FreeNAS 8.3 to 9.1 Upgrade - How to Prepare / Backup Jail, etc?

[bbddpp]

I've finally decided to take the brave leap from my working FreeNAS 8.3 to 9.1. However I have some concerns over losing some stuff that took a while to set up in 8.3 so I was hoping that I might be able to get a little detail on anything I might lose, or can back up, to re-use under 9.1

This is a media server so I had previously manually installed sickbeard, sabnzdb, mysql (for xbmc database maintenance), headphones, and the like on this box in a jail.

My assumption is that my jail will be either lost, or the plugins residing in this jail will no longer function in 9.1.

I realize that there are new, better plugins for a lot of this stuff, but also hope that someone might be able to point me towards files or items I can save from the current jail under 8.3, so I don't lose anything critical in 9.1. My assumption is that FreeNAS itself, my shares, volumes, config, will all survive the upgrade, but that anything in the jail and any plugins are safe to assume as getting totally destroyed.

Any help or pointers from someone who has been through it, as far as what I can do before I take the plunge, would really be appreciated.

Thanks for FreeNAS!

 

[bbddpp]

Think I may have answered my own question by reading the manual (duh)...One more question though.

The manual details how to upgrade an 8.3.x jail to a 9.1 jail. I want to actually move my jail to a new volume as it's on an old non-ZFS volume that I'd like to upgrade. When I upgrade the jail using the script, does it remain on the old volume or is there a way I can specify for the jail to move volumes as part of the upgrade?

 

[dlavigne]

According to the developer:

The jail itself won't be destroyed. It will remain there unless he actually does something to it intentionally. This guy has a couple of options here:

1. Just leave it alone. He can leave it the way it is, import it with the warden from the command line, and it will happily run the way it is.
The plugins will not be available from the GUI though.

2. Same as option 1, except grab new versions of pbi's from appcafe, do a pbi update in the jail (update, not install), then do some database
hackery to teach freenas about the new versions. This needs magic to get right, very tricky.

3. Create a new jail, manually fetch all the plugins from appcafe, upload into single jail, then copy necessary config files over. This will work exactly how it does currently with everything updated.

4. Install all new plugins from the GUI, create a jail for the mysql instance (and whatever else that isn't a plugin), and re-configure
accordingly.

I don't really recommend running the migration script in this case. The migration script is
similar to a warden import, so it would leave things similar to option #3.

 

[N00b]

bbddpp,
Option 3 - (Create a new jail, manually fetch all the plugins from appcafe, upload into single jail, then copy necessary config files over. ) works very well. I had a 9.1(Stable or Release) jail running Deluge, Nginx, Owncloud 4.5 in a PC-BSD jail all installed from ports. Here is what I did just fyi ... (if it helps) .:
1. Exported the jail with warden (command line or gui I am not sure) on the PC-BSD box.
2. Brought it over to a 9.1.1 VM.Imported the jail and changed type to plugin from standard.
3. Installed Owncloud 5.10 , SickBeard and Couchpotato into the jail by using the upload plugin option in the gui.
4. Shut down Nginx (enable="NO" in rc.conf) and moved Owncloud 4.5 data to new Owncloud directory. Removed old Owncloud.
5. Changed Deluge and Apache users to _Sickbeard. Somehow Couchpotato doesn't work when changed to _Sickbeard so the user is media.
6. Exported the jail back in warden and moved it back to the PC-BSD box. Imported the jail.
7. Updated the jail to 9.2-Release-p8 using warden CLI.

As far as I can tell the jail is running well with all apps working the way they should except that Couchpotato rename and manage functions are broken. I managed to get Couchpotato working too briefly but something I did to the settings broke the rename and manage function but I will come to it later.

I am probably living recklessly but I am not committing my wedding photographs to Owncloud just yet. :)

 

[bbddpp]

Just wanted to say thanks, this advice was great...Ultimately just backing up data and creating a new jail was the best. The migration script was never needed. I really love FreeNAS. Thanks to everyone who puts so much hard work into it. Of all the toys and stuff I own, I think the FreeNAS sever is the greatest thing given how flexible it has become with all the plugins and stuff. It's great having a box handling all this for me instead of having it running on a desktop or something.

Thanks everyone and happy holidays.