Upgrade FreeNAS 11.0-U1 to TrueNAS

TrueNAS General
22

I still have not read a direct answer to my questions.

From information posted in this thread it seems there is no direct upgrade path from FreeNAS 11.0-u1 to TrueNAS. Although I have read other posts that say otherwise (i.e. ISO upgrade from 11.0-U2 to 11.1-U7 then manual .tar upgrade to 11.3-U5, followed by manual .tar upgrade to 12.0-U8).

As I’ve stated previously my main concern is - will an ISO “upgrade” preserve my existing data? My expectation is that after performing an ISO update the FreeNAS OS will be updated, and all my data will exist as it did before the ISO ugrade. Can anyone confirm this? Has anyone performed this and can attest to the result? If so, is anyone willing to list the steps they performed? I am not asking for anyone to comment on backing up my data. I do have copies of it all and I am aware of the risks.

23

You are asking questions about old versions of FreeNAS / TrueNAS. There are very few people that have gone through the same process of upgrading through all those versions and can comment about it working or if there were issues.

I have only performed upgrades within the TrueNAS 13 series. I have completely overwritten the boot drive and installed TrueNAS Scale and I had access to my data pools. I have also overwritten the TrueNAS Scale boot drive and reinstalled back to TrueNAS Core 13 series and my data pool was fine.

If you only have data and SMB shares, you are pretty safe just going through the tar file upgrade paths manually.
11.0 upgrade to 11.0U4
11.0U4 upgrade to 11.1 Release
11.1 upgrade to 11.1U7
etc.
You can keep doing the upgrades that way until you get to a 13 series release and then the GUI web updates should work again.

Read the documentation and release notes as you go along. It should be covered in the Legacy docs but you will have to follow along as FreeNAS becomes TrueNAS.

1 Like
24

@FreeNAS : Is your current 11.0-U1 system taking snapshots of the pool, and do you have any jails set up, for example Plex Media Server?

25

I assumed there was a system process running that takes periodic snapshots of my volume/dataset but there wasn’t. So, I added one.

Although at one time I had considered creating a jail for something, I don’t remember ever doing it. However, when I select the Storage icon, I see a “jails” folder listed at the bottom of my main volume.

26

I believe most of what I have is data and SMB shares. I think that I previously mentioned attempting going through a manual .tar upgrade from 11.0-U1 to 11.0-U2 which failed with an exception. Which you previously acknowledged there may be a problem with manual upgrades in the version that I am running and suggested to get to the next version, backup my configuration, performing an ISO upgrade overwriting the boot pool and when the upgrade is finished, restore the configuration file. I may end up doing this.

27

Thanks for the extra information; if you can’t see anything inside the jail then it is probably only a reserved area in case you wanted to add one.

I have some experience in the upgrading process from much earlier versions, going from 11.x to 12.x which was a difficult experience; mainly because it involved updating Plex Media Server in an old jail which did not transfer across properly to 12.x and I ended up having to recreate the whole jail again, sort out some ACL permissions for the storage access for Plex, and set up the SMB share again. That upgrade process was using the manual .tar file method, which failed at one point and I had to roll back the whole server and start the process afresh. That’s why I asked about the snapshots; they are your way out of trouble if something disastrous occurs with the upgrade.

Once in 12.0-U8.1, the server worked OK for several months until I tried to delete files across the SMB share, but was unable to do so. I received very good advice on this forum to further upgrade to 13.3 as there might have been a bug in 12.x (but equally it could also have been the leftovers from the previous failed upgrade).

I did this upgrade process from 12.0-U8.1 → 13.3 step-wise using the .iso method, with saving and importing the config file at each stage, which worked very well and without any problem. From that point the problems with SMB file deletion disappeared, the Plex jail survived transition through the successive versions and continued to work well.

So, if you haven’t got any jails and just a simple data / SMB share, and have a good reason to upgrade, then there’s an excellent chance that using the .iso method / import config file process will work reliably. My reason for 11.x → 12.x were to update the Plex Media Server application, which was outdated under 11.x and became unsupported by the companion apps on Windows and FireTV box. As described above, the reason for 12.x → 13.3 were to cure a problem with SMB file deletion.

The TrueNAS documentation recommends this upgrade path:

13.3 Version Notes | TrueNAS Documentation Hub

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and you have already partially done the process earlier by burning the .iso file to a memory stick, rebooting from that and installing onto your boot drive. Once that new installation starts up from the boot drive then re-import the config file and your pool should be accessible again.

I recommend doing the following steps before starting any upgrading:

  1. Back up any critical data
  2. Run a set of long S.M.A.R.T. tests on all your drives and see that no unfixable errors have been returned
  3. Make sure a full scrub has been done on your pool, and any errors have been corrected
  4. Take another snapshot of the pool at this stage
  5. Export the config file and rename it to something recognisable as being associated with the Free/TrueNAS version from which it has been saved.

The reason for the last step is that you will be doing several save / re-import stages and the config file may have changed in between. As a rule, I always re-import the config file saved from the previous stage, not the one saved right at the beginning.

28

Or if they have, it was long enough ago that the details are fuzzy.

When you perform a fresh install of TrueNAS to a boot device, you can upload your previously saved config file to restore the previous config. Your data is preserved.

29

I think I could manage my way through that process. Question, instead of going through the work of installing all the intermediate versions, why not skip to installing the latest version and then restore your saved configuration? Is it because the config format changes a little between versions (i.e. new properties)? Anyone who has built installers usually takes backward compatibility into consideration. Unless the new version is a complete refactor.
Aren’t there release notes that explain what changed? I know I’m looking for a shortcut here, but I would think I can’t be the only one who has ever thought of this.

30

@SmallBarky already linked you to the archived release notes for past versions. Generally I would say yes, a fresh .iso install is always an option, but when you’re that far behind there is always the possibility that a major change occurred in the intervening versions that will cause issues with just applying an outdated config file. So you may want to make a few stops along the way if it looks like there are major changes in a version impacting your configuration. I don’t have any familiarity with Freenas versions that far back or most of the changes that were made along the way to give you any better advice than that.

31

I remember, during the upgrade process, observing some changes in the underlying technology of ZFS; so as DjP-iX says perhaps they could have depended on something else that definitely happened by a previous ‘recommended’ stage in the upgrade path. If you miss out on that intermediate step then things might not work according to plan.