High disk activity and error messages - help needed

[JFD]

Hi everyone,

My FreeNAS system (FreeNAS 9.10.2-U6) woke up last night with some high disk activity since it is located in my bedroom. I attached a screenshot. I have no clue why this is, and it did not happen before for as far as I know. When looking at the dashboard there are a lot of alert.py messages which I do not understand. Can somebody please help figure this out and tell me what to do?

Thanks so much in advance.

 

[dlavigne]

That's an old release...

Anything else in /var/log/messages around the time of the disk activity?

 

[JFD]

@dlavigne yes it is not the most recent. been away for a while, busy with other things (like a new house). But can I just press update to update to 11.2 STABLE?

 

[dlavigne]

That's about 3 years worth of updates, which makes it tricker to update your config. If your config is not complex, you could install the latest 11.2 (U6) and recreate your config.

If you want to keep your config, it's recommended to first update to 11.1, verify your config still works, then update to 11.2. If you go this route, backup your config first before going to 11.1, then again before going to 11.2 as the update itself might be hard on the boot device (if it's USB), causing it to fail.

 

[JFD]

@dlavigne thanks for your reply. Since I have been away from all this for some time I hope you can give me a step by step guide or so. I don't think I have a complex system with 1 pool (3 hard disks) with 7 folders and 1 jail/plugin (sabnzbd).

But if I could update without needing to recreate settings for all this that would be great. So could you be so kind to tell me what to do? Exactly what to backup and how, how to install 11.1 since I cannot select in in the interface. The boot device is USB. Do I need to clean it up?

with kind regards, J

 

[JFD]

I simply did "save config" and trying to find the 11.1 file (and then do a manual update right?). But which version should I get from https://download.freenas.org/11/ ???

 

[dlavigne]

If you haven't already updated, try https://download.freenas.org/11/11.1-U7/.

 

[JFD]

the manual update to 11.1u7 was successful. But I get the message: New feature flags are available for volume FreeNAS_Z1_1. Refer to the "Upgrading a ZFS Pool" section of the User Guide for instructions. Do I upgrade the ZFS Pool? And when do I do that? After updating to stable 11.2 is my guess. Please help me if you will so I am up and running on the most current version ;-). Thanks so far

 

[JFD]

@dlavigne I am on 11.2U6 now. n00b as I am ;-) I noticed that I need the legacy layout to manage the jail that is used for downloading with VPN and sabnzbd. I really like the new layout so I now have 2 open questions:

1: can I "update" the legacy jail to the new interface?
2: do I or do I not update the ZFS pool? It seems like I don't need it but there is also no problem to update. I now get an alert on this to do so.

 

[dlavigne]

Check out the sections on Updating the Storage Pools and Updating Existing Jails or Plugins at https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/library/freenas-11-2-release/.

 

[JFD]

@dlavigne I already started reading on it. But still I think I do not need to update but what is the risk in updating when not needed? Usually newer is better, right?

On the question of jails, plugins I found in your link that sabnzbd is not approved for the 11.2 environment and therefore I believe I should just leave the jail and sabnzbd alone for now. I need to execute "service openvpn restart" every day to be able to download using sabnzbd + VPN and I hoped that something magically happened in FreeNAS 11(.2) that would fix this ;-)