9.3 to 11 Upgrade with Jails & VirtualBox

[RoadHazard]

Is upgrading my box from 9.3-STABLE to FreeNAS 11 really as simple as selecting the new train and clicking Manual Update? That seems way too easy, convenient, and naive.

I've got Plex, SABnzbd, Couch Potato, Sonarr, and VirtualBox (running Windows 7 and a few Window apps) all running in their own jails, and I'd want them all to work afterwards, too. Evidently FN11 replaces VirtualBox with bhyve... so that will require some tweaking, I'm sure.

What other landmines, gotchas, and surprises should I prepare for? Is there a step-by-step Compleat Idiot's Guide I should consult?

 

[m0nkey_]

When upgrading, you may have to rebuild your jails. While they will work in their current state, you won't be able to update any of the software inside of them. Your VirtualBox machines will not come over automatically. There are some posts about this on the forum which you will have to search for.

 

[adrianwi]

Even updating to a version of 9.10 is going to give you some issues updating your jails, so unless you really don't want to lose VirtualBox (which stopped being supported at 9.10.1-U4) then I can't see any benefit in updating to 9.10 and then 11.0.

11.0 wasn't out when I updated, so I just bumped up to 9.10.1-U4 (to keep VirtualBox), but still ended up rebuilding some jails. I didn't do them all, knowing I'd probably need to do it again at 11.0.

 

[SweetAndLow]

All your jails will need to be rebuilt and as it stands now you haven't gotten updates for them in over 6 months. Virtual box is not supported anymore. Smb might break but if it does that means you are using an insecure version and should fix that anyways.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[eldo]

Is upgrading my box from 9.3-STABLE to FreeNAS 11 really as simple as selecting the new train and clicking Manual Update? That seems way too easy, convenient, and naive.

I've got Plex, SABnzbd, Couch Potato, Sonarr, and VirtualBox (running Windows 7 and a few Window apps) all running in their own jails, and I'd want them all to work afterwards, too. Evidently FN11 replaces VirtualBox with bhyve... so that will require some tweaking, I'm sure.

What other landmines, gotchas, and surprises should I prepare for? Is there a step-by-step Compleat Idiot's Guide I should consult?

RoadHazard,
Recently I upgraded from 9.3 to 11. I used a USB drive instead of the webui update, but I've had 0 issues with my plugins and jails since upgrading to 11. I was also dumbfounded and /very/ pleasantly surprised that it really *was* that easy.
I had constant issues with vbox in 9.3, but rarely needed a VM. after a few hours I would get kernel panics, fs errors, etc etc etc.
Currently I'm in the process of using the webui VM management to handle my Plex, etc as I have more luck with those programs in linux than in the bsd jails I'd used in the past.

From what I understand, if you upgrade and have issues, you should be able to roll back at boot time to your 9.3 install as long as you don't accept the new ZFS flags in FN11.

Look on the forums for using bhyve, there isn't as robust of a management ui as vbox was, and I've run into issues with an ubuntu 16.04 VM that it will hang until FN reboot if I try to reboot the VM with an NFS share mounted. I have to always remember to umount, then init 6.

ETA:
If you're going to install an ubuntu 16 VM (I'm sure other OSs may be impacted), you may need to search for the UEFI boot fix. basically you need to manually boot through the uefi console and then as root create a proper /boot/......... path for the bootx64.efi otherwise the system may not boot.

When upgrading, you may have to rebuild your jails. While they will work in their current state, you won't be able to update any of the software inside of them. Your VirtualBox machines will not come over automatically. There are some posts about this on the forum which you will have to search for.

m0nkey,

Oddly enough, I had the opposite behavior with updating software.
In my 9.3 install pkg update would fail, however running my old jail in 11 I was able to pkg update; pkg install dnsmasq with no issues.
I didn't do any updates to the jails or jail template, but if it was upgraded it was done behind the scenes and was transparent to me.

 

[SweetAndLow]

RoadHazard,
Recently I upgraded from 9.3 to 11. I used a USB drive instead of the webui update, but I've had 0 issues with my plugins and jails since upgrading to 11. I was also dumbfounded and /very/ pleasantly surprised that it really *was* that easy.
I had constant issues with vbox in 9.3, but rarely needed a VM. after a few hours I would get kernel panics, fs errors, etc etc etc.
Currently I'm in the process of using the webui VM management to handle my Plex, etc as I have more luck with those programs in linux than in the bsd jails I'd used in the past.

