this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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Tips for moving from TrueNAS to Debian for a NAS? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 day ago by CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I have been using a NAS running TrueNAS for a couple of weeks now. From the App GUI for setting up Docker containers, which I genuinely despise, to the removal of SMART tests in the new version, I don't think this was a good call. So I'm thinking I might as well DIY it, although if you believe that may be a questionable idea, feel free to mention that!

Because of that, I am looking at Debian, as it seems to be the standard server OS, and I have used it a little before. I have light server administration experience, although not a lot, and no specific knowledge of how to optimize one to act as a NAS. I am, however, reasonably familiar with Linux in general.

  • How do I optimize Debian for NAS use?
  • What utilities should I install that provide system info, allow for network shares, and so on?
  • Are there things that TrueNAS did that I may be unaware of and should also set up for myself on Debian?
  • Do you have any tips and suggestions for what I should install in addition to that? Maybe some power optimization tools or useful dashboard software?
  • Can I just wipe the OS drive, put Debian on there, and then mount my pool once Debian is set up for ZFS, or does TrueNAS do anything special to the filesystem? If not, how should I migrate the existing data? (Mostly videos, pictures, documents, and a Home Assistant setup)
  • What are good resources to find help with Debian server administration?
  • Are there any issues with Nvidia? If so, how do I fix them? I have an old Nvidia GPU in the NAS for video encoding since my CPU doesn't have an iGPU.
  • Are there common pitfalls in this for people with little experience like me?

I'd be glad to get some info on these topics to know if this is a reasonable idea or if I should just stick with what I have.

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[–] static09@piefed.world 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For my own curiosity, I decided to check the release notes. I thought it was weird that TrueNAS would remove SMART monitoring, but looks like they didn't. Just got heavily changed what they're doing with it. The new recommendation is to use a third-party tool which does what TrueNAS was doing with disk monitoring, but does it better.

The short of it is TrueNAS still has smartmontools binaries installed and still monitors SMART data from drives. Just doesn't have the dedicated space in the UI anymore. It'll still alert on SMART failures.

Link to Disk Monitoring in the relevant Release Notes (25.10):

https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/25.10/gettingstarted/versionnotes/#smart-monitoring-and-disk-management-in-2510-and-beyond

[–] Colloidal@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

Thank you, that's very helpful.

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 12 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NFS Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency
Plex Brand of media server package
RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
VPN Virtual Private Network
ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.

[Thread #997 for this comm, first seen 12th Jan 2026, 16:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] Canuck@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago

I set up Debian as my NAS and gaming tower. Drives are paired by capacity in RAID, it uses BTRFS, they are pooled together, and have one LUKS password that unlocks them with the main OS drive.

With Samba share, some podman containers, Tailscale, it does everything I need it to. Since I also use it as a desktop computer, I don't really have dashboards since I already typically sit in front of it, or can remote desktop in. I occasionally check the health of the drives, and use ECC memory/motherboard

[–] chazwhiz@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

This doesn’t answer the question you asked, but take a look at OpenMediaVault. It’s Debian underneath but already has pretty much everything you would need to do built in.

[–] synapse1278@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago (4 children)

Hello, I have some experience using Debian in NAS, but none with TrueNAS.

Before anything: BACKUP !

If possible, make a full copy of your pool onto external drives, or another NAS or anything else. If it is not possible to get enough spare storage soace, then at least backup the things your really care about (personal photos, important projects, password database). Just make sure you have a valid backup in case things go terribly wrong ! I am sure everything will go well, but this will give you additional peace of mind.

Setup Debian for NAS use

There are a few things I can think of, many might be obvious, anyway:

  1. Install and configure network file sharing protocols: Samba (files sharing compatible with Windows, Linux, Android and others), NFS (more like network drive)
  2. Install: S.M.A.R.T monitoring tools
  3. Choose and configure filesystem. I have been using BTRFS, but since your pool is ZFS and you probably don't want to format and start from nothing, I think you are already set on that one. I believe this is extra configuration as it doesn't come by default on Debian.

More advanced things:

  1. Setup SSH for remote connection with the terminal
  2. Install htop or btop for system monitoring in the terminal
  3. wireguard is a very nice VPN, it's easy to configure on all platforms in order to access your NAS from outside your home

Power optimization

  1. Enable C-stats in the BIOS (warning in case your CPU is a 1st gen Ryzen, do not activate)
  2. powertop is an utility to optimize power saving settings (I've not bothered with this until now)
  3. hdparm is an utility to manage and configure hard drives, you can use this to configure automatic spin-down after some time of inactivity, this is a bit tricky though.

