What is the future of TrueNAS CORE?

[Kris Moore]

It's not so much the discomfort of using the terminal, but rather that a GUI will give it a "seat at the table" of a fully-fledged and supported "NAS" feature. *(That, and it also saves time and is easier to manage, rather than doing every step manually.)

Would be nice (that's an understatement!) to have an "iocage equivalent" for systemd-nspawn "Linux jails".

* I honestly don't believe I would have gotten into using jails in TrueNAS Core if there was no iocage + GUI for iocage. (It streamlines a lot of things under-the-hood.)

That's fair and we agree. A proper GUI is much desired and on the list :)

 

[winnielinnie]

A proper GUI is much desired and on the list :)

Should be ready by March? I'm willing to wait until mid-April.

(Anyone stumbling upon this tag-less, emoticon-less post: I'm bein sarcastic.)

 

[adrianwi]

What a sad thread

I love Free/TrueNAS Core and to think 13.x might just be left to die is so disheartning.

 

[danb35]

The Future of TrueNAS...

https://lawrence.video/truenasThe TrueNAS Forum Posthttps://www.truenas.com/community/threads/what-is-the-future-of-truenas-core.116049/page-2TrueNAS Documen...

www.youtube.com

Even mentions this thread.

 

[beagle]

The Future of TrueNAS...

https://lawrence.video/truenasThe TrueNAS Forum Posthttps://www.truenas.com/community/threads/what-is-the-future-of-truenas-core.116049/page-2TrueNAS Documen...

www.youtube.com

Even mentions this thread.

I gave him a nudge

The future of TrueNAS Core

Hi folks, I’ve seen this interesting thread on the TrueNAS forum about the future of TrueNAS Core and the roadmap for TrueNAS. Some insightful inputs from Kris Moore (ixSystem SVP of Engineering) who discusses some of the challenges presented in developing for FreeBSD and pointing that due to...

forums.lawrencesystems.com

 

[michaeldexter]

I am attending regular ZFS and bhyve users calls organised by Michael Dexter and I can assure you that there is concern among more "hard core" developers than me to turn the platform into a true open source project again. Not entirely convinced we will gain traction, but I will definitely try to contribute what I can.

If you wonder why I frequently bring up that name, even though Michael does not participate here - watch this for his ideas about what makes an "appliance" and a strong argument that FreeBSD is the appliance OS.

The FreeBSD Appliance - Michael Dexter - EuroBSDcon 2023

Michael Dexter: The FreeBSD Appliance The FreeBSD Operating System has traditionally been viewed as both a complete server and desktop solution, and a colle...

www.youtube.com

I participate here! I had to renew my account... but here I am.

It didn't help that Lawrence Systems recently published a bizarre video stating more or less that "BSD is dying because Gluster is dying on Linux" and I sincerely hope people can keep these things separate. FreeBSD isn't dying and in my direct experience has never been better.

The state of the FreeBSD project aside, I worked on two TrueNAS SCALE systems this week, each running different recent versions.

Two simple comments:

1. Please decide on where to put disk replacement-related buttons.

2. Please make disk replacement work.

The replacement devices had been used under a QNAP zpool and were correctly recognized as having 1. partitions and 2. a previous zpool.

However, "Force(d)" replacement did not work. It also did not work after several "Wipes" but the device was always busy.

I found three command line strategies to clear the partition tables of disks but the partition table was always held onto by the kernel.

FYI: blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sdX should do the trick and not require a reboot.

Replacements are still failing and 'lsblk' shows the original partition sizes and replacing 4TB disks with 8TB disks did not result in a large pool and still has one drive that refuses to replace.

Please make disk replacement work. To your credit, I don't think Proxmox has an in-GUI replacement yet.

Please also stop moving things, add CTRL-T, and get 100GbE performance on par with CORE.

Thx!

Michael Dexter
Former iXsystems Senior Analyst and independent support provider

 

[Kris Moore]

I participate here! I had to renew my account... but here I am.

It didn't help that Lawrence Systems recently published a bizarre video stating more or less that "BSD is dying because Gluster is dying on Linux" and I sincerely hope people can keep these things separate. FreeBSD isn't dying and in my direct experience has never been better.

The state of the FreeBSD project aside, I worked on two TrueNAS SCALE systems this week, each running different recent versions.

Two simple comments:

1. Please decide on where to put disk replacement-related buttons.

On the devices page when you click a disk? Seems straight-forward to me.

2. Please make disk replacement work.

The replacement devices had been used under a QNAP zpool and were correctly recognized as having 1. partitions and 2. a previous zpool.

However, "Force(d)" replacement did not work. It also did not work after several "Wipes" but the device was always busy.

