Upgrading from 8.3.1 to 9.3.1

[pdoten]

I am looking to upgrade from 8.3.1 to 9.3.1. When I started looking at some of the information for 9.3.1 it states that a boot drive of 8GB is recommended. Currently I am running 8.3.1 off a 2GB flash drive so I went out and bought a nice new 32GB flash drive. As I am installing the new version on to a new drive it appears that I need to download the full ISO so that my process would be:

1. Download and burn full ISO
2. Backup config file from current version
3. Shutdown and swap flash drives, put in ISO disc
4. Install 9.3.1 from ISO disc onto new 32gb drive
5. Restore config file
6. Open beer

Should I have any issues with 9.3.1 opening my older config file? It wouldn't seem to based on everything I have read on here just wanted to confirm. TIA

 

[gpsguy]

Don't drink that beer yet.

You need to do a little slower.

Do a forum search for the recommended path. I believe it is: 8.3.1 -> 9.1 -> 9.2.1 -> 9.2.1.9 -> 9.3 -> 9.3.1

Sorry I can't easily look this up. I am on vacation and working from my phone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pdoten]

Don't drink that beer yet.

You need to do a little slower.

Do a forum search for the recommended path. I believe it is: 8.3.1 -> 9.1 -> 9.2.1 -> 9.2.1.9 -> 9.3 -> 9.3.1

Sorry I can't easily look this up. I am on vacation and working from my phone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I found this thread: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-8-0-to-9-3.26804/#post-170918

It looks like you were 0n-target with the upgrade path. The scary part appears to be the jump from MBR to GPT. Not that it will corrupt my array or anything but that the motherboard might not cooperate easily. As there isn't much risk for data lost (my primary concern) I think I may try the leap first. But it does appear based on other users that the baby steps may be necessary.

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, that's the thread I remembered.


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[pdoten]

Well the leap from 8.3.1 to 9.3.1 went fairly smoothly. No issues booting from the flash drive after installation which was my main concern. Haven't upgraded the ZFS pool yet, going from advice I saw in other upgrade threads I should probably give it a few days of everything working properly before making that leap. Only concern right now is getting my CIFS share to work again, having some issues there, may end up posting in the requisite forum for that if my troubleshooting hits a dead end.

 

[KevinM]

Well the leap from 8.3.1 to 9.3.1 went fairly smoothly. No issues booting from the flash drive after installation which was my main concern. Haven't upgraded the ZFS pool yet, going from advice I saw in other upgrade threads I should probably give it a few days of everything working properly before making that leap. Only concern right now is getting my CIFS share to work again, having some issues there, may end up posting in the requisite forum for that if my troubleshooting hits a dead end.

By leap, do you mean you jumped directly from 8.3.1 to 9.3.1? Reason I'm asking, I have 2 production boxes on 8.3.2 that have been chugging along for a couple of years, and the upgrade process looked so painful that I was going to just migrate the data off, wipe them and start over.

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, that's what the OP did.

Then opened this thread - https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...cifs-share-after-upgrading.42136/#post-272716

By leap, do you mean you jumped directly from 8.3.1 to 9.3.1?

 

[KevinM]

Yes, that's what the OP did.

Then opened this thread - https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...cifs-share-after-upgrading.42136/#post-272716

It's good to know that it's possible to hop from 8.3.x to 9.current, but I still think the safest path is to nuke from orbit and do a clean install. Even after following the recommended upgrade path on home system I've had to manually fix things in the back-end sqlite database.

 

[pdoten]

It's good to know that it's possible to hop from 8.3.x to 9.current, but I still think the safest path is to nuke from orbit and do a clean install. Even after following the recommended upgrade path on home system I've had to manually fix things in the back-end sqlite database.

It's possible but probably not ideal as I had to redo the CIFS shares as outlined in the other thread. I suppose it would probably depend on your use and installation. I would not have done the big upgrade if I was a sysadmin and had a client with a FreeNAS box but as it was just a unit in my home with one user (me) the risk wasn't as great.