Dashboards, UI, frontends

  1. OpenMediaVault is the first one that comes to my mind. It's actually a Linux distro based on Debian with a web interface that allows you to do all the NAS relevant confirmations from the Webbrowser. It can also be installed on top of an existing Debian install. I have used it a long time ago.
  2. CasaOS, similar in concept, I have not used it.
  3. Another simple option to get started, get a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Install Debian with full desktop environment and configure everything in person. You can always go headless at a later time

Docker

You definitely want to install docker to run most of your services. Please, also add your local user to the docker group to not have to run everything as root. Useful services I use:

  • Portainer: manage containers with a web interface
  • watchtower: Auto-Update other docker containers
  • Jellyfin: media Manager and player (similar to Plex)
  • *arr, transmission, sabnzbd: sail the high seas
  • gluetun: route containers traffic through a VPN
  • caddy: reverse proxy, to access your container with sub-domain name, example: jellyfin.mycoolnas.net
  • vaultwarden: redistribution of the Bitwarden password manager for self-loading with the premium features available.

Graphics cards

It's been a long time I didn't have to deal with NVidia. Debian comes by default with the nouveau open source driver, which works but may not give the best performance. I don't know if it impacts transcoding performance. I suppose it doesn't give your the NVENC codecs. Anyway, you can install the NVidia proprietary drivers and should be able to transcode.

Conclusion

Debian is a solid option for a NAS, it's been serving me well for many years. It is set and forget. However. It takes time to setup and the terminal is going to be your main configuration tool unless you go for OMV or another distro specialty made for NAS.

Your main source of information shall be the Debian Wiki. You will find step-by-step guides to install most of the things mentioned above. The Arch wiki is also a good resource, keep in mind that some files may have different locations and package different names across Linux distributions, but configuration should be similar.

Best of luck my friend

[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Awesome comment!

About the dashboards, I have been using CasaOS for a while now, it is not a OS, but it decently handles containers and allows you to install a bunch of services in a very user friendly way. Nowadays (as I found out a few days ago) the project seems to be moving in the direction of a fully purposed OS with NAS capabilities plus the containers stuff. Unfortunately the project (under the name ZimaOS) has gone into proprietary software and (for now) a one payment level to unlock full options with a free limited version.

I don't think I can recommend anymore to go with casaOS due to that (although for now casaOS remains free OSS kinda separate). I have been also looking for alternatives to set up a NAS and so far I am heavily leaning on OMV as it is a full OS with the idea of handling a NAS with all ready, plus it is based in Debian which is a plus for me too. Alternatively I am looking into YunoHost also, but I think it is not exactly what I want, although it looks promising.

Edit: forgot to mention FreedomBox as another option that can work as a NAS OS of sorts that helps with self hosting services too.

[–] CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Huh, sound pretty simple overall. I was mostly afraid I was missing some key features that would be painful to set up and were needed for a NAS, but apart from the filesystem and SMART tools, this isn't much less setup than I had to do with TrueNAS. Thanks!

[–] kumi@feddit.online 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Filling some gaps:

systemctl enable --now firewalld unattended-upgrades

Read through /etc/firewall/firewalld.conf, especially the part about how containers might bypass your firewall if you don't change defaults.

Also rootless podman should run well out of the box as a mostly drop-in replacement for docker (meanwhile docker also does rootless now) and allows you to run the container runtime unprivileged. This is more secure than adding user to docker (effectively root) group. Setting up autostart by writing systemd .service unit files works the same for both Docker and Podman.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

This is awesome

[–] TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

imma give you another opinion and start out with the unhelpful statement of „what’s best for you is gonna depend on what you need“

I‘ve never used debian as my personal NAS, but did manage a debian cluster at work. Compared to TrueNAS and later TrueNAS in a proxmox VM, debian is a lot more effort and in that sense „a hobby“.

Things that TrueNAS just handles for me without much work:

  • install correct and functioning legacy nvidia drivers into select docker containers. i used to use an old card and it worked like a charm. comparing that to my experience of manually installing nvidia drivers on debian, both on work servers as well as on old systems i found on the street, Debian is a real chore sometimes and requires fiddling where TrueNAS is a lot simpler.
  • TrueNAS apps are awesome. the catalogue is limited and sometimes it’s annoying how Truenas abstracts important things away (like the config file of HomeAssistant), but they are very useful too. they tend to be well-configured, updating is pretty and easy as is installing. you get automatic snapshots and rollback for each and every update. I have done systems administration as a hobby, but i kinda want my NAS to just work and that reliably. in that sense, Truenas has been better than debian for me.
  • setting things up can be annoying on truenas, but most is set and forget. I set up smart tests and they just work now. same for snapshots. configuring pools and vdevs is pretty easy and intuitive. this also is the case for harddrive power profiles and spindown. i‘ve never had to do this on debian, so all i can say is that truenas makes it all very accessible.
  • monitoring is easy-ish… if you wanna monitor from within the truenas UI, you’ll be pretty happy. there’s lots to see. some things you for some reason don’t though, and exporting makes you see even less info in some places. it’s a bit weird…
  • re-silvering is very simple
  • data replication is very nice. i’m using pcloud which has a somewhat annoying linux client. it’s a flatpak that only launches if it has a wayland (or x) session it can attach to, to display a window. kinda stupid if it’s a headless system or if i’m remoting into my desktop. still, truenas has me covered even in that regard as they can pull or push data (optionally well encrypted) to a variety of providers, including pcloud.

