Upgrade 11-U2 to 11.1 Stable unbootable

[AndrewH]

I tried to upgrade my freeNAS box this morning from 11-U2 to the latest version. The upgrade went through ok, the system rebooted, I was able to ping it an tought everything was ok. Turns out it didn't actually start all the way. After a reboot the system just wouldn't boot. Not even from the old version because it couldn't find the media?

I'm currently in the process of resolving this issue and trying to do a fresh "upgrade" with the install medium. Hopefully it will boot after this.
Seems a lot of people are having problems with this upgrade. Is there any better way to do it other than the webGUI?

I'll update if the "upgrade" worked and fixed my box.

 

[emk2203]

The least error-prone way in my experience is to backup the preferences of the old box and reboot with a FreeNAS install medium attached, then make a new installation. After that, import the preferences, done.

Definitely a little more work than just pushing the update button, but takes not more than 15 minutes of your time.

 

[AndrewH]

Ok update! Everything just crashed and burned. It detected the old database and "migrated" it but nothing was working. All the plugins all the services everything was giving python errors.

The last solution I tried was formating my boot drives and reinstalling fresh. It detected my pool, thanks to the mixed linux windows AD thing all the windows people could work on the NAS straight away. Now I just need to recreate all the linux users and groups as they were, and setup everything back up.