Sometimes FreeNAS is gettin' on my nerves

[IceBoosteR]

Hi folks,

I don't know why I am writing this short thread, but sometimes FreeNAS is jumping me again and again in my face. By this I mean things are too complicated. Normally it is not, but here is my story.
I have installed FreeNAS on bare-metal to avoid problems with the hypervisor. I have plenty CPU cycles/resources left and want to do more on my server.
First problem, want to go with latest emby, as the plugin is often not up-to date. Easy I thought, created a new jail updated ports and dang. I am on 11.0-U4 so the jail template is on 11 and has no support from FreeBSD anymore, so the port upgrade fails. Even with plenty of workaround, MAKE fails because of inconsistency...
I could also not update the jail to 11.1...
Next problem with 11.1 on my test machine -> Jails are still on 11.0? Yes WTF!
Bug ticket opened and the kind answer was: Use IOCAGE. Yeah I could but I want the simplicity of the jails I have now, adding storage and so on. No way.
Next try, use bhyve. Some problems with the keyboard, problems at boot and no chance to add local filesystem from GUI. I have no problem with doing things from CLI, as I do this every day at work, but with FreeNAS I should use the GUI and I don't want to break things apart. Ok yeah got it....
Sometimes I wished I installed it in ESXi and use FreeNAS only for serving storage. OR I need to buy more servers. Meeeh.

Sorry but this has to get out of mind and writing down helps -__-

 

[acp]

I could also not update the jail to 11.1...
Next problem with 11.1 on my test machine -> Jails are still on 11.0? Yes WTF!

Yes they still are. The reason and the work around is in the documentation.

http://doc.freenas.org/11/jails.html


The version of FreeBSD that FreeNAS 11.0 was on was EOL, so it made sense to release an updated version to be on supported version of FreeBSD. However they didn't get everything done. C'est la vie.

It is nice that FreeNAS has all this other functionality but it still a NAS first and everything else second.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[danb35]

Yeah I could but I want the simplicity of the jails I have now, adding storage and so on.

You'd need to learn different terminology for iocage, but you can add storage to iocage jails just as you can to warden jails. Though networking seems to be trickier with iocage.

 

[IceBoosteR]

You'd need to learn different terminology for iocage, but you can add storage to iocage jails just as you can to warden jails. Though networking seems to be trickier with iocage.

Terminology is ok to learn, with that said I love how the "old" jails are working and I may need to wait for 11.2 until the new GUI supports iocage. But I suspect there will be a bunch of bugs again.
But at this point, I would be happy to use ESXi, but I know this would cause other problem on the FN system itself. But this is another point :O

 

[danb35]

I may need to wait for 11.2 until the new GUI supports iocage.

The new GUI supports iocage now, though I don't think it handles the storage mounting issue.

It's up to you--I'm making the transition myself, and it'd sure be nice if the new GUI were feature-complete in jail management, handled networking better, etc. But it's the way ahead, and it appears that iocage jails will be upgradable to newer FreeBSD base releases, which is a big win.

 

[IceBoosteR]

The new GUI supports iocage now, though I don't think it handles the storage mounting issue.

It's up to you--I'm making the transition myself, and it'd sure be nice if the new GUI were feature-complete in jail management, handled networking better, etc. But it's the way ahead, and it appears that iocage jails will be upgradable to newer FreeBSD base releases, which is a big win.

Are you talking about 11.1 or 11.0 with iocage?

I an still traumatized of Corral (or was it Coral; never mind FreeNAS 10).
The upgradable feature is nice, I think there will be also a script for that, which is indeed nice ;)

 

[danb35]

Are you talking about 11.1 or 11.0 with iocage?

I'm using 11.1-U1.

 

[IceBoosteR]

I'm using 11.1-U1.

Haven't made the step on 11.1 yet, issues again which I could see on my test system. Maybe I need to wait for 11.1-U2 :/

 

[danb35]

Are you seeing the issues with -U1? I had serious issues with 11.1 (and reverted to 11.0-U4 as a result), but -U1 is working well for me so far.

 

[IceBoosteR]

Are you seeing the issues with -U1? I had serious issues with 11.1 (and reverted to 11.0-U4 as a result), but -U1 is working well for me so far.

Only a few. I got other issues, where destroying a dataset with 100GB of data is taking half a day. Was not sure i this is related to the storage, as there was a hotfix for that, but I had not the time to get into this again. Also seeing an issue where my messages log is filling with stupid messages. I think this will be fixed in U2.

 

[danb35]

One big positive with iocage is that you can do things at the CLI, and the GUI will reflect those changes. That makes it possible to script jail creation, which you couldn't really do with warden.