Offline documentation for TrueNAS Core

[unseen]

If I remember correctly, in FreeNAS, the 'Guide' link in the web interface took me to a locally installed copy of the documentation.
Now, it takes me to https://www.truenas.com/docs/

This is far from an ideal solution. I regularly see packet loss happening at truenas.com and jira.ixsystems.com (which both resolve to the same IP address). This results in frustrating delays trying to use jira to report bugs, browsing the forum and trying to access the documentation. Doubly frustrating is that even though I am clicking the link 'Guide' in the web interface of TrueNAS Core, I am sent to the top level of the documentation section and have to then choose the documentation for TrueNAS Core. This adds an extra and entirely unnecessary step.
It also means that if there is a problem which prevents me from reaching the ixsystems web server, I have no documentation to refer to at all.

Is there a PDF or offline HTML version of the documentation for TrueNAS core that I can download?

 

[ornias]

This is far from an ideal solution. I regularly see packet loss happening at truenas.com and jira.ixsystems.com (which both resolve to the same IP address). This results in frustrating delays trying to use jira to report bugs, browsing the forum and trying to access the documentation.

No worries, i've had some talks with iX about this and they are aware of the increasing community frustration with Jira speeds (primarily for users that a re not in the continental US). They are working on the issue internally, but it means a complete Jira migration which (obviously) needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully because it is (ofcoarse) also their primary tool to manage work.

TLDR:
It's being worked on.

Is there a PDF or offline HTML version of the documentation for TrueNAS core that I can download?

There is a print button on the docs which can do that. It was added a few months ago after much community feedback on the new docs :)
Click "Print Preview" after selecting Core and you will get a complete printable/exportable/searchable version of the CORE docs :)

 

[unseen]

There is a print button on the docs which can do that. It was added a few months ago after much community feedback on the new docs :)
Click "Print Preview" after selecting Core and you will get a complete printable/exportable/searchable version of the CORE docs :)

Thanks, the Print Preview version is very useful indeed!

Once saved as a complete web page to include the images, I have something which can be used offline. It's not as functional as the previous locally integrated documentation, with the collapsible index in the left pane and the contents in the right pane, but speed-wise it's a massive improvement.

 

[unseen]

There is also another way to get the documentation available locally - install the TrueNAS documentation site to your TrueNAS server.

Here's a quick and simple recipe:

Log in to your TrueNAS server (mine is still called 'freenas', yours may be different)
ssh root@freenas.local

Install hugo to somewhere on root's $PATH (/root/bin in my case)
cd bin wget https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v0.83.1/hugo_0.83.1_FreeBSD-64bit.tar.gz tar zxf hugo_0.83.1_FreeBSD-64bit.tar.gz rm hugo_0.83.1_FreeBSD-64bit.tar.gz

Create a directory to store the TrueNAS documentation
mkdir /root/LocalDocs cd /root/LocalDocs

Clone the TrueNAS documentation repo
git clone https://github.com/truenas/documentation.git

Enter the cloned repo and start the hugo server to make it available
cd documentation nohup hugo serve --bind=0.0.0.0 &

Log out of your session with CTRL-D, leaving the hugo server running

Now you can open the locally served documentation page in your web browser at the
following address (change server name to match your server name)
http://freenas.local:1313/

If you reboot your server, you'll need to start hugo again. Alternatively, you can start it by
adding a script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d to start hugo at boot time.