How to rollback 9.2.1.9 to 8.3.1

[NASbox]

I've been running FreeNAS v8.3.1 for quite some time with very little problems, (some issues with samba and windows) and I thought an upgrade would be useful.

Unfortunately I didn't read that the database and logging changes in 9.2.1.9 make it impossible to have my drives spin down when not in use. Given the limited amount of use (drives on the main pool spin up an average of less than 4x/day for 20 minutes each) and with the drives I am currently using (Seagate desktop drives not rated for 24/7 use) I can't tolerate this situation, so I need to rollback for now.

I cloned my 8.3.1 USB drive and upgraded the clone (so I still have my old USB drive just as it was before the upgrade), and I did NOT upgrade the pools. Can I simply shut down the box, put the old drive back in and reboot? I also did a save of the configuration as well in case I needed it.

Did the upgrade do anything to my data? Do I need to do anything to the pools to rollback?

What about the .system directory?
If I understand correctly, this is brand new in 9.x version.
Should this be deleted?
What if I later decide to upgrade again? Would this out of date .system directory cause problems?

Thanks very much for any help.

 

[cyberjock]

In theory, you should be able to go back to 8.3.1 without problems. If you had upgraded the pool, you'd be reading a different story.

In theory, if you go back to 8.3.1 you can delete the .system partition. I can't tell you if your permissions and such are going to work the same or not. Your pool's ACLs have been touched by Samba4. There's no way to know what the consequences of going backwards as far as you are will be. Nobody generally rolls back as far as you have, and you are leaving yourself open to quite a bunch of security bugs in various packages FreeNAS uses that aren't fixed in 8.3.1.

So in theory, this should work. Your mileage may vary. Your actual files should be safe no matter what. The question will be whether you'll be able to access those files when you go back to 8.3.1 without serious work to fix potential permissions problems.

Good luck.

 

[NASbox]

Thanks so much for the quick reply. Before I do anything I should try and work out a road map, and I'm hoping that someone who knows FreeNAS well and where it is going can help me out.

Questions/Items to confirm:
1. If I leave .system intact, and I swap back to 8.3.1, what happens if I swap back to 9.2.1.9 again? Do I make things worse?
2. Would 9.1.1 or even biting the bullet and going forward to 9.3 be a better choice for my current upgrade position. For me stability is key, as is low heat/noise as it is a home environment-i.e drives spun down for the 95% of the day that they are not needed. From what I can see if I go to 9.3 I can no longer attach USB UFS drives to do backups which is essential.
3. Can I turn something off to get rid of all that IO. Logging/perf stats... they are nice to have, but not essential if they are the reason for the spin up issues. Ram based for example?
4. From what I can see the only way to get the drives spun down is to install another pool on SSDs. (I agree USB Flash drives are not an option.) Correct?
5. If I decide to add SSDs, then I'm looking at a pair RaidZ1, and since I'm out of SATA ports I need to add a new controller. Am I likely to be able to get away with a low end pci-e board based on the Marvell 88SE9215 Chipset single chip 4-port Gen III 6Gb/s host controller?
6. Is anything likely to happen in 9.3 / 10 that will change the spin up issues?

Any suggestions/input would be much appreciated.

 

[Ericloewe]

Thanks so much for the quick reply. Before I do anything I should try and work out a road map, and I'm hoping that someone who knows FreeNAS well and where it is going can help me out.

Questions/Items to confirm:
1. If I leave .system intact, and I swap back to 8.3.1, what happens if I swap back to 9.2.1.9 again? Do I make things worse?
2. Would 9.1.1 or even biting the bullet and going forward to 9.3 be a better choice for my current upgrade position. For me stability is key, as is low heat/noise as it is a home environment-i.e drives spun down for the 95% of the day that they are not needed. From what I can see if I go to 9.3 I can no longer attach USB UFS drives to do backups which is essential.
3. Can I turn something off to get rid of all that IO. Logging/perf stats... they are nice to have, but not essential if they are the reason for the spin up issues. Ram based for example?
4. From what I can see the only way to get the drives spun down is to install another pool on SSDs. (I agree USB Flash drives are not an option.) Correct?
5. If I decide to add SSDs, then I'm looking at a pair RaidZ1, and since I'm out of SATA ports I need to add a new controller. Am I likely to be able to get away with a low end pci-e board based on the Marvell 88SE9215 Chipset single chip 4-port Gen III 6Gb/s host controller?
6. Is anything likely to happen in 9.3 / 10 that will change the spin up issues?