there probably is lots more, but i can’t think of anything else as of right now. I’ve used „plain“ Truenas scale for over a year and then switched to proxmox with a truenas VM when i built a new nas. the transition went pretty smoothly and i really like it. it does however add a layer of complexity you must be willing to deal with.

all things considered, i would like some things about truenas to work differently, but i would never wanna trade it. proxmox is very cool, and i like using it with a truenas VM, but i wouldn’t wanna use it without truenas i think. also i absolutely love debian and use it in many places. if i was running services on one machine and storage on another, id have the services on debian(or proxmox mby) and the storage on truenas, but as long as its just one device, its truenas.

additional thoughts:

  • i’ve heard good things about unraid but never tested it.
  • i’ve also seen many youtubers use CasaOS, but would recommend against it. i’ve not used it, but kept stumbling upon negative news in regards to it. it’s not as bad as omarchy/dhh, but it seems semi trustworthy.
[–] CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

On your point about it being "easy" to install containers via the app interface, are there any guidelines for how to configure them when all you've got for reference is a Docker Compose file?

A lot of stuff matches 1:1, but there are often oddities here and there, and I'm still not entirely sure of the correct way to configure storage. Some guides say to create datasets in the pool and then configure some to use the "apps" preset, while others should use "generic." Others say to just use the automatic permissions checkbox, and others still tell you to check the "Use ACL" box. When I haven't found a guide, I just created the datasets manually, set them to "apps," and so far it has worked.

And when I want to use Docker containers normally, I've been advised against it. There used to be something called "jails," but that was deprecated with the new Containers tab in the GUI. Apparently, that's being dropped again for some reason, but the jails are still deprecated, and any time I search for how to use Docker Compose, I get so much conflicting info. Some say to just run docker compose as you would on a regular server via the command line, while others say that could break the system and tell me to just use VMs instead, and it's all a mess.

The SMART stuff I mentioned was definitely my lesser worry, just a mild annoyance that tipped me over to consider switching, but the apps feel like I'm learning a whole new abstraction layer instead of just writing a Docker Compose file with input fields. Maybe that's just a me problem though and I'm simply refusing to adapt, I am really not sure.

[–] TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 hours ago

I get your point, it can be really quite confusing to go from a compose file or just general instructions and mby a docker run command to the settings of truenas.

you mention jails and that’s a core (no pun intended) issue of truenas. Truenas core is based on BSD which uses jails, whilst truenas scale is based on debian and uses docker. then recently it was all combined back into one, based on linux. hence no jails, just docker.
additionally, truenas scale was using kubernetes instead of docker until a year ago i’d guess. so what im trying to say is that whatever info you may find online could be very irrelevant if it’s for truenas core or truenas scale back in the kubernetes days.

besides the ui, if you have a compose yaml and just wanna use that for setup, you can go to apps -> discover apps -> three dots next to custom app -> install via yaml. now this is a pain to find, but it is there an it works pretty well. if you hate how that editor works, you can just paste a stub there that imports a specific other yaml file and then you put all the relevant config into that one. this extra file can then be edited via the cli, copied, moved, and version controlled, which can be very convenient.

regarding storage, using ixVolumes is perfectly fine. i prefer to have a generic dataset called apps that then contains specific datasets for each app i’m running. those specific datasets i set to the apps preset.
beyond that, i’ve got more diverse setups too. for example audiobookshelf. the config and metadata storage live in an audiobookshelf dataset in the apps dataset, as described before. this apps dataset is on a small ssd pool.
the podcasts and audiobooks themselves are stored on a larger HDD mirror. basically i have a media dataset there that uses the share preset and then within that i got an audiobooks dataset that uses the apps preset. that way audiobookshelf can use the books and i can easily access the directory via smb. additionally i run a cloud sync task from the data protection tab once a week that syncs all my audiobooks to pcloud.

now all of that isn’t necessarily easy, but i find it easier and more intuitive than doing it all via the cli on debian. then again i’ve never used debian with some specialised nas ui as others have recommended.

[–] TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

on omarchy

on dhh

[–] snekerpimp@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I ran a Debian nas with cockpit as the interface for a bit. Eventually stopped using cockpit and did most of what I needed from the terminal, just easier and quicker. Only used it for nfs shares, but you can use docker or podman no problem. The great thing about Debian is that it is barebones and easy to add exactly what you need and nothing else. There is nothing special you need to do other than install and set up the disk sharing of your choice. There are specific and special was to set certain things up, like zfs, but everything is usually well documented.

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 0 points 1 day ago

Core or Scale? If running Core I'd say install plain FreeBSD on it. Even if scale I'd consider that in a full wipe - FreeBSD is great as a server and supports ZFS out of the box without problems.

Then grow a long beard (not optional, even if female) so you can be "the old guy who has seen it all"