Novice User a bit confused on migration from Legacy Freenas to TrueNas Core - looking for some advice.

Krextyl

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 10, 2021
Messages
28
My Current System Information:

FreeNas ver. 9.10.10.2-U6​
Mbord: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 w/ American Megatrends Bios Revision 2101​
w/ Onboard NIC Realtek 8111E/F PCIe Gigabit Lan Controller​
Proc: AMD Phenom II x4 840 Quad-Core @ 3.2Ghz​
Ram: Crucial DDR3 PC3-14900 Unbuffered ECC 32Gb (4x8GB)​
System Cache:​
Striped – 2x 120GB Sata III SSD (PNY CS 1311)​
Storage Pool:​
Raidz2 – 8x 4TB Sata 6GB/s HDD (Seagate ST4000VN000)​
PCIe Storage Pool Controller Card:​
LSI MegaRaid 9260-8i L3-25121-60A 6gb/s SAS to Sata Controller flashed in HBA mode (Avago MPT2BIOS – 7.39.02.00 (201.08.03))​



With that out of the way, the reason for my post – to get some insight on an upgrade path to the latest TrueNas Core 12.0-U4…..

In the legacy User guide documentation for FreeNas 9.10, there was information on how to upgrade at:

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/9.10/install.html#upgrading

In the Last FreeNas version, 11.3, it had similar information on upgrading at:

https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.3-U5/install.html#upgrading

However,I have not found similar information on the newer TrueNas site. I have read conflicting information on various threads about issues and paths for upgrading pausing at certain ones and skipping others - I fairly certain I’m at the point of information overload :). I also happened to noticed in my GUI, of my current server, that under upgrading there is an option for TrueNas 12 but it doesn’t specify which version and I haven’t hit check yet either. At any rate, I am trying to figure out how best to go about getting up to the latest and greatest stable version of TrueNas Core(12.0-U4). Should I run the GUI Update tool? Should I just simply start fresh with a complete new install abandoning everything I currently have up and working? Or some other avenue?

As far as my current Server usage, I only use it for two purposes for the unit, a central file repository for my intranet and a Jail Service for my Plex Media server. I don’t have any VM or other services running on it. Given this, what would you suggest?

Also if there is an updated guide / best practices sticky or similar that I’ve overlooked on upgrading and migrating from legacy freenas platforms to the newer TrueNas Core please do point me to a link for it :)
 
Last edited:

Stux

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Jun 2, 2016
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4,367
Well, going from 11.3 to 12 is simply a matter of switching trains and upgrading.

11.2 to 11.3 likewise.

I would upgrade from one minor version to the next, rather than skipping multiples. Check everything works, then go to the next.
 

Krextyl

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 10, 2021
Messages
28
Well....

I didn't know what 'switching trains' was, thought that was slang, but figured it out. At any rate, from my GUI I told the system to switch trains and saw the download and install occur as one would expect. All seemed well and after a little while, it appeared complete with the system stating it was rebooting itself. Upon reboot, however, I was welcomed with a surprise. My system is no longer remotely accessible and when I connected a monitor to the headless server to see what was going on, it is stuck in a looping message as follows:

Jul 16 19:04:26 truenas ntpd[905]: error resolving pool 0.freebsd.pool.ntp.org: Name does not resolve (8)

Obviously, the looping message's timestamp updates but otherwise I have no idea what to do next... I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks in advance for the help!
 

Krextyl

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 10, 2021
Messages
28
I rebooted once more watching all of the text for any other errors while loading the system from scratch. It got hung a long time on a plugin attempting to load -> middlewared: setting up plugins (pwenc) [4/59]

After several minutes at that attempt (240secs) It output a message like the following:

******************************************************************************
MIDDLEWARED FAILED TO START, SYSTEM WILL NOT BEHAVE CORRECTLY
******************************************************************************

Failed to run middleware call, Daemon not running?

only other error I noticed is the one mentioned above regarding the ntpd[905] error resolving pool

Is my system hosed?
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2019
Messages
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might be faster/easier to install 12.0U4.1 from scratch and restore data from backups.
 

danb35

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Aug 16, 2011
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15,464
restore data from backups.
Why would OP be restoring data? Unless the pool's failed (and nothing so far even hints at that), the data's still there. Install, import pool, configure services--assuming there isn't a saved config file, or that the old config file won't import into 12.0.

