8.2.0 progress report

[gcooper]

If folks noticed, the bits and pieces for 8.2.0-BETA1 have been committed to SF, but haven't been officially announced. I see on the forums that some folks have installed the -BETA1 image, but there are items that need to be worked on that we're monkeying around with before coming up with an official announcement (the FreeBSD project has a similar procedure). I'm going through the GUI and poking at things so I can route items over to some of the iX devs and we can improve things for a proper -BETA1 release (there are one or two critical items that I think could be fixed in order to prevent accidental 'paths of pain').

Sorry for any confusion this may have caused, but I just wanted to make this clear somewhere and I seem to get really good feedback on the forums from the user community.

I'll see if either Josh or I can start an "8.2.0 coming soon" post so progress can be tracked for the new release.

Thanks for your patience -- we (the FreeNAS 8 dev team) really appreciate it :).

 

[Durkatlon]

I'll see if either Josh or I can start an "8.2.0 coming soon" post so progress can be tracked for the new release.

May I suggest you put this new "coming soon" thread in a forum other than "Announcements" so that the inevitably ensuing 27 page discussion about all the bugs and problems is actually in a forum intended for Discussions.

Then when 8.2.0 is ready please put an announcement in "Annoucements"! I was hoping there'd be an annoucement of 8.0.4 in this forum as well, but it never came... I cannot keep up with the daily banter in those "coming soon" threads but would like to have a clear delineation when the product is actually considered released.

Up until 8.0.2 Josh would post a thread here listing the improvements and providing the SHA256 hashes for the various downloads. I miss those! :D

 

[lrusak]

Looking forward to it! keep up the great work guys!

 

[ProtoSD]

May I suggest you put this new "coming soon" thread in a forum other than "Announcements" so that the inevitably ensuing 27 page discussion about all the bugs and problems is actually in a forum intended for Discussions.

I don't think it's going to make any difference where announcements and "coming soon" messages are posted because it comes without saying there is going to be 27 pages of discussion anyway. It's like trying to tell people to RTFM or not to post the same question more than once, it's hopeless.... ;)


Thanks for the update Garrett and as always keep up the great work!

 

[knightwolf654]

i loaded up the beta and its telling me zfs is version 15 still, is this correct?

 

[gcooper]

i loaded up the beta and its telling me zfs is version 15 still, is this correct?

Yes. 8.3 will have v28.

 

[moraga695]

Suggested Critical Fix In Version 8.2.

Hi, As far as I can tell, the process for replacing a failed drive in a zfs raidz array is still not "foolproof" as of version 8.04. Apparently, one shouldn't try this with the GUI and even if using the command line method is "successful", you still may need to do a reinstall from scratch and manually reenter all configuration settings. I respectfully suggest that a high priority be given to improving this in version 8.2. Thanks for listening.

 

[gcooper]

Hi, As far as I can tell, the process for replacing a failed drive in a zfs raidz array is still not "foolproof" as of version 8.04. Apparently, one shouldn't try this with the GUI and even if using the command line method is "successful", you still may need to do a reinstall from scratch and manually reenter all configuration settings. I respectfully suggest that a high priority be given to improving this in version 8.2. Thanks for listening.

Understood. I'll add that to my queue of items that need to be tested in 8.2.0 and maybe fixed still.

In the meantime, can you please provide more details as to how things don't work with drive replacement in 8.0.4?

Thanks!

 

[moraga695]

Understood. I'll add that to my queue of items that need to be tested in 8.2.0 and maybe fixed still.

In the meantime, can you please provide more details as to how things don't work with drive replacement in 8.0.4?

Thanks!

Hi,

I should have been more specific. Thankfully, I don't have personal experience replacing a failed drive - yet. I've only been using Freenas for about 6 months and during that time I've been trying to learn all I can by reading stuff posted on the Freenas Forums and other places. The gist of what I've found on the subject of replacing failed drives is that doing it with the GUI doesn't work (or perhaps people don't know how to do it correctly?). I've not been able to find a how-to that completely describes the GUI replacement process, nor have I found any posts where somebody said that they successfully used the GUI to complete a restore (or people only comment when the outcome is bad?).

