this page for instructions on getting NFS installed and working:

https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/service-nfs

NOTE: Ubuntu is systemd so you may or may not like that

Good luck whatever you do.

Cheers,
Mark