11.1 to 11.3 upgrade & everything is lost. Can't find step-by-step help....help?

[hamby]

I was foolish and went down a rabbit hole and updated from 11.1 to 11.3. All of my plugins like Plex are no longer there. I installed them again. How do I point these new plugins to the data and recover the metadata? I am one who tinkers around with Freenas but having two children within two-years I have not messed with my ixSystem FreeNAS Mini in a couple of years. It just happily chugged along. I have been searching for instructions but most of the time it seems people post something that would be routine for someone more versed in FreeNAS. Should I just wipe everything on my system (not the media and metadata) but everything else and start a "clean" 11.3 build? Are there any patient souls out there to help walk me through this process? I am a bit underwater and a new freeNAS dad. I honestly wish I could have someone login to my system and share their screen to show me how to clean all this up. FreeNAS lesson?

 

[Samuel Tai]

11.3 switched from warden to iocage for jail/plugin management. You can reboot back into 11.1 to regain access to your plugins. Look under System->Boot, and click the 3 dots next to your previous boot environment to Activate it for the next boot. Once back in 11.1, remove any boot environments for 11.3, and the iocage datasets in your pool.

The recommended upgrade path is 11.1->11.2->11.3. Please read the release notes before any upgrades. See https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/path-to-success-for-system-upgrades.85589/.

You can find the manual install upgrades at http://download.freenas.org/. Then once you're back in 11.3, you can try running the plugin migration script from shell via /usr/local/sbin/migrate_warden.py.

 

[hamby]

Thank you!! A follow up...I am thinking of just waiting until 12 is full release. IF I wait until then and wanted to do a complete rebuild from the ground up. I would need to save all metadata for plex and then wipe all jails. Update to 12. Re-install plugins. Point the plugins to the volumes (with all the content) and then I should be good? The only thing we use our ixSystem freenas mini for is media, photos, and computer backup.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

I'd encourage you to upgrade now and follow @Samuel Tai's recommended upgrade path. The reason is that embracing a .0 version of any major release brings with it its own challenges. It's better to 'get your house in order' before then to put you in a good position to ease into TrueNAS 12 Core.

The only piece of advice that I would change is maybe to suggest that you consider using @danb35's Scripted Plex resource which places Plex metadata outside the jail and also auto-updates Plex.