I’m not sure what the disconnect is here Dan. Connect introduces a new way to do fully web-driven TrueNAS installation. Both headless and vastly streamlined. As part of that process it also delivers full proper SSL certs which are used fully for the installation process. All for Free.
The process basically looks like: Boot Install USB. Login to TrueNAS Connect. Discover your NAS. Click Install. Click Next a few times. Wait for reboot and then log into TrueNAS UI with full valid SSL enablement. I’m pretty darn happy with this evolution. Not that folks do installs every day, but it sure is a nice improvement to have available.
The text-based installer is of course still there for the fully offline installation. Its pretty basic and straightforward, no real drive to change that. The web-driven process was the big missing piece here.
The disconnect is, fundamentally, that I assumed something different by “web-based installation” than what you meant–I understood this to be an alternative to “download the ISO, dd the ISO, boot, install” (because, as I noted above, that’s one of the recurring pain points I see with the installer). Fine, that’s on me. Now that I do understand what you meant, I’m left (again) asking, “who wants this?” You obviously think someone does, or you wouldn’t have gone to the effort to develop it. Presumably you think it’s a lot of someones.
Is it? Don’t you still have to answer the same questions as in the normal installer? I mean, those aren’t many–password, installation target, and (maybe) Legacy vs. UEFI boot–but they still need to be answered, as I understood the docs page.
But rather than speculate, I decided to run through the process, signing up for yet another online account. And it’s largely as I’d expected from the docs: prettier than the text installer, but no more streamlined. Somewhere in the process, you get a cert for *.cr49fa5fij885c9jhncnkquoin20d23t52an3ug.l226e8evc5ldjcspgcppqt378sj9n4btef62ojo.truenas.direct (so you’re taking a page from Plex’s playbook) from ZeroSSL, and giving the system a hostname of 192-168-1-176.cr49fa5fij885c9jhncnkquoin20d23t52an3ug.l226e8evc5ldjcspgcppqt378sj9n4btef62ojo.truenas.direct. Not exactly something I’m going to type in, but I guess that’s why bookmarks exist.
So really, other than generating the cert, nothing about this is more streamlined than the normal installation. It’s prettier, it generates a hostname you’ll never be able to remember, and it gets a cert for that hostname. Presumably it will automatically renew that cert?
Thats pretty much it. Again, its just an alternative way to do what is pretty much the same process, some of that cannot be reduced any further of course. Pick a drive. Set a few knobs. Do install. Wait and reboot. But with the entire process done without needing to use the (ugly) CLI, is now done over SSL end-to-end, and with a renewing cert/host on the other side of it. It’s about providing more modern alternatives and web-driven is the thing people expect these days, especially when the software itself is designed to be managed via the web browser as well. Possible now to never use locally attached keyboard/monitor or clunky IPMI console to go from nothing to running storage.
May be that you are not the target audience, but there are some who find this far more accessible from a new user perspective. It’s like me expecting folks to just like and use vi I’ve had to realize I’m the old man now and that just isn’t going to happen for most folks
I didn’t examine this new installation method closely, but perhaps I’m the one who could benefit from it. My old MyCloudPR4100 doesn’t have video output of any kind (well, it has a serial console header on the mobo). I’m planning to run TrueNAS on it eventually. Guides suggest to just install it on a different machine and then move the boot (usb) drive to the PR4100 with fingers crossed. Perhaps it could be easier with remote installation.
Nevertheless, I share your PoV that it isn’t needed. The decision to develop a feature for the half-assed hardware without any video output is very questionable IMO (if that was the case).
I work in `vi` most of the time. Because I don’t know how to exit it. (c)
Actually, TN install from Ventioy used to fail somewhere right after boot. Can’t remember exactly as it was a while ago, but it would fail shortly after boot.
So yes, it would boot but then fail when it couldn’t find a file or filesystem, can’t remember.
This was a known issue in Ventioy so Im surprised it works now?
I installed TrueNAS (Scale) via Ventoy about a year ago. There were no major bumps (and I don’t remember any minor ones).
I’ve heard that Ventoy has/had issues with FreeBSD, but I’ve never used one (apart from OPNsense, but this was a VM installation). So, it may be that it had issues with TrueNAS Core.
I was using Ventoy as an example of a user-friendly Windows program that can make a USB stick bootable with all the required software and boot code.
TrueNAS could theoretically make a user-friendly Windows app that has a simple UI (like Ventoy) that only requires the user to insert a USB stick and press a button. Now your USB stick is ready to use for a TrueNAS install.
This wouldn’t matter for more experienced users who are familiar with making their own bootable sticks with ISOs and image files. It would cater only to the new users that want an “easy button” way to prepare a USB stick for their first TrueNAS installation.
These are so, only because you have made them so, and have done nothing to change them. You have chosen to “give some love to the installer” (as you phrased it), not by making it easier to use, nor to download and flash, nor by creating a local GUI for it (any of which you could have done, and any of which would resolve the “ugly” and “clunky” you mention), but instead by building in hooks to something nobody’s asked for AFAIK.
Hey, it’s your product, and you do you. But I can’t believe this was a bigger pain point than so many others you could have addressed, but didn’t.
I don’t necessarily think IPMI nullifies the benefit of something like TN Connect for fleet management. However, IPMI is something that’s fairly well understood and integrated, it remains to be seen what part of the management cake that TN Connect can grab, if any.
The appeal might be in being able to manage all kinds of boards, including those where IPMI is not present?
All from one consistent UI that doesn’t jump from ancient to present-day interfaces depending on whether the motherboard is already in the HTML5 era or not?
At least that’s the most compelling reason I can think of in my very limited use case…
Hi, I was using TrueNAS as a self-signed CA for some reason (convenience).
I’m wondering if the Certificate Authority (and most importantly the active cert already issued from it) disappears on upgrade to Goldeye or if it can continue to be used for the next 11 months.
I saw your other thread, but don’t know, as I don’t use this feature. But my guess is that the cert is still there, but the CA is gone. You can use the cert you have, but you can’t make any more.
