Availability of User Guides of Previous FreeNAS Versions

[MrToddsFriends]

We are seeing quite a lot of users that are undecided if they should upgrade (often from some 9.10.x) to the latest FreeNAS version or not. It would be nice to have a list of new features and changes these users could be pointed to. Specifically, the user guides (UG) of the following FreeNAS versions would be helpful in this respect:

• Latest 9.10.1 release (9.10.1-U4) --- AFAIK not available at all
  
• Latest 9.10.2 release (9.10.2-U6) --- AFAIK not available at all, the "9.10" link in https://doc.freenas.org/ points to the 9.10.2-U2 UG
  
• Latest 11.0 release (11.0-U4) --- AFAIK not available as an HTML version via https://doc.freenas.org/, @gpsguy provides PDF and EPUB variants of this UG version via http://freenas.2trux.com/

Alternatively, a single list of changes would be nice, although maintaining such a document would of course cause additional work.

Side note: While I appreciate the work of @gpsguy to provide PDF and EPUB variants, I would prefer "official" HTML versions created by iXsystems.

 

[gpsguy]

IIRC, some of the older "latest" versions, never had a corresponding user guide. They may have included a single security patch.

One can watch the commits (I do) for the changes being made - https://github.com/freenas/freenas-docs/commits/master Note, it includes both FreeNAS and TrueNAS, as well as documentation for their hardware. For example, yesterday the version number was bumped to 11.1-U3.

a single list of changes would be nice

I understand your comment.

As a (hopefully) respected forum member, who has been active here for 6+ years, know that the files I host are produced using iXsystems code from github. I don't alter the files in any way, nor does my site include trackers or advertising.

While I appreciate the work of @gpsguy to provide PDF and EPUB variants, I would prefer "official" HTML versions created by iXsystems.

 

[MrToddsFriends]

As a (hopefully) respected forum member, whose been active here for 6+ years, know that the files I host are produced using iXsystems code from github. I don't alter the files in any way, nor does my site include trackers or advertising.

I do not suspect that there are any special threats lurking on your website. And of course I do appreciate your work, as well as many forum readers who prefer the UG in PDF and/or EPUB format.

But unfortunately a website maintained by a single individual is more prone to instant loss (maybe due to an accident or a severe disease) than a website maintained by a company like iXsystems.

So a more complete list of UG versions of the last three years in https://doc.freenas.org/ would be very nice to have.

 

[Arwen]

I do agree that a simple document that shows the changes, (both features and security bug fixes), from each version would be nice.
That said, if iXsystems started doing that with new versions only, (not going back to 9.10.x or 11.0.x), I could live with that.

Some of us know certain features made it into FreeNAS, like the new OpenZFS scrub / resilver improvement code. But, I personally can't say which 11.x.x version has that improvement. A single place to then search would be helpful. (I do know the bug tracker has some of this information. Even to the version. It's just not simple and easy.)

So a plain text document, (or web site), with something like this;

Version:
BugID Description
FeatureID Description
BugID Description
...

Version+1:
BugID Description
FeatureID Description

...

And if there is no bug tracker difference for Bugs verses Features, then they can all be Bugs.

I can submit a bug / feature request for this, if it seems reasonable. (The irony of that does not eascape me .

 

[dlavigne]

Starting with 11.1 we implemented the Library for recording what is new: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/knowledgebase_category/freenas-release-notes/.

 

[Arwen]

Starting with 11.1 we implemented the Library for recording what is new: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/knowledgebase_category/freenas-release-notes/.

Close, but no cigar. (Though tons better for someone doing point release upgrades. They can look at the bugs fixed, and features added before the upgrade.)

Could we have a separate page for all the bugs listed by version?

That would make searching easier.

 

[Ericloewe]

Starting with 11.1 we implemented the Library for recording what is new: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/knowledgebase_category/freenas-release-notes/.

First I've heard of this. Was this posted anywhere before?

 

[dlavigne]

Close, but no cigar. (Though tons better for someone doing point release upgrades. They can look at the bugs fixed, and features added before the upgrade.)

Could we have a separate page for all the bugs listed by version?

That would make searching easier.

That does list all bugs plus new features for each version...

 

[dlavigne]

First I've heard of this. Was this posted anywhere before?

Just in the blogs for the release AFAIK.

 

[Arwen]

That does list all bugs plus new features for each version...

No, it does not give a complete list for ALL versions.

Specific example. If a user needs a particular bug fix, (Samba comes to mind), they can search for Samba, SMB, bug # and other wording in the entire list to see which version has the bug fix.
At present, they would have to search all 3 web pages. And later, potentially dozens of releases. If they can't find the fix, (because it's not yet been released), they can delay upgrading until then. (Their user base may not want the outage unless it fixes the problem.)

During support issues, I have had to do this for other Unix OSes. Having a plain list helped.

 

[dlavigne]

Correct, as one long list would be very long.

If you wish to create one and make it available to the community, you can use https://redmine.ixsystems.com/projects/freenas/issues. Select a Status of "any" then Add filter and select Target Version. You can then get a list of all of the tickets in each release, and from there create a list that goes back as many target versions as you care to research. Note that there's nearly 30,000 tickets so this is no small feat

 

[MrToddsFriends]

Correct, as one long list would be very long. [...] Note that there's nearly 30,000 tickets so this is no small feat :)

Quick sanity check based on ChangeLog files from FreeNAS releases instead of Redmine bug tracker listings.

All FreeNAS 11 ChangeLogs up to now (199 lines total):

Code:

D:\Home\Scr\IT\Software\FreeNAS\ChangeLogs\FreeNAS_11>wc *.txt
	 18	 196	1250 ChangeLog_11.0-RELEASE.txt
	 17	 223	1532 ChangeLog_11.0-U1.txt
	  9	  93	 685 ChangeLog_11.0-U2.txt
	 40	 276	1812 ChangeLog_11.0-U3.txt
	  3	  18	 123 ChangeLog_11.0-U4.txt
	 23	 165	1079 ChangeLog_11.1-RELEASE.txt
	 50	 414	2650 ChangeLog_11.1-U1.txt
	 39	 370	2261 ChangeLog_11.1-U2.txt
	199	1755   11392 total

All FreeNAS 9.10 ChangeLogs from 9.10.1 on (327 lines total):

Code:

D:\Home\Scr\IT\Software\FreeNAS\ChangeLogs\FreeNAS_9.10>wc *.txt
	 64	 921	6710 ChangeLog_9.10.1-U1.txt
	  8	 112	 809 ChangeLog_9.10.1-U2.txt
	 61	 770	5252 ChangeLog_9.10.1-U3.txt
	  8	  97	 679 ChangeLog_9.10.1-U4.txt
	 31	 365	2246 ChangeLog_9.10.1.txt
	 27	 283	1844 ChangeLog_9.10.2-U1.txt
	 36	 412	2996 ChangeLog_9.10.2-U2.txt
	  1	  11	  77 ChangeLog_9.10.2-U3.txt
	  1	   7	  44 ChangeLog_9.10.2-U4.txt
	  2	  36	 249 ChangeLog_9.10.2-U5.txt
	  2	  16	 131 ChangeLog_9.10.2-U6.txt
	 86	1237	7717 ChangeLog_9.10.2.txt
	327	4267   28754 total

Total amount of data not that colossal in my eyes.