It depends which train you're following. If you're following NIGHTLIES, testing is still in progress, so buyer beware and if you find a bug, make sure it's reported. If you're following STABLE, testing has occurred internally, and depending upon the bug ticket, has also been confirmed by at least the person who had experienced the original problem, as well as those who test NIGHTLIES.
Thanks. I should have mentioned 9.3 Stable as that is what my main FreeNAS system is running. I'm not into the Nightlies yet, waiting on FreeNAS 10 to become usable and then I'll be testing that one using nightly updates as they become available on my test rig and when it becomes a Beta, then I'll give it a shot on my main system to ensure it's even going to run without any significant issue.
My concern is the inadvertent destruction of someones data. But I will say that making smaller update corrections has got to be much easier on the developer team.
So is the 9.3 nightlies effectively the Beta testing? How is that communicated to the testers in the community?
Feeling like your freeNAS box turned into a windows server with the daily updates? :(
Naw, MS pushes updates once a month to keep up with the security hacks and you only see the bulk of real bug fixes when the product is initially launched.
I think your question is very valid. Back when it was announced there would be automated upgrading via the WebGUI several people said that it gave iX a chance to do less testing before rolling out. I was involved with the testing and we definitely had more testing with 9.3-betas than we ever had with prior RCs and such.
All that being said, I've gotten quite a few PMs, emails, phone calls, etc asking what the story is with all the updates in the same type of thoughts as the original post. Quite a few people aren't going to 9.3 because they aren't convinced that things won't go horribly wrong. They don't expect them too, but after seeing how many updates have been pushed (and how many bugs have been closed) they don't have confidence in 9.3. Some have decided to stay on 9.2.1.9 until a security patch is pushed that really warrants their attention to upgrade because they consider 9.3 to be a moving target.
I agree, I do have less confidence in the product simply because I'm certain there is less testing going on. There is a large variety of hardware platforms out there and iXsystems is using only what they have available. If we all had the same hardware then I'd actually feel better. And I'm not talking about the difference between Intel and AMD, there are various motherboards, BIOS versions, SAS cards, and different CPUs. I know the developers would never do anything to intentionally cause damage but it's difficult to test for that if there isn't sufficient beta testing.
I'm sure this will jump to the top the minute an update is pushed and catastrophe hits too many users. Lets be honest, FreeNAS users are the beta testers for the paying TrueNAS users. I understand it and accept it.
On a positive note, FreeNAS 9.3 had a few issues with Grub but otherwise it's been running very well for me.