I found three command line strategies to clear the partition tables of disks but the partition table was always held onto by the kernel.

FYI: blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sdX should do the trick and not require a reboot.

Replacements are still failing and 'lsblk' shows the original partition sizes and replacing 4TB disks with 8TB disks did not result in a large pool and still has one drive that refuses to replace.

Please make disk replacement work. To your credit, I don't think Proxmox has an in-GUI replacement yet.

Did you file a bug ticket? Disk replacement works, but we probably need some details on that particular disks's formatting, guessing some data protections are getting in the way.

Please also stop moving things, add CTRL-T, and get 100GbE performance on par with CORE.

Ctrl-T is really irrelevant to the product overall, we actively discourage usage of the command-line for non super technical users, and frankly lack of Ctrl-T on Linux hasn't hurt any adoption in the grand scheme of things :)

100GbE (And beyond!) is high on our list, SMB performance on SCALE exceeds CORE now, iSCSI is not far behind and we expect it to eclipse in the near future. The ARC changes landing in Dragonfish was a major win, at this point we see ZFS on Linux integration being as good in nearly every respect, even better if you consider what the Linux kernel brings to the table on top of it.

Thx!

Michael Dexter
Former iXsystems Senior Analyst and independent support provider

Good to hear from you again!

 

[danb35]

Disk replacement works,

Not to expand a pool, it doesn't, as I and several others have reported (including multiple tickets). Supposedly it's fixed in 23.10.2 though.

 

[Kris Moore]

Not to expand a pool, it doesn't, as I and several others have reported (including multiple tickets). Supposedly it's fixed in 23.10.2 though.

Ahh, thanks, that context helps. I found the ticket and indeed that piece is fixed in 23.10.2:

[NAS-126809] - iXsystems TrueNAS Jira

ixsystems.atlassian.net

 

[michaeldexter]

Kris! Long time no talk!

On the devices page when you click a disk? Seems straight-forward to me.

View attachment 75549

On this point: One version had zpool status under a "hamburger" menu while the second one follows this layout. The user and I finally found them, but they were in different places. One was 23.10.12, for what it's worth.

As for the actual replacement, the zpool was created with SCALE but the disks came from a QNAP ZFS-based NAS. Replacing disks via the GUI above resulted in valid warnings that there was evidence of a previous zpool, but also several busy warnings along these lines confirmed at the GUI: (I tried to upload a screen shot but get this via Chrome:
Oops! We ran into some problems.
Security error occurred. Please press back, refresh the page, and try again.
Good news! It let me attach it. See attached.
Paraphrased: 'sgdisk -Z /dev/sdg
Warning: The kernel is still using the olde partition table. ... You should reboot

I confess I was at the mercy on search for this. I tried that syntax and 'sfdisk --delete /dev/sdg' and eventually was lead to 'blockdev --rereadpt /dev/sdg', which does not require a reboot. For the win! This allowed the 8TB disk to replace a 4TB disk and while that worked for most, lsblk showed 3.4TB partitioning on 8TB disk. The capacity did not grow. I would experiment further if it were my own system, but alas I cannot.

Did you file a bug ticket? Disk replacement works, but we probably need some details on that particular disks's formatting, guessing some data protections are getting in the way.

Given my limited access to the system, about all I can do is report that the "[X] Force" did not adequately cleanse the disks that 1. had partitioning and 2. remnants of a previous zpool. Hopefully you test this scenario in the pre-flighting. Yeah, I admit that disks can have mysterious pasts. I recall Disks: Wipe warning of the zpool but my screen shots are missing this. My apologies!

Ctrl-T is really irrelevant to the product overall, we actively discourage usage of the command-line for non super technical users, and frankly lack of Ctrl-T on Linux hasn't hurt any adoption in the grand scheme of things :)

It's handy when it's handy! But yeah, hopefully most have never heard of it. I have no choice but to live and die at the command line.

100GbE (And beyond!) is high on our list, SMB performance on SCALE exceeds CORE now, iSCSI is not far behind and we expect it to eclipse in the near future. The ARC changes landing in Dragonfish was a major win, at this point we see ZFS on Linux integration being as good in nearly every respect, even better if you consider what the Linux kernel brings to the table on top of it.

It's a journey! I cannot emphasize enough grateful I am for the amazing OpenZFS improvements your team has made AND the fact that you are keeping SCALE and CORE compatible at a zpool level. Data portability for the win!

Good to hear from you again!

Likewise!

 

[michaeldexter]

Ahh, thanks, that context helps. I found the ticket and indeed that piece is fixed in 23.10.2:

[NAS-126809] - iXsystems TrueNAS Jira

ixsystems.atlassian.net

Indeed good to know.

