1.3.2

September 29, 2020

The TrueCommand team is pleased to make revision 2 of the 1.3 release (version 1.3.2) available!

This is a small collection of updates to the 1.3 release based on user feedback. This includes several adjustments to visuals on the UI dashboard, as well as a few changes in the backend to streamline status reporting from TrueNAS systems.

Specific Changes in 1.3.2:

UI Changes

  • New TrueCommand Logo integrated.
  • Better highlighting for storage pools which are on “ONLINE”
  • Show exactly which disks failed S.M.A.R.T tests in the dashboard popup dialog rather than just a general failure warning.
  • Fix an issue with snapshot tasks that have not yet run reporting an “invalid date” message.
  • If the connection between the UI and middleware is severed for some reason, show a popup with a refresh button which forces the UI to reload.

Backend Changes

  • Poll for new S.M.A.R.T test results less frequently. These tests do not run continuously on the NAS.
  • Poll for replication and update status changes more frequently.
  • Add a new safety check into the container startup routine to ensure database permissions are always correct.
  • Fix the percentage calculations for network traffic so they are more accurate for higher-max-bandwidth interfaces.

Specific Changes in 1.3.1

  • Add in a new “theme” button for changing the colors in the UI corresponding to the various information states.
  • Adjust the pool and disk popup colors. Now the background color is consistent across all states, and only the metrics on the popup which need attention are colored differently.
  • Adjust the “Disk Activity” report widget to use the disk percent busy metric (11.3-U4+, 12.0-BETA1+) instead of kBps. This makes it easier to see which disks are running at their limits and may require attention.
  • Add in a new “system offline” alert rule which triggers as soon as a NAS goes offline unexpectedly (not as the result of an update). This replaces the older alert rule utilizing system uptime.
  • Ensure that the jails metric on the system card respects the autostart flag for each jail before alerting about jails which are not running.
  • Fix an issue with the smtp-email alert service when using a no-authentication connection to a mailserver. These connections appear to work normally now.

What is New in 1.3

The TrueCommand dashboard has been completely redesigned:

  • System cards now show all relevant information for system administrators.
  • Metrics have been prioritized and color coded based upon the level of attention that they may require.
  • Many of the metrics can be clicked to quickly inspect details about the metric.
  • New metrics on the system cards:
    • Storage pool and drive information
    • Sharing service status and active client count
    • VM and Jail status
    • Disk utilization as a percentage
    • Number of active alerts for the specific system
    • Networking statistics are now available as a percentage of the possible bandwidth. This can be customized to show either the system average or highlight a specific network interface
    • Status information about currently running updates, scrubs, replications, or cloudsync tasks
    • Dataset size information. (TrueNAS 12+ or FreeNAS 11.3-U4+)
    • Active client counts for sharing protocols (TrueNAS 12+ or FreeNAS 11.3-U4+)

Temporary password reset option added:

  • On the host running the docker container, use the following command to reset the password for a TrueCommand user account: docker exec -it [container ID] resetpw [username]
  • This will return a random password which is valid for 6 hours. This can be used to login to the TrueCommand user account to change the password to something that will be remembered later. The temporary password is invalidated the moment the real password is changed for the account.

Rolling estimates of pool storage utilization are now included by default for 80% and 100% full warnings. These estimates will also be used to generate alerts for systems which will reach the 80% threshold within 180 days.

New SMR notification to warn the user if any of the NAS’s attached to TrueCommand are utilizing known problematic SMR drives.

Alerts rules may now be copied as the basis for new rules.

Alert rules now support multiple conditions for the alert to trigger.

FreeNAS/TrueNAS metrics gathering:

  • Version 12.0-BETA1+ & 11.3-U4+
    • Statistics gathered by TrueCommand are more accurate and return additional information required to generate some of the new TrueCommand dashboard metrics.
    • Dataset Size information
  • Version 12.0-BETA1+

Support for using API Keys to login to the NAS, rather than the root user password.

To Download this Release

Login to the TrueCommand Account Portal for downloads, documentation links, and licensing options. For storage clusters with more than 50 disks, the account portal also offers a free 60-day trial license with unlimited disks.

To Update to this Release

Docker: Re-run docker pull ixsystems/truecommand to fetch the latest version of TrueCommand, and then restart your docker instance.

VM Image: Either reboot the VM or run systemctl restart truecommand.service. This will automatically fetch and start the latest Docker image of TrueCommand within your VM.