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TrueNAS Post-Installation

TrueNAS Community 25.10 (Goldeye) Post-Installation

Installing TrueNAS Community is fairly straightforward and self‑guided through the installer. So this is not a strict tutorial. It’s a documentation of how I configure my home server. There are many approaches to set up TrueNAS, this is simply the way I do it.

Change the Timezone

TrueNAS defaults to Los Angeles. Update it to your local time zone.

  • Go to System → General Settings → Localization

Create a Storage Pool

  1. Go to Storage → Pools → Add → Create new pool
  2. I choose the most typical name for a pool: tank
  3. Layout: I select Mirror (I have two SSDs)
  4. Disk size: with two identical 2 TB SSDs, the selectable option is typically “1.82 TiB (SSD)”
  5. Width defaults to 2 (matching two disks) and Number of VDEVs defaults to 1 — I leave both as is
  6. I click Next → optional steps left at defaults → Save And Go To Review
  7. Review settings → Create Pool
  8. Confirm the warning: “The contents of all added disks will be erased.”
It’s good practice to use identical disks for a pool. Even when two disks are labeled the same capacity, their actual usable sizes can differ slightly. The pool capacity is limited by the smallest disk, so matching drives avoids surprises.

Create a User Account

Navigate to Credentials → Users, then click Add (top‑right).

Documentation reference: Managing Users

That page may default to the “Next” (development) version. Use the version selector in the top‑right to switch to your installed release.
  • Required fields are marked with an asterisk
  • Email isn’t required, but I like to include it
  • UID is prefilled with 3000 — I leave it unchanged

Help: UID — User accounts have an ID greater than 1000 and system accounts have an ID equal to the default port number used by the service.

  • Auxiliary Groups is optional, but I add builtin_administrators to give the my user admin privileges.
  • Create new primary group: Yes (default)

Home Directory and Permissions

For Home Directory, I point it at a dataset under tank:

  1. Click the dataset picker → choose tank
  2. Click Create Dataset and name it with the username you chose before
  3. Leave “Create Home Directory” unchecked
Why this approach? I simply prefer seeing the home dataset explicitly under Datasets, which makes things more organized in my opinion.

Authentication and Shell

TrueNAS has a built-in terminal, but I prefer to use SSH to connect to my server.

  • Authorized Keys: paste my SSH public key
  • Shell (required): select zsh if you want. I wish I could use fish but it’s not supported yet.
  • Check “Allow all sudo commands” and “Allow all sudo commands with no password” If you feel adventurous.
Granting passwordless sudo is not really a good choice. I do this because it’s convenient when working in the terminal, but the GUI is the only recommended management method in TrueNAS.
  • SMB User: leave checked if you want to use SMB to access your files from other devices. Which probably you most likely will. That’s why you installed a NAS in the first place.

You’ll see a confirmation:

“With this configuration, the existing directory /mnt/tank/<username> will be used as a home directory without creating a new directory for the user.”

Confirm and continue.

Finally, log out of truenas_admin and log in with your new user.

If you added your SSH public key, you need to enable SSH in the Services section.

Personal UI Preferences

  • Theme: set to Dracula (User menu → Preferences → Theme)
  • Session timeout: increase from 5 minutes to 1 hour (3600 seconds) (User menu → Preferences)
  • Enable “Redirect to HTTPS” and “Show Console Messages” I do this as a quality of life improvement.

Prepare Datasets for Apps

I create an apps dataset and preset it for applications:

  1. Datasets → tank → Add Dataset
  2. Name: apps
  3. Dataset Preset (required): In this case I select “Apps” → Save

Tip I follow: I name datasets in lowercase to make CLI usage and compose.yaml file paths easier to type.

Create sub‑datasets under apps for each application you install later (e.g., apps/portainer).

Configure Scheduled Scrubs

I configure my pool’s scrub schedule and adjust the threshold:

  • Go to Storage → Storage Health → Schedule Scrubs → Configure
  • Change Threshold Days from 35 to 30

It’s more convinient if you search for the option in the search bar at the top of the page.

Enable the Apps Service

Go to Apps. If you see “Apps Services Not Configured” (top‑right near the gear):

  1. Click Configuration → Choose Pool
  2. Select tank or the name of your pool
  3. Status should change to “Apps Services Running”

Network Settings

Since I have two TrueNAS servers, I set a hostname to distinguish them.

  • Network → Global Configuration → Hostname (e.g., truenas01, truenas02)

Email Notifications (SMTP)

Placeholder: I’ll document SMTP setup separately and link it here when ready.

Email (SMTP) setup guide: coming soon.

First App: Portainer

I install Portainer first as my container management interface. The setup includes IP binding for a cleaner homelab experience.

Check out the Portainer installation guide for detailed step-by-step instructions.

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