 

[lproven]

2 years to fork the project

There is already a fork of the original FreeNAS, just FWIW.

XigmaNAS – XigmaNAS

xigmanas.com

 

[Ericloewe]

Yeah, it's never really come close to matching FreeNAS 8.x+/TrueNAS.

 

[victort]

Yeah, it's never really come close to matching FreeNAS 8.x+/TrueNAS.

Agreed. Love the bastille plug-in but my experience with XigmaNAS has been wanting…

 

[winnielinnie]

While at first I thought they had promise, I don't care if they fail.

For one simple reason: The XigmaNAS forums are private.

They can go pound sand.

Not only does it come off as elitist, and not only does it withhold useful troubleshooting and information from anonymous views, but their posts rarely populate the results of a web search. (You just have to cross your fingers and hope something was scraped. Even still, if you do find a post, you cannot browse the parent subforum, since the whole thing is private.)

 

[Ericloewe]

The XigmaNAS forums are private.

That's just ridiculous. I complained a lot back in the day when this forum still had the XenForo default of restricting full-resolution images to registered members (sidenote: WHY THE HELL? It only serves to piss people off!). Closing off the whole forum is a whole different level.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

There is already a fork of the original FreeNAS, just FWIW.

We are pondering a fork of the current TrueNAS on a current FreeBSD. Forking that years old architecture just would not make sense.

Just to make that clear: I am absolutely satisfied with the feature set and the stability iXsystems have delivered in the last couple of years. I still use and support various TrueNAS CORE installations and I see little incentive to switch to SCALE. I run one SCALE system out of curiosity, but all apps on that are TrueCharts ones. And the k3s networking is a joke. This is 2024. The Internet is IPv6. IPv4 is legacy.

The only - really the only - thing missing in the last releases has been the lack of keeping up with FreeBSD updates. If this was my project I would absolutely push for separating the TrueNAS part from the FreeBSD OS part. What I personally want is TrueNAS on FreeBSD 14, 15, .... 20, ... for the next 20 years to come. Nothing else. I have ten years of professional live in IT ahead of me and hopefully another 10 to 20 of hobbyist work in various open source communities and I don't see ANY reason to switch to Linux for the things I am personally interested in.

So if - and there still is a big IF - iXsystems officially stop support beyond FreeBSD 13 ... then there is a reason to try and set up a community driven fork of the project. But only then.

Kind regards,
Patrick

 

[rumbeard]

Why? TrueNAS CORE is on github - it's open source. BSD licensed. Everything and the kitchen sink. We just need to find a team that doesn't start promising then loses steam within weeks. And we need to agree among developers about the direction and the first steps.

My personal idea:

• Fork - just do it.
• Agree on a name - no idea if FreeNAS is trademarked by iX and if yes, if they are willing to let it go. OpenNAS? Whatever.
• Understand the build process, familiarise myself so I can reliably build the status quo into a release.
• Now work starts: identify all local modifications they made to the FreeBSD source tree, judge if they are necessary, if possible undo them and find a different solution.
• The goal is to get a clean reliable build on a stock FreeBSD release - just put the "XY-NAS" on top.
• Same for the ports tree. One example I am aware of: they modified the collectd port. It delivers many more metrics compared to the stock FreeBSD one. What I do not understand: WHY THEY NEVER UPSTREAMED THAT?
• Once we can build "XY-NAS" on a stock FreeBSD and stock FreeBSD packages, switch from 13.2 to 14 or even 15, fix breakage until you get a clean build again.
• Then - and only then - think about new features, UI improvements etc.

My personal mantra when building on top of open source projects: never - at all costs - keep local modifications. Upstream everything. EVERYTHING. When my developer colleagues ask for a piece of software like - lately - phpfpmtop that does not exist on FreeBSD I create a port and submit it for inclusion in the ports tree. Picture Steve Ballmer's "dance monkey" but instead of "developers, developers, ..." go "upstream, upstream, upstream ..."

That's me. That's how I think open source should be done.

Kind regards,
Patrick

Or we could look at OmniOS. Sun Solaris is where ZFS came from. I've been enjoying running a virtual VAX on simh inside OmniOS for a bit.

 

[Stux]

I'm a long time BSD fan... I grew up in the Kali east bay, back when you could hop on BART with a blank tape and (*cough*) a nickle bag, go find a grad student and trade for the latest BSD src. I remember going to my college library (I didn't make UCB's list... and no I don't partake of the stuff myself, I'm dumb enough naturally...) in the 80's and reading each installment of the Jolitz articles for 386BSD... And I get the bit about attachment... I got sucked into Sun until (credit B. Cantrill's allegorical labeling...) the Nazi's took it over, and got dumped after 16 years...

