ISO Upgrades - who are they meant for?

[cheongi]

Have two FreeNAS installations on HP Microserver N36L. One happy running 8.3.0, other had been running 8.0.1, until recent issues with managing failed RAID array. To date, I've always upgraded by ISO (but haven't done one for a long time), since something I read in the past suggested it was more reliable and worked when all else failed.

Can't get any iso to boot up to the "upgrade" screen any more (fig 2.6.a in multiple versions of pdf user guide). Both machines will boot the ISO to the normal Figure 2.5a: FreeNAS Console Setup Menu and attempt to run ISO as a live boot FreeNAS and fail.

The manual (all pdf versions I have looked at 8.0.1 to 9.2.1) still says "2.6.2 Using the ISO [...] The installer will recognize that an earlier version of FreeNAS® is installed on the device and will present the message shown in Figure 2.6a."

I just read in a bug report about ISO booting for 9.2.1 "We've added logic to deny gui upgrades using the iso file."

So did that logic get added in FreeNAS 8.x?? Will ISO upgrade work if the GUI "firmware" update bricks??

(I must be one of the only people on earth still trying to do ISO upgrades.)

 

[cyberjock]

Upgrading by uploading the ISO file shouldn't have worked. The problem was that people were trying to do it, and the system would reboot to an unusable system. Whoops!

 

[cheongi]

Booting from the ISO burned onto a CD previously never caused any issues. Was simple and painless and behaved like all the manuals say in sect 2.6.2. I'm guessing that the code recognizing the earlier installation was removed a while back.

The potential for a "firmware" upgrade over a network to fail and "brick" is something I'm paranoid about! It does take a long time and the suggestion in the manual to watch the upgrade progress on the console is not really very practical.

So the GUI upgrade should fall over if someone uploads the wrong file.

But should a CD boot be prevented from recognizing a previous FreeNAS install?

 

[Ericloewe]

Booting from the ISO burned onto a CD previously never caused any issues. Was simple and painless and behaved like all the manuals say in sect 2.6.2. I'm guessing that the code recognizing the earlier installation was removed a while back.

The potential for a "firmware" upgrade over a network to fail and "brick" is something I'm paranoid about! It does take a long time and the suggestion in the manual to watch the upgrade progress on the console is not really very practical.

So the GUI upgrade should fall over if someone uploads the wrong file.

But should a CD boot be prevented from recognizing a previous FreeNAS install?

I think Cyberjock just means that the WebGUI refuses the ISO image.

Booting from it should work. Does the regular, non-upgrade ISO work? I remember there was an upgrade option when I installed.

 

[cheongi]

Does the regular, non-upgrade ISO work? I remember there was an upgrade option when I installed.

I think there is only one kind of ISO. It used to recognize existing install and offer upgrade menu up until I last did one maybe a year ago. But now I can't get any 8.2-8.3 version to do this. Trying to find out if it is meant to work or not, but nobody seems to be reporting problems. I think I saw one thread where a person trying ISO upgrade was recommended to use gui upgrade.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, with all due respect, 8.x was outdated over a year ago. 8.2 is like 27 months old or something. So you're going to find nobody here that's going to "report problems" on something that old. But I can tell you that if you make an ISO and boot the system from the disk it should work.

Recommending a GUI upgrade versus CD upgrade depends on any things. For the most part the GUI upgrade should work and is very easy for most people versus the ISO upgrade which can be more time intensive. But the ISO is the "take a hammer to it" approach as it should work regardless of how broken your OS is (assuming the OS isn't broken because of a hardware problem like a bad USB stick).

 

[cheongi]

Don't "need" help. But the ISO's don't boot and so I won't be trying them any more.

The fact that the ISOs won't boot to upgrade on 2 servers with 2 different CD drive methods and two different FreeNAS versions and 2 different USB sticks does not give great confidence in upgrading if the NAS boxes are "working" as is.

 

[cyberjock]

I hate to say it, but the ISOs exist only *because* they are bootable. If they aren't booting it's either user error, the OS isn't compatible (which I highly doubt but is included for completeness), or hardware issue.

There is literally no other reason that the ISO exists except to be bootable. ;)