Is it safe to upgrade to 9.3 Beta?

[Apollo]

I am perplexed about the new 9.3 beta release.
I have red the announcements and watched the demo video and nowhere have I seen or heard anything prompting caution in transitioning to the 9.3 beta release.
On the contrary, the call to move forward to the beta release is so enthusiastic that I am definitely inclined to make the jump, but my concern remains with the data integrity of my volume.
Is the transition safe, or should we wait for the stable release instead?

 

[Ericloewe]

I am perplexed about the new 9.3 beta release.
I have red the announcements and watched the demo video and nowhere have I seen or heard anything prompting caution in transitioning to the 9.3 beta release.
On the contrary, the call to move forward to the beta release is so enthusiastic that I am definitely inclined to make the jump, but my concern remains with the data integrity of my volume.
Is the transition safe, or should we wait for the stable release instead?

9.3 is Beta, and as such not the best choice for production systems.

If you have a backup system, moving it to 9.3 Beta wouldn't be too dangerous (well, relatively speaking).

 

[Apollo]

Just what I thought, but then why not mentioning any warnings?

 

[Ericloewe]

Just what I thought, but then why not mentioning any warnings?

It's a given for any kind of Beta software. That's why it has the Beta label instead of Release.

 

[Apollo]

I would not be too sure about stating it as a fact.
I wouldn't be surprised some people on this forum may not be aware of the difference between Alpha, Beta, RC1 and so forth and what it entails.

 

[joeschmuck]

I would not be too sure about stating it as a fact.
I wouldn't be surprised some people on this forum may not be aware of the difference between Alpha, Beta, RC1 and so forth and what it entails.

There are some things we all have to expect someone to have such as a basic understanding of these things with a project like this, after all the individual must build or have a computer with capable resources to even implement this.

As for if it's safe to upgrade, Yes on a testing platform, No for a production machine.

 

[Ben Woods]

I have to agree with @Apollo a bit there, the beta announcement was so enthusiastic that it probably should have included the standard beta caution message. Particularly since you don't have to have had any knowledge of FreeBSD to be using FreeNAS - you might have just straight up bought a FreeNAS mini from IxSystems.

That being said, I am curious about the move to ZFS on the FreeNAS root drive. Is that handled by the upgrade automatically? Sounds ominous to be playing around either betas that format your hard drive! (Note: I am not talking about the data storage drive)

 

[diedrichg]

I am most curious about what everybody is saying that a SSD would be best as a boot drive in 9.3.

 

[indivision]

I am perplexed about the new 9.3 beta release.
I have red the announcements and watched the demo video and nowhere have I seen or heard anything prompting caution in transitioning to the 9.3 beta release.
On the contrary, the call to move forward to the beta release is so enthusiastic that I am definitely inclined to make the jump, but my concern remains with the data integrity of my volume.
Is the transition safe, or should we wait for the stable release instead?

Just my 10 cents. Unless you upgrade your pool(s), I don't see how using the beta introduces much risk. The risk, as I see it, is that some features of the OS could have bugs and not function correctly. But, that seems very unlikely to cause data loss or anything like that. If something is broken that you need you can always switch back to the release version. That's the beauty of a system that separates the OS out onto its own little drive. Just make sure you're saving backups of your settings db if you start switching between OS.

 

[Apollo]

Just my 10 cents. Unless you upgrade your pool(s), I don't see how using the beta introduces much risk. The risk, as I see it, is that some features of the OS could have bugs and not function correctly. But, that seems very unlikely to cause data loss or anything like that. If something is broken that you need you can always switch back to the release version. That's the beauty of a system that separates the OS out onto its own little drive. Just make sure you're saving backups of your settings db if you start switching between OS.

My concern obviously implies I want to upgrade to 9.3 from an existing setup already holding a volume. I am not sure if the transition back to 9.2.1.8 is possible as I have read within the 9.3 FreeBSD release note that a new Bookmark feature or flag on ZFS, once upgraded to 9.3 will not permit reverting to previous ZFS version.

 

[indivision]

I realized that you wanted to upgrade an existing setup with a volume. I could be mistaken. But, I don't believe that using 9.3 automatically modifies your volume(s). You have to select it in the GUI and click a button to upgrade its ZFS (look at the documentation for 9.3 regarding upgrading ZFS). You can still use the beta and the volume without doing that.

That's what I'm doing. I just installed 9.3 on an additional USB drive. I haven't tested it. But, I'm pretty sure that I can just plug in the other release version USB and it would still work fine with the volume. My plan is to leave the volume un-upgraded during beta, just in case. Then upgrade the [ZFS] a little while after 9.3 release.

 

[Apollo]

Indeed, and I maybe mistaken, but if you don't upgrade, then you will not be able to perform scrubbing or other zfs operation.

 

[RobertT]

the only real worry I would think would be if there is a data corruption bug in the beta..
though most likely at this stage those kind of issues shouldnt exist you still see them even in release versions of software from major storage vendors..
so it comes down to how much is your data worth..

personally no sleep would be lost if everything on my freenas went poof because it is all recoverable..

 

[indivision]

Indeed, and I maybe mistaken, but if you don't upgrade, then you will not be able to perform scrubbing or other zfs operation.

I just tested this. Scrubbing works on volumes that haven't been upgraded.

the only real worry I would think would be if there is a data corruption bug in the beta..
though most likely at this stage those kind of issues shouldnt exist you still see them even in release versions of software from major storage vendors..
so it comes down to how much is your data worth..

personally no sleep would be lost if everything on my freenas went poof because it is all recoverable..

What is a way that FreeNAS might cause data corruption?

 

[cyberjock]

What is a way that FreeNAS might cause data corruption?

Bad line of code in FreeNAS due to a typo. There is no "list" as the hypothetical causes are limited only by your imagination.

 

[indivision]

Bad line of code in FreeNAS due to a typo. There is no "list" as the hypothetical causes are limited only by your imagination.

What is one example of what a bad line of code causing data corruption would look like? A zfs command with certain parameters?

 

[cyberjock]

What is one example of what a bad line of code causing data corruption would look like? A zfs command with certain parameters?

That's one way. Again, it's only limited by your imagination. Heck, it's possible that there's a bug in the FreeBSD code that can cause data loss.

 

[indivision]

That's one way. Again, it's only limited by your imagination. Heck, it's possible that there's a bug in the FreeBSD code that can cause data loss.

Right. That's what I'm getting at. My impression is that you would have to write some pretty deliberate commands to mess up the data with zfs. The possibility of a FreeBSD bug causing data corruption is probably a greater (albeit small) risk.

Then again. Maybe I just like new features asap and take reckless risks to get them. ;)

 

[jkh]

It's like buying a new Ferrari at the dealership. If you have to ask if you can afford it, the answer is already No. :)

 

[Ben Woods]

Right. That's what I'm getting at. My impression is that you would have to write some pretty deliberate commands to mess up the data with zfs. The possibility of a FreeBSD bug causing data corruption is probably a greater (albeit small) risk.

One example would be an accidental "rm -rf" of the data on your zfs datasets. With syslogs being stored on the zfs dataset now, there is a reason for FreeNAS commands to touch the dataset, and if they are malformed in a beta it could go bad. Regular zfs snapshots to the rescue!

A discussion of how this could happen is at the bottom of this thread (post by user Carpetsmoker where he describes "set -u"):
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/usr-home-home.48377/

An example of a bad script:
rm -rf /mnt/zpool/${SOMEVARAIBLE}