Any suggestions/input would be much appreciated.

1. I expect the system to just proceed on its merry way.
2. I would definitely upgrade. Having the drives spin up four times a day really cannot be good for them. If it was once a day, it would be much murkier. As for the USB drives, you can use ZFS with them.
3. No, but you could offload it to a separate pool. Of course, with the latter solution, you save no power overall (manufacturing the drives isn't free) and certainly save no money.
4. SSDs or HDDs, see 3.
5. RAIDZ1? Where did you get that idea? It would almost certainly be a mirrored pair. I wouldn't get my hopes up for that controller. The 9230 found in the ASRock C2750D4i boards is on the dodgy side after they issued firmware that dropped the fakeRAID crap. The only reliable option is an LSI SAS controller, I'm afraid.
6. Nope. Drive spin down is frankly not a priority for FreeNAS, as it is probably detrimental in general and completely unwanted in the enterprise market. Best case for you would be a USB 3.0-attached SSD and a possible (unlikely) future option to use the boot device for the .system dataset.

 

[NASbox]

Thanks for the quick response Ericloewe!

For the benefit of anyone trolling the form with a similar problem, I plugged the original USB
(I'm so glad that I cloned and updated the clone), back in and everything came back to exactly
where it was before I started.

One of the things that I think gets missed re spin down is noise and heat. I don't know if
"Prosumers" buy the TrueNAS or not, but if it doesn't spin down I would be PISSED if I
was using it in a quiet residential environment. I agree, that in any active environment that
spinning down makes no sense... we run all our desktops 24/7/365 for just that reason.

On 8.3.1 when everything spins down there is NO noise, the power supply (a Seasonic with
temperature sensing) shuts down the fan. For now I guess I'll stay put for now... the ST3000DM001's
(which are complete crap... but with drive prices in April 2012 was all I could justify financially...
I wouldn't EVER buy them even for desktop) are due to be replaced...

I'm going to start the process of swapping them out with WD60EFRX's ... will take me a couple
of months since I don't like to have drives from the same batch or with the same # of hours on them
and I want to spread the financial hit... I'll look at the upgrade thing again.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Spin-down for noise reasons is not justified. I sleep at 2 m of my server and during the day it is so quiet that the everyday noise masks it ;)

Actually it's hard to justify the drives spin-down because generally it reduces their lifespan more than it save it, especially if you need to access the server more than once a day.

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, since TrueNAS is a high-end enterprise storage product, noise really doesn't factor into its design.

 

[sremick]

One of the things that I think gets missed re spin down is noise and heat.

No, not missed at all... just not an issue with a properly-designed system. I have 6 drives and 3 fans. I can't hear the drives at all, nor the fans... just a very gentle flow of air if I listen very carefully in a quiet room. But when we're actually watching stuff on the TV (the FreeNAS server is a Plex server) it's impossible to notice. And my HDD temps are 26-27 degrees Celsius.

 

[jgreco]

Idle drives do typically dissipate less heat, but you're probably trading drive longevity for that.

 

[pjc]

Or just get a pair of USB sticks and create a mirrored system dataset. Spindles stay idle except when used by you.

 

[cyberjock]

Or just get a pair of USB sticks and create a mirrored system dataset. Spindles stay idle except when used by you.

That is such a bad idea it's not even worth me trying to discuss why for the 10th time. Do NOT put the system dataset on USB sticks. Holy crap...

 

[jgreco]

... waits for someone to try putting the system dataset on USB sticks with RAIDZ3.