VirtualBox (VBox) Plugin Upgrade?

[DaPlumber]

Not to be trollin'... But:

The first VBox plugin is 4.3.12-OSE and VBox 4.3.14 is now out. What's the best/correct way to upgrade the plugin/jail?

 

[cyberjock]

The best way is is to stay on whatever version FreeNAS released its vbox kernel drivers with. In this case 4.3.12 per the 9.2.1.6 notes. ;)

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-9-2-1-6-release-is-now-available.21958/

You are welcome to upgrade using pkg-ng (which is how I do upgrades when I need to do them and how I created the template) but you are totally on your own if you wish to update the jail beyond the version supported with FreeNAS.

This was/is the major drawback to putting virtualbox in a jail. :P

 

[DaPlumber]

@cyberjock: That was pretty much what I'd guessed, but I didn't want to prejudice any answers. ;)

So, any expectations on lag after VBox release and "official" updates? Do we have to have a FreeNAS point release to accommodate new drivers?

 

[cyberjock]

Well, that hasn't been discussed in great detail how to deal with this. Since you *have* to compile the latest vbox drivers with FreeNAS it's quite difficult to do unless you are familiar with git and such. What I have seen personally is that if we have a 4.3.x driver the entire 4.3.x+ would work. If you want to try it feel free to. Just snapshot the jail before you start so you can rollback if things go badly. ;)

 

[DaPlumber]

@cyberjock: Get thee behind me Satan!

Must chant "This is why I wanted an appliance-like NAS" 100X. Must fear the wrath of beloved spouse over fascinating time sinks.

I will be patient. I will wait. Ohmmmm... ;):p

 

[danb35]

I'd like to generalize the question a bit--is there even an upgrade mechanism planned for this? With a plugin, presumably it's just a matter of updating the PBI, but VirtualBox isn't a plugin, it's a separate jail template. How would that be upgraded?

I had set up a VBox 4.3.10 jail under 9.2.1.6-RC. When -RELEASE came out, the template was up to 4.3.12, but I didn't see any way to upgrade, so I exported my VMs, set up a new jail, and imported them into the new jail. Was there a simpler way to do this?