Here are two example links where command line restores are discussed:

http://protosd.blogspot.com/2011/12/protosds-unofficial-freenas-8-faq.html (See Item #4)

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?1191-How-to-replace-a-HDD-in-a-raidz1-in-8.0.1-Beta-4

My take-away is that you can successfully replace a failed drive with commands, but you'd better not make any mistakes or you may lose data - and be ready to reinstall Freenas from scratch and then try to remember all the settings you had before because you are going to have to reenter them all.

There is very little out there yet regarding 8.04, or 8.03-p1 for that matter, so I don't know if any changes were made to change/improve failed drive handling (but I didn't see the subject mentioned in the release notes for either version).

Best I can tell, the articles linked above are representative of what's out there on the subject and I'm led to believe the process isn't nearly foolproof (especially for noobs like me). From things you and Josh have written, it appears one of your goals is to make Freenas more user friendly and, IMHO, a failed drive and possibility of lost data because a user doesn't fully understand how to replace a drive is of critical importance. If my impressions are wrong and there are no longer any failed drive issues in 8.04, I will gladly stand corrected. Thanks for your help!

 

[ProtoSD]

Moraga,

I'm a little behind on updating some of my posts and FAQ. There are still some issues with replacing disks that require interaction from the command line, (I have an open ticket on one relating to swap parition sizes preventing replacement) but replacing from the GUI works better than it did when those posts you reference were written. It's definitely still not foolproof, but getting better.

 

[moraga695]

Moraga,

I'm a little behind on updating some of my posts and FAQ. There are still some issues with replacing disks that require interaction from the command line, (I have an open ticket on one relating to swap parition sizes preventing replacement) but replacing from the GUI works better than it did when those posts you reference were written. It's definitely still not foolproof, but getting better.

Good to hear! I'll look forward to even more improvements in 8.2.0.

Is there a how-to or other instruction somewhere about the procedure for correctly replacing a failed drive using the GUI?

 

[ProtoSD]

Here are the Official docs:

http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Volumes#Replacing_a_Failed_Drive

If you look in the bug reporting section here in the forums, there's an outline of what I had to do with 8.03 and the ticket #.

 

[seer_tenedos]

what is plugin support like in 8.2.0 beta? If it has working plugin support then i will consider moving to the beta.

 

[x-cimo]

FreeNAS is very interesting, however the old ZFS version it support is an issue. How long until 8.3 is out (estimate based on previous release cycle) ? Is it a few month thing or a year thing? Are there any other GUI implementation with a newer ZFS version for NAS with ZFS and iSCSI / SMB with domain integration ?

Thanks!

 

[James]

After FreeBSD 8.3 is released. http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.3R/schedule.html shows it scheduled for the end of March. Seeing that it's already in RC1, that shouldn't be too off the mark.

 

[James]

At the moment, there's very few plugins. For the ones that exist, it is very cool how their configuration integrates into the GUI. I'll be polishing up the how to create a plugin section after I've had a chance to make a few plugins. The existing docs (which will improve over next few weeks as I test and document) are here: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Plugins_Configuration.

 

[seer_tenedos]

At the moment, there's very few plugins.

I just had a look at the doco and the list of current plugins ( minidlna, transmission, firefly). It looks and sounds good.

Shame i wanted MySQL, SabNzbd, Sickbeard, Couchpatato, Headphones as well but maybe it will not be too hard to make the plugin myself as i already have them running in a jail so hopefully it would not be too hard to integrate them into a plugin when i get some time.

Great start on the plugins and just to be clear i am not complaining that there are only 3 or anything like that. I think it is great that there are 3 of them already!

 

[lrusak]

do the plugins have to be freeNAS specific or can freeBSD plugins be used?

 

[ProtoSD]

Hi Seer,

Joshua Parker Ruehlig is working on the SabNzbd, Sickbeard, Couchpatato, Headphones plugin here:

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?6221-sabnzbd-sickbeard-couchpotato-pbi-s

If you already know how to use a jail and don't care about a plugin it should be easy to initialize the Plugin Jail and just install the apps you need from within the jail and configure everything from the command line inside the jail.

It shouldn't be long before there are a lot more plugins ready.

 

[Daisuke]

Will Nginx be implemented in 8.2? Looking forward to the release.
Are we going to have official plugins released by you guys?