FWIW - My first Linux kernel was 0.95a... Downloaded on actual "floppy" floppy's... I would challenge @jgreco's Grinch for curmudgeonness, but he's so much better at it than I am...



This is probably my problem... I have two down-rev jails. I don't want to port them to Linux/Docker/LXC/Etc... for the foreseeable future. Can SCALE give me a "BSD-JAIL" VM that can import them from TrueNAS CORE without me fiddling around with the networking, etc...? Even for a transitional horizon of year or three? I know I can pull this off myself after a day or two of work, but... I don't have time to poke at it and deal with the CORE -> SCALE uncertainties. I'm a power user, but not a paying power user. My understanding is this upgrade requires me to use a vacation day or two. Is there a solution that solves this problem in a day or two for all of us that don't have a day or two? Consider this may be one of the bigger logjams remaining in the CORE -> SCALE transition for actual paying iX customers.

As someone who just did that "day off" to upgrade... I'd suggest moving your jails into a VM on your CORE install... then when you migrate to SCALE its much simpler to get that VM up and running.

Later, migrate the services out of the VM if you want.

I migrated my jails to "docker compose" in an ubuntu vm on CORE a few years back... and that was a good decision. And really, now that I know exactly how to do it, getting the VM back up and running on SCALE was trivial.

Next step for me is to make use of jailmaker once Dragonfish releases, and hopefully begin migrating some of the docker-compose compositions out of the VM...

And maybe after that I'll look at moving some of them over into SCALE's native app system. Or not... the docker-compose stuff is rock solid... but cmd-line.

 

[Robert@f[m]]

So, I'm just a new member of this TrueNas Community, but I'm using TrueNAS Core for quite a few years and I have found so many good advices here in this community for several Tasks in my Career for issues about working with TrueNAS. This is a great Community.

Then, I have to thank you iXsystem for all the work, they have done to get TrueNAS Core up and running.

I have also supported TrueNAS by translation it into german. :)

But...

... as I have read about the fact that TrueNAS Core should be "End-of-Life" of FreeBSD (https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/18/truenas_abandons_freebsd/). I searched and have found this long Thread.

After reading the hole disscussion I have a few questions:

#--------------------#
As from the start of this Discussion, it was asked about a roadmap for TrueNAS Core. Is there any? I have not found any word about it. I have found other entries for 13.3 (https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/next-version-of-truenas-core.116418/), but will this be true?

Why wasn't this mentioned until now?

#--------------------#
Kris and several other writes suggested, to move the jails into VM to easier move them to TrueNAS scale. Why?

I have all jails (Web-, Database-, Mail-, Radio-Streaming-, owncast-Streaming-, LDAP-Server) as basejails, or called "FAT-jails".

I see them all as full machines or full VMs and I have all services up and running. Not even on my Storage here in my Business. No, even at my customers side I have the same principle up and running.

As long as they are running, and the oldest macine is running for more than 7 years right now, there was no problem in upgrading TrueNAS-OS, the Software or Applications like nextcloud. I have all software, e.g. nexcloud, from the manufacturer and the upgrading is not a big thing.

For my business-Setup with 7 jails up and running constantly the upgrade of OS and third-party-Software does not take longer than 1 hour.

So, why should I transfer these base-jails into VMs? They work as expected.

If the statement that it is easier to move a VM from TrueNAS Core to TrueNAS scale, then in my opinion this is rather an admission that TrueNAS Core will no longer be further developed by iXsystems.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

And please, think of the fact, that not all enthusiasts of TrueNAS Core/scale/"what-ever" are dev-ops. No, they are not, There are also a wide number of simple Admins, which want to use TrueNAS as NAS and Serving-machines.

Not every admin wants to learn all technologies just because they are "in" in some areas. I do not know Containers very good, but I know that you can't run a Linux-container on FreeBSD.

Why should I? I have jails for separation, and Upgrades, as I have mentioned before are running smoothly.

Containers may be the greatest thing in the world for dev-ops, but for a simple admin who wants to keep his business running, he will be happy if he can build very flexible systems with ZFS and jails and can also count on having a reliable system running in the future.

When I compare, building up a basejail and building up a container, I can not see and advantage for both sides. You have quite some things to do to get them up and running. Installing the Third-Partyx Software on the jail or container is an other way but the same effort.

So why should I use containers?

All my customers are very happy with TrueNAS Core as it is and want to keep it that way in the long term.

#--------------------#

This should be not bashing. Instead this should be a view from a user, which is satisfied with all the thing in TrueNAS Core.

The only Thing is the look into the future. FreeBSD 14 is out, and very good and 13.3 is also there.

Is ther really no statement about a roadmap from TrueNAS Core FreeBSD-based for the long term?

Kind Regards

Robert Friemer