Looking into upgrading from 0.7.1

[reswob]

It's been a while since I thought about upgrading. My box has been happily running for four years with minimal problems.

But after looking through FreeNAS and then here, I decided to look into upgrading.

Here are my current stats:

Version 0.7.1 Shere (revision 4944)
Built on Tue Dec 15 20:12:44 UTC 2009
OS Version FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE-p5 (revision 199506)
Platform i386-embedded on Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz
RAM 1GB
About 1 TB of disk space using four differnt sized drives.


Based on what I've read, I'm not going to use ZFS. But the question I can't seem to answer is this: Will my processor and RAM support the new version of NAS4Free?

Thanks.

[raulfg3]

Based on what I've read, I'm not going to use ZFS. But the question I can't seem to answer is this: Will my processor and RAM support the new version of NAS4Free?

YES, no problem to use UFS disk.

N4F will probably work but, meditate if there is time to buy a new board and new disk and make a new NAS

[reswob]

Thanks!

[Veloce]

I went from the "shere" version to the latest Nas4Free too by changing the hardware and mounting the UFS disk of 1,5 Tb. in the new rig. created mountpoint and shares, set up in no time.
My only issue is the network throughput that went down from close 100 Mbit/sec. to a meagre 10-15 Mbit/sec. allthough it's a 1000Mbit NIC.
If your 4 disk setup is a RAID you could have a challenge rebuilding it, upgrade inplace won't work, you have to install Nas4Free fresh: using the old XML config file from FreeNas does not work either.

[wayover13]

This is my scenario as well, i.e., upgrading from FreeNAS .7.1. My system is and has been running fine, though my attempt to upgrade to .7.2 failed a couple of years ago. I've got an admittedly quirky set-up wherein I boot from a unebootin USB drive that has the embedded image saved on it.

Honestly, the system continues to work fine but for one issue: I don't want to have to go physically to the file server and turn it on manually each time I want to back up something. So, I'm mostly interested in upgrading so as to be able to do a WOL to start the file server. I understand that's supported under NAS4Free? I know my mobo/NIC supports it.

As for the machine it's a P4 2.4. Currently has 512MB RAM but I plan to up that to 2GB. I set up four disks with RAID0. I'm still not real clear on the steps for upgrading, so I need to do a bit more reading up. I did just try copying the latest *.img file to my flash drive, editing syslinux.cfg to specify it as the boot target. The image does actually boot, but it doesn't find config.xml--or maybe just can't read it since it's an older version.

[b0ssman]

wol and freebsd is a thing of its own.
currently wol under 9.2 isnt working very well.
try the 9.1 build if it isnt working for you.

[wayover13]

Good to know WOL is functioning well under some versions of NAS4Free. I hope I'll be able to do this upgrade. Incidentally, the image I've been trying to use is NAS4Free-x86-embedded-9.2.0.1.943.img. I'd like to ask in this post for a clarification on whether I'm understanding some things correctly.

As I mentioned, I've got this unetbootin USB drive onto which I've loaded embedded FreeNAS images in the past and have successfully booted the system with them. That's how I'm currently booting 0.7.1 on this system. Now, when I load NAS4Free-x86-embedded-9.2.0.1.943.img onto that USB drive and try booting it, it also gets most of the way through the process. It finishes at a prompt asking me the mount point for the root device. So, my question: does it seem I am understanding correctly that I reach this prompt, rather than a fully functioning NAS4Free system, because this image cannot parse the older config.xml I've been using (it's marked version 8.3, btw)? If so, then do I correctly infer that, if I could somehow translate my current config.xml to the newer config.xml format, the system would boot up normally as it has been under 0.7.1? Clarification on these questions will be appreciated.

On a slightly different note, I did a fairly detailed write-up on the old FreeNAS forum (possibly in 2009 or 2010?) of how I got this unebootin set-up operating. That old forum seems now to be offline, though. Is there any way to search out and transfer that write-up to this new forum?

[wayover13]

I've done some more reading on the forums and in documentation and am getting a better idea of how the upgrade process might work. I believe the "canonical" way for someone like me to go about this would be, using a NAS4Free live CD and a USB stick, to do a fresh installation onto that USB stick. Then, I'd go in and reconfigure everything as I had it set up under 0.7.1, using my old config.xml as a reference.

That's a somewhat involved process since I do have 4 disks in a RAID0 configuration. Which is what has me wondering about another possible approach--assuming my understanding of why the image with which I've been experimenting doesn't result in a working NAS4Free (i.e., because it can't use my old config.xml) is correct. That approach, which might be no more time consuming than the "canonical" approach, is as follows.

I would locate a current config.xml to use as a template (I've already actually found one on gitub--version 1.7). Then, using it, my old config.xml, and a utility like diff, I would manually create a new config.xml that uses the current scheme but that contains data from my old config.xml. It looks like it could be time consuming, but I'm not sure it would be more so than the "canonical" method.

My question is whether this a viable option? Does it seem possible or even doable? What are the potential dangers? Or will it just not work, for some reason I'm unaware of?

[wayover13]

Here's how I accomplished my upgrade. I used an old 512 MB CF card and a USB reader I had laying around and wrote the embedded image to that using gunzip and dd (directions found at viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1371 ). I booted the computer from that and reconfigured everything through the web interface. It was fairly easy and smooth to import my existing RAID0 set-up once I had rooted around a bit in the interface (Disks > Management > Import software RAID disks). Once I'd done all that I had a valid config.xml file on the CF disk, which I scp'd to another machine on my network. I then copied that and the embedded image I wanted (9.1) onto my trusty USB unetbootin thumb drive, edited syslinux.cfg so it would boot the new embedded image, and popped the drive into the USB slot. The system booted up fine like that, so I now have an updated, apparently-working, nas4free. Once I'd replaced the onboard NIC, I even managed to get WOL functioning. So things are looking good so far.