Migrating Away from TrueCharts on TrueNAS SCALE

With the release of TrueNAS SCALE Electric Eel, and the final removal of support for third-party Apps on TrueNAS, its time for people to decide where to migrate their TrueCharts on TrueNAS SCALE Apps.

Our go-to solution is: A real Kubernetes cluster, setup through our ClusterTool (currently in Release Candidate status).

However for some people, moving to a real Kubernetes cluster to keep using TrueCharts is too-much to ask.

Hence we’ve now also published our instructions on how to use our tools, to export the SCALE-App GUI configuration into simply textfiles.

Which can then be used to either move to iX-Systems Apps or Docker-Compose, without any issues

https://truecharts.org/news/leaving-scale/

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There is no finally removal of third party apps… we have full docker compose now,

We can compose load any app we please now…

TrueCharts apps were good, Docker Compose is Better

EE takes away the ability to use third-party apps catalogs.

…which is something completely different.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the thought process that concludes that “paste in any .yaml you like” is even in the same category with “here’s a list of apps to point, click, and install.” It must be something in the metaphorical water around here.

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Having the ability to run any dockerized app is better than any catalogue or third party app adder in term of pure flexibility…

Less limitations is always better than a cookie cutter catalogue, the learning curve is bigger but that price is worth paying… Why, because learning things like docker leads to more skills which are marketable. It is permanent personal improvement…

I honestly would be more comfortable if IX just had no catalogue at all… all docker command line, (use Portainer or Dockge if you need a gui) personally is preffered.

Honestly, you have basically two types of users.

  1. Non-technical type that just wants things to work easily. This type needs help when things dont work. When third-party catalog screws things up they will ask here on forum “Why doesnt my TrueNAS work?” They will not go to catalog maintainer, but here. They will think it’s fault of TrueNAS. It’s obvious that TrueNAS cant be responsible for third-party catalogs. For people like this there is official catalog that TrueNAS devs can support. It’s not good idea to let these people use third-party catalogs because that would only bring problems.

  2. Technical user who can solve problems. This kind of user would understand dangers of third-party catalog. But this user can also manage their own compose files and use Dockge or Portainer. So no third-party catalog needed for them.

As you can see, you either have a user that you shouldn’t give access to third party catalogs, or a user that doesn’t need them.

Nonsense. If you believed this, you wouldn’t be limiting yourself to Docker images, or to the TrueNAS UI/API–you’d be bit-banging your own code on bare metal. But you accept the limitations of these tools, because they provide you other useful capabilities.

Similarly, others are willing to accept the increased limitations of pre-packaged apps, because those apps provide other useful capabilities. If you’re not willing to make that trade-off, that’s your affair, but saying one is “always better” than the other is just silly.

But we have a couple of years of history showing that this is often not the case. Yes, some TrueCharts users would come here (or to the old forum) for help with those apps, but many–I believe most–would use the TC support channels instead.

Not needed, perhaps, but still useful. I don’t need the apps; I’m capable of installing the software in question in a number of other ways. And I’m likewise capable of duplicating many of the functions of the TC chart that I find useful (e.g., ingress/reverse proxy/TLS termination, Homepage, etc.). But I do find those useful, because it’s easier for me to check the box than it is to edit my Caddyfile (for example).

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This warrants a short reply:
The amount of support tickets, threads and loosely reported issues, directly reported to us was many-MANY times higher than the iX-Forums, iX-Reddit and iX-Issuetracker combined. (we’re talking somewhere between 25x-100x, depending on the timeframe)

While not perfect, its pretty clear that the forum didn’t get the 100s of issues reported a month we did get :wink:

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Aren’t custom apps a type of third-party app?

The OP needs the word “catalogue” (or regional equivalent) added in there to not be misleading.

I wouldn’t read it that way; I’d read “app” as something you can point/click to install–though I can see how it might be ambiguous. But I think the rest of this short thread makes the meaning clear enough.

For those that do want to migrate to a normal kubernetes cluster, we’ve also just released our temporary migration catalog containing VolSync (which can be used as a platform-agnostic way to migrate/backup PVC data) :slightly_smiling_face:

Available here:

This is a great summary.

