FreeNAS 9.10 to FreeNAS 11 Jails

[jag131990]

Hi Guys I apologise if the answer to this is obvious -

I am having trouble finding information whether my existing jails in 9-10-2 will work if I upgrade to FreeNAS 11 of if I will need to rebuild them all?

 

[jag131990]

dlavigne has suggested to this user that its a great time for him to start setting up his jails which implies to me this is not 'loss of work' i.e. these jails will migrate between 9.10.2 and 9.10.3... https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/jails-future.54006/

I have seen conflicting information all over this forum and the FreeNAS 11 documentation does not answer this question..

IMO this is a big deal, and this should very clear.

 

[SweetAndLow]

They will work but not really. You will have a FreeBSD 10 userspace and a freebsd 11 kernel. This mismatch will cause problems but you might not notice.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[dlavigne]

To add to SweetAndLow's comment, I suspect this will be similar to the jail upgrades we saw during the bump from 9.3 (9.x backend) to 9.10 (10.x backend) due to the ABI bump in the backend FreeBSD operating system.

These were the FAQs we wrote at that time:

Will my 9.3 jails continue to work under 9.10?

Yes and no. If you have a 9.3 jail used by a plugin or other application that you don't plan to change in any way (you just want it to continue to work), then yes, it will keep working just fine. If you are trying to use FreeBSD tools like the ports and packages collection (or any of the various upgrade helpers for them) then NO. Those tools inspect the currently running OS version and will immediately detect a mis-match and get angry. If you want to do any "manual jail management" then you need a 9.10 jail.

How do I create a 9.10 jail?

Due to the way that templates are cached over the lifetime of a FreeNAS install (an architectural design flaw it is too late to fix now), you will need a fresh (totally empty) jail root in order to trigger the download and installation of a FreeBSD 10 jail environment (template).

Once we get more feedback from users and their various jail scenarios, we can add any caveats or known limitations to the Guide, and if we get feedback in time for RELEASE, also to the Release Notes for 11.

 

[jag131990]

Thanks for the clarity guys.

I take it, provided I do not upgrade my pool, then there is relatively no risk to try this out, and be able to revert back?

 

[Ericloewe]

Even if you upgrade the pool, the new feature flags in this particular case do not prevent the pool from being imported, unless you actually use them.

 

[jag131990]

Hang on a minute the jail dataset contains all the system files and would be upgraded to the new base os..

Then if you upgrade and it breaks if you revert you still have a modified jail? The only way I can see testing this is to use snapshots before the upgrade and restore them when downgrading

 

[jag131990]

If the above (which I had seen elsewhere) in the forum is wrong then assuming the base os remains unchanged in a jail after upgrading, what is meant by no 'manual jail managment' you can't actually get to the shell?

 

[Jailer]

Hang on a minute the jail dataset contains all the system files and would be upgraded to the new base os..

The datasets don't get touched in an upgrade. The jails template will still exist just as it has from previous major system updates. The base OS will be updated but the installed base in the existing jails remains what it was when the template in the jails dataset was downloaded.

For example the switch from 9.3 to 9.10 changed from FreeBSD 9.3 to FreeBSD 10.3. The jails template, if you had one in 9.3, was still there unchanged along with all your jails. They continued to remain functional just as before. If you created a new jail after updating it will downloaded the new template and create a new jail from that newer template.

 

[SweetAndLow]

They continued to remain functional just as before

ehh this is questionable. It did work but it might not work correctly all the time. Most people will never notice.

 

[Jailer]

Good point. With the switch to iocage for jail management coming up it may be a whole new ballgame. I sure hope they can coexist so jails can be migrated.

 

[jag131990]

Thanks guys. Would you also expect to be able to SSH to these existing jails?? I would hope there is some form of 'jail management', I need to perform sometimes upgrades to nextcloud and check packages/ports.

 

[dlavigne]

Yes, the functionality remains the same, it is the backend that creates the jails which has changed. In other words, everything in the Jails chapter of the Guide still applies.

 

[mloiterman]

So, what's the definitive answer here. What happens to jails when upgrading from 9.10 to 11?

 

[Jailer]

So, what's the definitive answer here. What happens to jails when upgrading from 9.10 to 11?

The same thing that has been already stated in this thread. If you are holding off on upgrading you might be better served waiting for 11.1 and the new jails management system.

 

[jag131990]

So, what's the definitive answer here. What happens to jails when upgrading from 9.10 to 11?

Funny enough this is my thread... I finally took the plunge to actually do this today about 8 hrs ago. Can report all working for the most part. Something does seem to be broken with my OpenVPN jail as I can connect but the ipfw rules that should allow access to the lan appears broken so no actual access.

Edit: to anyone anyone attempting the same just note that your tun adapted names may reassign/move themselves after the upgrade which was the case here.

 

[Scharbag]

IIRC I read in another post that it may be best to wait for 11.1.x and then rebuild the jails. Not sure if this applies. Is that the case?

I am running 9.10.2-U6. I have 5 jails that I use and 4 of them are plugins that are pretty easy to rebuild. I am also running FreeNAS on ESXi if that causes any other issues.

Cheers,

 

[Moppen]

I have 5 jails that I use and 4 of them are plugins that are pretty easy to rebuild.

I read this a lot in that context ... but what actually means 'rebuilding a plugin' technically?

 

[Scharbag]

By rebuild, I just mean that they will need to be deleted, the jail subsystem re-installed with the latest version (mine were last created in 9.10) and then the settings restored. Nothing major and not really required if they keep working properly.

Unless something has changed and the jail subsystem is updated when the base OS is updated.

Cheers,