SOLVED Lost & Confused

[cvejic]

I have a FreeNAS box I built about three years ago. It has an Intel Xeon processor and 128GB RAM. I have been running FreeNAS v9 stable since I built it but I just recently, and rashly I now think, upgraded to FreeNAS 11.2. At first it seemed as though everything went well. Plex, the main application I use this NAS for, was missing but I knew that would probably happen. But the splash screen showed my NICs (there are 4 of them on this device) with IPv4 addresses and I was able to login and my ZFS volume was there, so I thought I was sitting pretty.

Then I went to install the Plex plugin, but the list of plugins was empty. So I followed a guide which suggested checking my Internet connection by pinging. "No route to host". Ok, so maybe it wasn't seeing the default gateway and DNS servers in the DHCP. So I manually entered those details in Network->Global Configuration. No change. I can ping my gateway, but nothing seems to travel beyond that.

Now I'm feeling really stupid; I should have left things well enough alone, but I thought upgrading would be good in terms of security patches etc., and often I don't like to get too far behind current software versions because you can find yourself in trouble if you ever have to reload/repair etc. I just didn't realize how buggy this upgrade process was. Can anyone provide some assistance? I'm getting kind of desperate.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Have you tried rebooting and selecting the old version during the boot process? 11.2 is still in BETA, so you may be out on the bleeding edge there. 11.1 works great for my, but I just use the basic NAS functions (no jails, VM's, etc).

 

[KrisBee]

@cvejic Two choices really, try to sort out your networking in FN11.2 beta or revert to FN9 via your hopefully working "boot environments" at the FreeNAS boot menu as already suggested. Did you realise plugins are now based on iocage and not warden? I wouldn't recommend a BETA for anything other than testing and I don't know if the promised auto conversion from warden to iocage plugins/jails works. I believe any pre-existing warden based jails are left in situ but will not appear in the new UI of FN11.2 beta, so your warden based plex may still be there and visible if you switch to the old UI in FN11.2 beta.

I still think you'd be better off updating from 9 to current FN11.1 and then take stock.

 

[Jailer]

I don't know if the promised auto conversion from warden to iocage plugins/jails works.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/warden-migration-script-test.68502/

 

[Chris Moore]

I have a FreeNAS box I built about three years ago.

Now I'm feeling really stupid; I should have left things well enough alone, but I thought upgrading would be good in terms of security patches etc., and often I don't like to get too far behind current software versions because you can find yourself in trouble if you ever have to reload/repair etc. I just didn't realize how buggy this upgrade process was. Can anyone provide some assistance? I'm getting kind of desperate.

It is not a buggy upgrade. The thing you should have done is incremental upgrading instead of the atomic upgrade you did.

There was a huge amount of change in the last 3 years.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[cvejic]

Oh thank Jeebus. Going back to the previous version worked. Thank you! I have an incredible amount of time invested into that Plex box; it's got pretty much every family photo and video we've ever taken over the last 10 years plus my movie collection plus my music collection. And while I have it backed up, I've been around enough to know restores don't always go the way you hope.

@ Chris Moore You're probably right. All I really know is that it didn't emerge in a state I could get working again (without reverting).

Thank you again everyone!