Is there an opposite to FOMO?

[mistermanko]

You all know about FOMO(Fear of missing out) and I found myself feeling the opposite when it comes to FreeNAS.
I just wanted to share my thoughts with you.

For me, it is more like FOFU(Fear of fucking up)

I've spend weeks in tweaking, customizing a system to my needs, fucking up a working system just for the sake of a bunch of new features, that I don't know if I need them, seems unnecessary.
Sure if there are security issues, obviously an update is inevitable. But still, I don't really want to click that update button.

Just Backup your config you say?

Yes yes, FOFU is beyond reasonable. If you have backups, there is nothing to worry about, you can always rollback if something goes wrong.
Yes, maybe I have trust issues. FreeNAS and me got off a bumpy start.

Do you also suffer from FOFU?

 

[Yorick]

I don’t. FOFU is kept at bay by boot environments and config backups. I’ve never needed the config backups, I’ve used the boot environments.

Here’s the one thing you don’t want to do: don’t upgrade your pool feature flags after you click that button. If you do, you can go back via boot environment, and your pool will be read only. Really not great.

Upgrading feature flags is done when you know you will never ever go back. Only then. And only “maybe” then, depending on whether you actually want/need the features for the pool.

Learn how to use boot environments, it’ll give you a lot of confidence.

Also - does your board have IPMI? That’s the other part that keeps fear at bay. I will always be able to see it booting, and I don’t need to disconnect a monitor and lug it to the cellar for that.

Lastly, I am not fearful because I boot from ssd, not usb. I know my boot media won’t die on me during upgrade.

 

[mistermanko]

does your board have IPMI?

Hell, yes! Really learned to love it when I had this lovely encounter.
Anyway, looking into boot envs now, thank you for that.

 

[Pitfrr]

No FOFU: I'm staying with 9.10.x for now! :-D

 

[Tigersharke]

Although I am not a FreeNAS user at least aside from pre-corral to corral and back (which broke everything). I am fairly certain the data is still there, I just haven't run FreeNAS since. FOFU doesn't apply to me exactly, and not due to being outside FreeNAS, but that I have broken and had to recover access to my primary box numberless times. Whether an intentional mistake or due to an update that succeeds to uninstall but not manage to reinstall everything.. I now have both FreeBSD 12-release and NomadBSD on usb media to help rescue me when I cannot boot to single user or a gui. I have also lost things for various reasons over the years, once was a test of a ZFS feature that I did wrongly, wiping out my /usr/home. Lucky for me, I do not have anything that is precious and irrecoverable, no photos or videos or anything. Losing whatever it is I have will suck but I can rebuild, I have done it too many times already.

How else does anyone learn if they never make mistakes. Change is not always bad. Sometimes you need a push.

Losing a config file might mean rebuilding it better because you are forced to re-learn it. The same for any written thing: how many times have you forgot to have auto-save flipped on, and something happens that you lose all that text? The re-wording might be more concise or eloquent. Starting over is not always the worst thing in the world, it can be an improvement. Forced to quit your job for circumstances beyond your control and you end up in an even more enjoyable and flexible job with a laid-back employer.. or you can stay at the same job, never learning anything new, the irritations eating at you more and more over time, causing stressm, etc. You might not have specifically decided to leave but things are better since.

 

[mistermanko]

Although I am not a FreeNAS user at least aside from pre-corral to corral and back (which broke everything). I am fairly certain the data is still there, I just haven't run FreeNAS since. FOFU doesn't apply to me exactly, and not due to being outside FreeNAS, but that I have broken and had to recover access to my primary box numberless times. Whether an intentional mistake or due to an update that succeeds to uninstall but not manage to reinstall everything.. I now have both FreeBSD 12-release and NomadBSD on usb media to help rescue me when I cannot boot to single user or a gui. I have also lost things for various reasons over the years, once was a test of a ZFS feature that I did wrongly, wiping out my /usr/home. Lucky for me, I do not have anything that is precious and irrecoverable, no photos or videos or anything. Losing whatever it is I have will suck but I can rebuild, I have done it too many times already.

How else does anyone learn if they never make mistakes. Change is not always bad. Sometimes you need a push.

Losing a config file might mean rebuilding it better because you are forced to re-learn it. The same for any written thing: how many times have you forgot to have auto-save flipped on, and something happens that you lose all that text? The re-wording might be more concise or eloquent. Starting over is not always the worst thing in the world, it can be an improvement. Forced to quit your job for circumstances beyond your control and you end up in an even more enjoyable and flexible job with a laid-back employer.. or you can stay at the same job, never learning anything new, the irritations eating at you more and more over time, causing stressm, etc. You might not have specifically decided to leave but things are better since.

Very well put. It's all about the learning experience in the end.

 

[Arwen]

I guess I suffer from FOFU, I am still on 9.x, (what ever the last was). When the update that should not be named came out, I waited to see when it was stable. Never happened, so never upgraded. Guess when work slows down, I'll upgrade. (And now, I finally have 2 large backup disks, so I can have double backups before the update!)

 

[Yorick]

There's a path to that, I think it was 9.3->9.10->11.2U1(!)->11.2U8->change warden jails->11.3U2.1/Ux

The 11.2U1 step is necessary, straight to 11.2U8 from 9.10 fails.

 

[jgreco]

There's also folks where downtime is hard to come by. In order to stop a NAS that is providing backing store for VM's, for example, you are faced with the unenviable choices of:

1) Shut down hundreds of production VM's and disrupt services

2) Evacuate the datastore to a different NAS (slow and painful)

3) Just keep running what's currently running

 

[Yorick]

4) Run TrueNAS Enterprise HA and upgrade one at a time (after having tested that in the lab for the specific source / target versions)
5) ???
6) Survive the EoX / security audit

 

[Dan Tudora]

I guess I suffer from FOFU, I am still on 9.x, (what ever the last was). When the update that should not be named came out, I waited to see when it was stable. Never happened, so never upgraded. Guess when work slows down, I'll upgrade. (And now, I finally have 2 large backup disks, so I can have double backups before the update!)

I agree
I have 9.10, 11.2, 11.3 and 12 for test
I guess I am FOFU too