SOLVED Updating with a poor Internet connection

[rogerh]

TL;DR Doesn't work.

Auto-update or manual attempts via GUI or CLI all fail. Often trains.txt fails to download, usually LATEST fails, and I have not so far managed to download a significant fraction of an actual update file. This is what happens:

Code:

TryGetNetworkFile(http://beta-update.freenas.org/FreeNAS/Packages/base-os-9.3-BE
TA-c8c922a-9da4e2d-6fe7954.tgz)                                                
Got exception timed out                                                        
Traceback (most recent call last):                                              
  File "/usr/local/bin/freenas-update", line 166, in <module>                  
    sys.exit(main())                                                            
  File "/usr/local/bin/freenas-update", line 132, in main                      
    rv = Update.DownloadUpdate(train, download_dir)                            
  File "/usr/local/lib/freenasOS/Update.py", line 514, in DownloadUpdate        
    pkg_file = conf.FindPackageFile(pkg, save_dir = directory, handler = get_han
dler)                                                                          
  File "/usr/local/lib/freenasOS/Configuration.py", line 988, in FindPackageFile
    pathname = save_name,                                                      
  File "/usr/local/lib/freenasOS/Configuration.py", line 526, in TryGetNetworkFi
le                                                                              
    raise e                                                                    
socket.timeout: timed out 

Does anyone know if this is a problem at the client or server end, being intolerant of the sort of connection delays quite usual on my Internet connection at least?

Luxury would be some kind of resumable downloading, at least after correcting the extreme intolerance of connection problems.

Even more luxury would be some form of delta updates, rather than trying to download hundreds of MB every night.

Or am I an underprivileged minority?

 

[cyberjock]

The updates are deltas. The updates aren't resumable (unfortunately). The error is almost certainly due to your own internet connection, but there have been problems and such with iXsystems servers from time to time.

My first response is that you are an underprivileged minority. :(

I'm not sure what a "poor connection" means where you are. But you may or may not have to deal with manual updates as a result if you can't maintain a good connection. :(

 

[rogerh]

I'm not sure what a "poor connection" means where you are. But you may or may not have to deal with manual updates as a result if you can't maintain a good connection. :(

5-25 kB/s, with pauses for a few 10s of seconds now and then. I did think that. But it might be possible for someone to change the timeout values either in the client or the server if I had a good idea which end the disconnections were coming from. Perhaps from the server end they might have some idea how often timeouts were happening.

Edit: timeouts that prevent a 1k text file being downloaded half the time must be pretty aggressive.

 

[rogerh]

Another thought; I hope when 9.3 is released they will continue to make the updates available for separate download for those who have poor or no Internet connections to their servers, preferably in an incremental form.

 

[Ericloewe]

Another thought; I hope when 9.3 is released they will continue to make the updates available for separate download for those who have poor or no Internet connections to their servers, preferably in an incremental form.

AFAIK, at least the latest full version is also available as an ISO, so that option will be there. As for deltas, it might not be available in 9.3, but the general system should be able to handle that kind of scenario.

 

[cyberjock]

Yes, the updates can still be done manually. There are many users where their FreeNAS/TrueNAS servers are on a network that isn't tied to the internet at all for security reasons. So providing manually installable updates is very important.

Unfortunately, with that kind of internet and interruptions I don't think you'll ever be able to use the auto-update feature. 10s+ is pretty much a killer for a lot of things that can't resume. :/

 

[Ericloewe]

Yes, the updates can still be done manually. There are many users where their FreeNAS/TrueNAS servers are on a network that isn't tied to the internet at all for security reasons. So providing manually installable updates is very important.

Unfortunately, with that kind of internet and interruptions I don't think you'll ever be able to use the auto-update feature. 10s+ is pretty much a killer for a lot of things that can't resume. :/

Any word on "manual" delta packages? Was that pushed back to 10.1?

 

[rogerh]

Thanks both for helpful advice - doesn't come as a great surprise!

 

[rogerh]

One more question! Is:

http://download.freenas.org/nightly/x64/

the right address for the FreeNAS-9.3-BETA "train"? The distinction between 'nightlies' and 'nightly' is a bit of a subtle one for me!

 

[cyberjock]

Any word on "manual" delta packages? Was that pushed back to 10.1?

I wouldn't expect this anytime soon, if ever. Publishing deltas would mean that if you are 10 months behind and we had weekly updates you'd have to make 40+ updates. Then you have to deal with matching your version with the delta, etc.

We've seen that far too many people are just incapable of that level of detail, so it's simpler to just provide full updates if you want to go manual. Less room for error and far less likely to have questions. Just look at how many posts we get relating to installing "manual" updates that don't require you to match deltas.

Yes, this means not everyone is going to be happy 100% of the time. But we're providing automatic updating with only modest internet, manual updates if you are offline, at some point it's not worth the development effort to continue to help those that "are at the bottom of the totem pole".

 

[jkh]

One more question! Is:

http://download.freenas.org/nightly/x64/

the right address for the FreeNAS-9.3-BETA "train"? The distinction between 'nightlies' and 'nightly' is a bit of a subtle one for me!

Nightlies is where all of the nightlies live. Nightly is just a pointer to the current (latest) one. :)

 

[rogerh]

Ok, thanks. And I note the latest one is not in nightlies. All makes sense!
(The manual update didn't work for me, but I'll try it again with a clean install before posting the details, as multiple attempts got a bit messy.)