Worth pointing out is that OP will need to redo the Plex jail in any event. It isn't difficult, but the 9.10 Warden jail won't work under any recent release of Free/TrueNAS.
 

Krextyl

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 10, 2021
Messages
28
Thank you for the information. I have since reinstalled the OS and noticed this time through on the monitor the middleware plugin loaded fine and the system launched properly as expected - I guess somehow through the upgrade process I just got a bad install. At any rate once up and running I was able to easily import the pool just as danb35 suggested. I used the below (link at bottom of post) which worked but seems to be a little different than expected on the results but that's probably just me. What I see under pool status is what I expected... It even shows my recent resilver of one old drive that had just started showing sector errors.

1626965775324.png


Under disks, however, it appears my dedicated SSD for cache is part of the pool but again probably me and this is a nonissue but I thought this existed outside of the pool but at the same time makes sense that it would be kept with the pool, I guess it's a semantics thing with me.
1626965891459.png


And lastly, in my pool datasets, I see the legacy jail as a dataset which I don't recall it being part of the storage pool but more of a config setup on the OS drive, again probably me but that warden template thing I really don't recognize what that is or if all of the prior 'jail' stuff should just be removed given the old jails are broken, prior to attempting to create new jails. I could use some guidance here please. :)
1626966040010.png



FYI I followed these (below) instructions for the import.

https://www.truenas.com/docs/core/storage/pools/poolimport/
 

Krextyl

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 10, 2021
Messages
28
Well was good while it lasted.... The system was up for about 15mins until it crashed. It seems there is something still residual with the middleware plugin wreaking havoc. I even told the installer to start fresh and format the drive. Guess I will manually format it and try once more... I'll grab a screen shot and post later for additional context
 

Stux

MVP
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Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
Its possible you could have a hardware issue... say bad ram.
 

ChrisRJ

Wizard
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Oct 23, 2020
Messages
1,906
As @Stux mentioned, a hardware issue is relatively likely. Also, you did not mentioned your NIC. So is it possible that we are talking about a RealTek chipset here?
 

Krextyl

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 10, 2021
Messages
28
As @Stux mentioned, a hardware issue is relatively likely. Also, you did not mentioned your NIC. So is it possible that we are talking about a RealTek chipset here?

Yep, you are correct, sorry about that I've added it to the OP. I am using the Mboard integrated NIC which is a Realtek 8111E/F PCIe Gigabit Lan Controller. That said, I am not sure I would agree with a hardware issue being the likely issue, driver perhaps sure but not the hardware. I'm not saying it's not possible I just don't suspect it given it had been an operating system since 2016 until this upgrade attempt.

Also, FWIW I decided to try and bring the system back online again to see if I could repeat the issue. So far it's been up for about 4hours. I went to the alerts button in the top right and noticed the following which when it crashed last time on the terminal I noticed text about middleware again and the python3.9....

1627066024080.png



I am not very familar with shell commands. How do I go about from the terminal copying the files it mentions off the system to one of my client PC's to create this ticket and then delete the files mentioned.

1627066160304.png


1627066203047.png


I'd like to create this ticket and see what response becomes of it... Can one of you please assist me with howto - thanks!
 

Krextyl

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 10, 2021
Messages
28
Apparently, others have had similar issues in the past with this middleware plugin, some bug I suppose...


Here are my next steps unless someone strongly feels otherwise... 1) figure out how to create a ticket extracting the data from my system. 2) remove the legacy jails datasets on the pool, just in case that is a related item but still remove useless legacy info in any case 3) pull OS drive format it 4) fresh install.
 
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