Big installation issues when upgrading from 11.2 U7 to 11.3

[vafk]

Today I upgraded two of my FreeNAS from 11.2 to 11.3. First I downloaded FreeNAS-11.3-RELEASE.iso and installed it with Rufus to a USB-stick. Install went well only odd when stuck at "middlewared: setting up plugins (system) [1/34]" I had to break with ctrl+c to be able to continue. Because this happened on two different hardware (HP N54L and HP Microserver Gen8) I assume this is a bug rather than a feature.

After having it installed I checked on HP N54L for updates and it shows me none but on HP Microserver Gen8 it found 4 upgrades and is now downloading a total of 456 MB raising the question what is the benefit of downloading the ISO when it needs to download almost the same size anyway. Yeah I can hear it it saved time downloading for N54L because it needed no updates but I am sure tomorrow it will cry for update.

Edit 1:
Only after downloading and starting the update it told that it was updating to 11.3-RC2 and provided a link https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/library/freenas-11-3-rc2/

Would be great to know this in advance before the user downloads the bunch of data in order to know if he/she wants to do it. As well as to find out how to get the 11.3-RC2 to update the second machine running 11.3-RELEASE Build Jan 27,2020...

Edit 2:
Now there is even bigger surprise for a Friday night!!! After installing the 11.3-RC2 upgrade the system is stuck booting
"Mounting from zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.2-U7 failed with error 45: retrying for 30 more seconds"

System now ended in mountroot> and I can start learning what this is, how to get out and how to root my ROOT to get my data.

Edit 3:
As I did not find out how to leave from the mountroot> promt I had to reset my server. I am curious what happens next...

This is it, folks. Great present from the upgrade & a ruined night. Hope I can roll back to 11.2 back to have my data ready for tomorrow.

Edit 4:
Only now after this occured and I googled for "zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.2-U7" I found that other users have faced the same problem

System tries to mount from 11.2-U7 after updating 11.3

I just built fresh installation of 11.3 and then applied my saved config (previously 11.2-U7). After I had the system working, I applied pending 11.3 updates. When the system rebooted, it hung trying to mount root from zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.2-U7. Well that sucked. So I reinstalled 11.3...

www.ixsystems.com

The reported date is Feb 2 which is 2 weeks back. WTF who placed the new updates and left them for two weeks after this error was first reported?

 

[vafk]

So here is the temporary solution, on a Valentine, from a country where you are not allowed to carry a peacemaker and where knuckleheads run away with no excuse... So you are stuck in boot after upgrading to 11.3?

Step 1 - get yourself a bottle of Jim Beam or similar
Step 2 - Do you have you boot stick with the FreeNAS-11.3-RELEASE.iso? If yes, take a sip. If no, take s sip, start a download and take a deep sip.
Step 3 - start the same shit it brought you here, i.e. do the upgrade boot.
Step 4 - hope that all went well and you will get there where you were before you selected to upgrade to 11.3-RC

 

[Kris Heslop]

If it helps, I can share my experience that seems closely related:

Attempted to use GUI update, failed with checksum failure.
Then the system automatically, "switched back to 11.2 Train"

I did not get any updates under 11.2, since all were previously applied. I didn't register at first why the train switched, since the first time I didn't see the checksum failure.

Applied update and after installing it hung at: middlewared: setting up plugins (system) 1/34

After several minutes, searched and found others had same issue and used "Cntrl-C" so I Did and the system started progressing, then shutdown and rebooted before coming up properly (I hope.)

Might not have any relation, but there do seem to be some issues with this update processing on some systems.

So now on 11.3