I would like to propose a 3rd type of user (like myself):

(a) Someone who WANTS to use one-click installl apps like (1) but is FORCED to use Stux’s helpful jaillmaker / dockge backdoor system because a lot of the Apps are straight broken as listed on the catalog. This is TRUENAS appps and not Truecharts. Believe me I would LOVE to use everything as vanilla state one click but a lot of them just do not install correctly if at all. AND my install of Truenas is 100% identical to the IX official how-to almost down to the users, groups, storage, dataset names, etc. so I know I am not alone.

I got it working (thanks to Stux) but for example Omada, Photoprism, Nginx, vaultwarden, etc. can only be used via docker at this time.

Not the fault of IX or Truecharts, but the public “word on the street” pitch for Truenas is precisely its nice easy GUI, helpful youtube videos, and one click application featureset.

I’m pretty much Dragonscale till I die mindset now, because I don’t want to have to learn how to install plexmedia server via docker compose, etc. Its not rocket science I know but its not easy either. For example, I googled for a while and couldnt find a single 95% complete .yml file to install plex pass media server install that didn’t give me incessant “curl plex token url not correct format, etc.” BS, etc. The Truenas application for PlexMediaServer just werks easy peasy out of the box. The plex server claim token works first time. No sweat at all. 2 minute install time TOPS.

I will miss this when Dragonscale is discontinued (hopefully many years from now) when I eventually will be forced into the “install plex media server your own way!!” with cryptic, autistic trial and error unix permission games along the way. I still am bitter that for an older version of plexmediaserver I had to go in and manually give ownership of the plex software folder it created itself(!) to plex after it installed just to get it working.

This stuff is probably childs play to Tyler, but its a PITA to someone in my situation, and most software users in general.

I never understood why linux / unix software almost always defaults to a broken install state, and can’t be assigned from the get go to a reasonable best practice vanilla state by the devs. Imagine if Apple and Microsoft tried that? Here’s your new iOS, but get what, you can’t get it working yet because you have to trawl through numerous forums for dicreet inside-baseball fixes first to prove you are an advanced user worthy of using it!

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But there are literally 1000’s of others that can “do docker” so that’s a big pool you’d be jumping into; I would imagine by now it would be like saying you can type or use Excel. w00t-w00t!

Almost anybody can do Docker, but not many truly understand networking well enough, so they can never be docker experts, until they dominate NAT, DNS, routing, subnetting, proxying, among other.

I’m not in IT so please bear with me but that screams “to be more marketable, roll your own server”.

Thanks for the info on getting the configs out of the TrueCharts apps.
In that post, you mention that this only extracts the configs and not the data, which uses heavyscript instead. What would be the best way to use those backups to import data into a TrueNAS catalog app, or a custom app on docker compose?

With heavyscript, you should be able to mount the truechart app PVC and copy whatever files you need. Each app will have a combo of config, data and other storage.

Brute force method would be to add an extra hostpath mount to each app, shell into apps and copy that to somewhere on your system that you can easily get to. I had an extra folder on my raidz-2 pool just to do the migration.

Once you have data, you could have that app config/data/extrafolders as a dataset and do your compose binds to the appropriate folders for each app. Could also add hostpath mounts for each app pointing to subfolders on that dataset and use ix official/community catalogue apps. Or portainer. Or dockge. Or jailmaker.

Once you have that data, you can choose whichever works for you.

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How are you mounting the PVC HeavyScript?

Also, how are you copying those files into a TrueNAS Docker container?

Heavy_script is a script that has a bunch of functionality.

It has a function that allows you to mount a kubernetes pod’s PVC, then you can copy what you need from an app to someplace easily accessible. As in app config/data.

How you get that into a EE docker container is up to you. I’d suggest creating a new dataset for app config/data. Then copy that stuff from the k3s/truecharts PVC to that.

As in:

/mnt/tank/docker/appname with subfolders for config or data or anything else that’s persistent. tank would just be whatever pool you decide to use.

Then you need to figure out if you want to use iX catalogue apps or use your own compose file(s).

For iX apps, you just add hostpath mounts to the the container’s /config (or whatever it’s looking for) pointed to those new folders on in /mnt/tank/docker/appname/config. And add hostpaths for any other ones the app needs.

Using your own compose, you’d use binds for that.

Each app could have multiple folders/mounts that would need to be copied.

The arrs & plex probably only have stuff in the /config. Exactly how that’s presented in Truecharts apps, I can’t say. I moved off their apps when the did their 100% breaking refactor in Spring 2023. I can’t remember if there was anything tricky or not.

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