Developer Volker Theile Working state Current | ||
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Initial release 17 October 2011; 5 years ago (2011-10-17) |
OpenMediaVault (OMV) is a free Linux distribution designed for network-attached storage (NAS). The project's lead developer is Volker Theile, who instituted it in 2009. OMV is based on the Debian operating system, and is licensed through the GNU General Public License v3.
Contents
Background
By the end of 2009, Volker Theile was the only active developer of FreeNAS, a NAS operating system that Olivier Cochard-Labbé started developing from m0n0wall in 2005. m0n0wall is a variation of the FreeBSD operating system, and Theile decided he wanted to rewrite FreeNAS for Linux. The project team had known for months that FreeNAS needed a major rewrite in order to support crucial features. Since Cochard-Labbé preferred to stay with a FreeBSD-based system, he and Theile agreed that Theile would develop his Linux version under a different name; that name was initially coreNAS, but within a matter of days Theile discarded it in favour of OpenMediaVault.
Meanwhile, FreeNAS still needed to be rewritten and maintained. To accomplish this, Cochard-Labbé handed development over to iXsystems, an American company that develops the PC-BSD operating system.
Technical design
Theile chose Debian because the large number of programs in its package management system meant that he wouldn't have to spend time repackaging software himself. OpenMediaVault makes few changes to the Debian operating system. It provides a Web-based user interface for administration and customisation, and a plug-in API for implementing new features. One can install plug-ins through the Web interface.
Features
Plug-ins
Additional plug-ins
Additional plug-ins are available via additional package repositories. The majority of those Plug-ins are developed by a group called OpenMediaVault Plugin Developers. The status of all Plug-ins can be viewed online. In October 2014 there were around 30 plugins available. In June 2015 there are already more than 70 stable plug-ins available.
Third-party plug-ins
Some of the software that is controllable via third-party plug-ins are:
Minimum System requirements
Release history
For each OpenMediaVault release, Thiele chooses a project code name from Frank Herbert's Dune novels.