From what I understand, if you upgrade and have issues, you should be able to roll back at boot time to your 9.3 install as long as you don't accept the new ZFS flags in FN11.

Look on the forums for using bhyve, there isn't as robust of a management ui as vbox was, and I've run into issues with an ubuntu 16.04 VM that it will hang until FN reboot if I try to reboot the VM with an NFS share mounted. I have to always remember to umount, then init 6.

ETA:
If you're going to install an ubuntu 16 VM (I'm sure other OSs may be impacted), you may need to search for the UEFI boot fix. basically you need to manually boot through the uefi console and then as root create a proper /boot/......... path for the bootx64.efi otherwise the system may not boot.




m0nkey,

Oddly enough, I had the opposite behavior with updating software.
In my 9.3 install pkg update would fail, however running my old jail in 11 I was able to pkg update; pkg install dnsmasq with no issues.
I didn't do any updates to the jails or jail template, but if it was upgraded it was done behind the scenes and was transparent to me.

Your jails are end of life. They no longer get updates or packages built for them. And they seem to work but really they don't work correctly.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[eldo]

Your jails are end of life. They no longer get updates or packages built for them. And they seem to work but really they don't work correctly.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I was wondering if that might be the case. I'm in the process of deciding my upgrade path, between fiddling with new jails or moving everything over to a single ubuntu VM and doing an nfs share to my existing datasets.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I was wondering if that might be the case. I'm in the process of deciding my upgrade path, between fiddling with new jails or moving everything over to a single ubuntu VM and doing an nfs share to my existing datasets.

VM on freenas?

I would choose jails over a bhyve vm any day if possible. Bhyve is alpha quality imo.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[eldo]

VM on freenas?

I would choose jails over a bhyve vm any day if possible. Bhyve is alpha quality imo.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

my main issue with going just jails stems from the fact that i'm migrating from owncloud/nextcloud to seafile (delta sync, android app works much better for my purposes), and I haven't seen any good installs yet with seafile on freebsd.

Plex, sure, would be nice to run on linux since it apparently has better support and a featureset, etc... but all i really use it for is just transcoding and media sync when I travel for work.

 

[SweetAndLow]

my main issue with going just jails stems from the fact that i'm migrating from owncloud/nextcloud to seafile (delta sync, android app works much better for my purposes), and I haven't seen any good installs yet with seafile on freebsd.

Plex, sure, would be nice to run on linux since it apparently has better support and a featureset, etc... but all i really use it for is just transcoding and media sync when I travel for work.

Only thing Linux has that freebsd doesn't with Plex is the groove music feature.

I'm not sure about seafile.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[eldo]

Only thing Linux has that freebsd doesn't with Plex is the groove music feature.

I'm not sure about seafile.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Yeah, I don't do any music with plex.

I did just come across an account of using seafile well with using the ports tree, so I'm going to try that. I really don't relish the idea of having to nfs from guest to host if I have the option to natively access a dataset from the jail.

 

[RoadHazard]

... so unless you really don't want to lose VirtualBox (which stopped being supported at 9.10.1-U4) then I can't see any benefit in updating to 9.10 and then 11.0.

I have no particular love for VirtualBox, but I do need to run Windows 7 (and a few Windoze apps). Whether that's done under VirtualBox or bhyve, I don't care -- so long as it works. I'm hesitant to upgrade from 9.3 to 11 until I feel warm and fuzzy that Windows 7 will continue to work under 11.

 

[eldo]

Unsure about win7, but I have seen many successes with win 10 since FN11 added vnc support for uefi systems.

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

 

[Ericloewe]

It works, but you need to boot it from UEFI, not BIOS.

 

[Scharbag]

I have no particular love for VirtualBox, but I do need to run Windows 7 (and a few Windoze apps). Whether that's done under VirtualBox or bhyve, I don't care -- so long as it works. I'm hesitant to upgrade from 9.3 to 11 until I feel warm and fuzzy that Windows 7 will continue to work under 11.

If you have hardware that supports it, you could use ESXi to virtualize FreeNAS and Windows machines. It works well as long as you can utilize VT-d and you have enough horsepower. I would prefer if BHyve could allow me to reliably ditch ESXi but for now, I prefer to have a reliable solution (I do hope this can change as ESXi does require a beefy server).

Another advantage of ESXi is that you can virtualize anything you want :) Not sure if BHyve has the same range of available software it can virtualize.

Cheers,