Upgrade Question

[eqartimus]

Hey all! Seasons greetings!

I have some down time and thought that I would finally wade in and upgrade my system from:
:FreeNAS-9.2.1.6-RELEASE-x64 (ddd1e39)
to the current 9.3.XXX.Stable

Anyhow, been reading the install guides over and over ... and wanted to double check that I have my bases covered.

So I *think* I have made the appropriate back-ups that I need to do before I proceed and wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. (better safe than sorry.)

These are the 3 files that I have now.

Code:

freenas-FreeNAS-9.2.1.6-RELEASE-x64 (ddd1e39)-20160106221023.db
geli.key
geli_recovery.key

And this is where I got them from:

and

Am I missing something -- or can I begin the update process now without fear of not being able to rewind in case of difficulties?
Thanks in advance.

David

 

[m0nkey_]

Ugh, another one using encryption. This is covered in the documentation: http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html#managing-encrypted-volumes

And as always, make sure you have a backup.

 

[eqartimus]

Yes, I have been reading that ... and other parts of the manual. If you followed my question, I *think* I have backed myself up ... and the essence of my question is: Have I backed myself up?

 

[joeschmuck]

Just some friendly advice before you begin anything with your hardware.... Back up you data! (Yes, not the first time you have heard it)

If you do not have a serious need for encryption, get rid of it.

Also, if you are going to continue to run encryption, you should already know all these answers to the questions you are asking. I say this not to be offensive, it's because when using encryption you really need to fully understand how things are working and how to recover from a failure or perform a drive replacement or upgrade. Encryption is not for the faint of heart. It all sounds cool but you could loose all your data in a heart beat. This forum is full of these horror stories.

If you need encryption on some files, you can use other software to handle that such as TrueCrypt. Just some food for thought. Speaking of food....

 

[BigDave]

Yes, I have been reading that ... and other parts of the manual. If you followed my question, I *think* I have backed myself up ... and the essence of my question is: Have I backed myself up?

@m0nkey_ and @joeschmuck are telling you to make sure you have a usable copy of your data, in case you make a mistake.
We have no way to know if you have made all the proper key strokes. This fact makes the copy UBER
important should you not be able to use your key to read the encrypted data files.

 

[eqartimus]

I suspected this (not for the faint at heart) about encryption ... though I set it up because I thought it was going to be easy and since my processor/hardware supported it, that there would be no noticeable hit in performance. In any case, I have 35+ years of experience in the computer field, but have been out of it now for nearly 10. So every time I need to do something with this system, it's weeks of trying to get re-acquainted with things.

I have thought about removing encryption, but don't see that it's trivial in any way...

Is there a relatively 'simple' way to remove the encryption? (Besides backing up, reinitializing drives, and restoring?)

This might be a good time to do this (removal of encryption) prior to updating the system.

Thanks in advance.

 

[BigDave]

Is there a relatively 'simple' way to remove the encryption?

How to remove encryption from a ZFS volume (while keeping the data)
The above link is a hack from 2013, with a newer post claiming sucess, from Dec. of last year.
I would not call it simple, but you did say you have 35+ years of exp.

 

[eqartimus]

I was looking at this post: http://freebsd93.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-to-remove-encryption-from-zfs.html

And wondering if it looked reasonable by those that could look at and tell ... which I can't. I certainly can follow instructions, but to know by looking at it if it is still valid ... no way ... :P

 

[BigDave]

I was looking at this post: http://freebsd93.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-to-remove-encryption-from-zfs.html

And wondering if it looked reasonable by those that could look at and tell ... which I can't. I certainly can follow instructions, but to know by looking at it if it is still valid ... no way ... :p

Is it just me, or are these two (linked) pieces identical?