FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

What is OMV?
OMV is an abbreviation of openmediavault.
Is openmediavault a fork of FreeNAS?
No
Does openmediavault have drivers for my hardware?
All module drivers are provided by the Debian standard kernel of oldstable release 8.9 (aka Jessie). This distribution ships with kernel 3.16 by default. Optionally is possible to install the backport kernel 4.9. If hardware is supported under Debian Jessie then is supported under openmediavault. The Jessie backport kernel 4.9 is the default kernel used by Stretch (Debian 9.3) at the moment, so it provides support for newer hardware.
Can I use a usb flash drive (stick) for installing the system?
Yes, but the installation does not have any optimizations to reduce writes into the OS disk. The usb media will most likely start failing within a few weeks of usage. Most common symptom is basic command execution does not work, denied login, etc. More information here.
Can I give access to non-admin users to the web control panel?
No. By default non-admin users can only access their account profile, they can change password and their email address if the admin has allowed changes on their account. However the current web interface framework is designed for developers to create plugins where they can give limited or full access to non-admin users to their plugin. An example is in the openvpn plugin by omv-extras.
What is the file /etc/openmediavault/config.xml for?
Is the database configuration store file for openmediavault. When a change is performed in the web interface, the config value is stored and/or retrieved by RPC to/from this file. If this is a save change, then mkconf passes the value to the service configuration file and reloads the daemon in case is necessary.
Can I upgrade to Debian Testing/Unstable (Debian Testing/Sid) or use Ubuntu as a base distribution?
Yes. But the end is most likely a broken web interface and possibly broken system. openmediavault releases are heavily tight to their Debian base distribution.
I´ve lost the web interface password. How do I reset it?
Simply connect via ssh into the server or login locally on the machine and type in: omv-firstaid. There is an option to reset the web interface password.
Can I backup or restore and existing openmediavault configuration?
No. Keep the file /etc/openmediavault/config.xml for references purposes if the option is to go for a clean re-install.
What is the default HTTP engine of openmediavault?
NGINX. The last version of openmediavault with Apache was 0.5 Sardoukar.
Can I use Apache as HTTP engine?
Yes, but is not supported. Eventually every openmediavault package upgrade will activate NGINX again leaving the web interface broken. A parallel Apache instance next to Nginx is possible, just make sure the ports are different otherwise the openmediavault web interface will not work.
How can use the default HTTP engine to hold my own web page?
Do not modify openmediavault default NGINX files. Place the website configurations in /etc/nginx/sites-available and enable it with nginx_ensite <SITE>. Read more information in the NGINX documentation.
Why does the system rewrites a configuration file(s) that I have manually edited?
OMV takes full control of some system services. This services include monit, ntp, samba, network, proftpd, nginx, php5-fpm, etc. Read here.
How can I modify an internal value of some service openmediavault has control over?
Read here for advanced configurations.
How can I modify or add a network configuration of /etc/network/interfaces with some custom options the web interface does not provide?
The interfaces file is controlled by openmediavault. To add network interfaces that are not configurable through the web interface or other options not present, use advanced settings.
Why my disks mount paths have a long alphanumeric number?

The long number is called UUID, it is used by fstab to mount disks. This number is unique per filesystem (or at least unlikely possible that another filesystem comes with an identical one). This helps maintaining the mount points. The old linux way (sda1, sdb1, etc.) is not guaranteed that /sda1 is the same disk on next reboot. If having trouble identifying them in terminal, create a pool with symlinks to each file system with easy to remember names.

This behaviour has been deprecated now in current omv releases including stable (Jessie). The default creation of mount paths is documented here.

I don’t have a data disk, and I want to use my OS disk for storing data?

The default behaviour of openmediavault is to act as NAS server, that means OS files are separated from data disks.

However if the OS disk is partitioned the system will recognise the extra partitions besides rootfs if is formatted. You can mount it and use it for shared folders.

The current installer does not provide access to the partition manager, use a plain Debian iso then install openmediavault on top and acommodate the partitions, or resize the partition after installing using Gparted or SystemRescueCd.

Can I install openmediavault on top a running Debian system?
Yes, but it is recommended that the current running OS not to have a desktop environment installed.
What is the permissions/ownership of folders in openmediavault created by shared folders?
The default is folders in 2775 mode, with root:users ownership. This means all users created in the web interface can read, write to folders created by the system in the data drives using the default. The setgid allows group inheritance, meaning new files/folders below will always have the group users (GID=100) membership.
Why are my filesystems mounted as noexec?

This is a security measure to avoid the placement of malicious scripts in the shared folders. This will prevent any script execution in those paths, including compiling packages and binaries.

If you need to remove the noexc flag, use advanced settings as decribed here.

I need to delete a shared folder, why the delete button is greyed/disabled?
Shared folder configurations can be used across different services. When removing a shared folder configuration is necessary to unlink it from every service is attached to, before the delete button becomes available. At the moment there is no internal database backend that can display information about which service is holding which shares.
What is the omv-mkconf command for?
omv-mkconf is a terminal console command that is used by the backend of openmediavault to pipe directives and values to service configuration files. The arguments that omv-mkconf accepts are related to the name of the service it configures. Type omv-mkconf in terminal, press TAB key, and the terminal will display all available arguments.
I want to experiment with openmediavault or make changes to the code
As a true open source system everything is possible. The recommendation is do not test with the production server to avoid breaking the web interface. The best thing to do is to use a Virtual Machine. On Sourceforge there are preconfigured openmediavault images with virtual disks ready to launch. Alternatively checkout the openmediavault GIT repository and use Vagrant to create a virtual machine.
Why there is no iscsitarget plugin in openmediavault 4?

The iscsitarget software is divided in two parts. The userland tools and the kernel modules both are provided by Debian repository system. Kernel modules come in the form of DKMS. The upstream software is maintained in sourceforge. Debian only provides packages up to Jessie, this is because the DKMS modules do not built in kernels higher than 4.x. The last commit upstream was in 2010, right now iscsitarget is abandoned software.

It is possible to use iscsitarget plugin in openmediavault 3 or lower versions by using kernels lower than 4.x.

The intention is to migrate core underlaying software from iscsitarget to LIO targetcli

What is the omv-update and omv-release-upgrade for?
Information about those commands are in the software section.