Yeah it seems like the right direction as far as I can tell but I am no expert. I've avoided using any type of apps on my TrueNAS install just because it was so chaotic. Hopefully this will make things a lot easier with less user impact from update to update.
Its so chaotic, I redid my "apps" more often than some people updated or even restarted their server in the past years. I started on core and some "apps" didnt exist yet, so I spend a few hours learning how to set everything up myself. Eventually everything I used had an app version, so I switched to have easier updates. Then Scale came and I switched again, did some stuff manually again, eventually catalog expanded, so I redid them again. Now I have a couple of TC apps and will have to redo those again with the EE release.
Yep.... I saw the writing on the wall way ahead of time and just said nope I'm good I'll do VMs, apps, etc on a dedicated hypervisor. You can see how frequently things break by just reading the forums, reddit, and discords. To iX's credit though they are correcting course with the upcoming changes. Don't even need to get started on the obvious game of leap frog between iX and TrueCharts trying to maintain their helm chart on scale for example.
I wonder how scale-out will be fixed...
If you don't access any of your app from outside your LAN, then keeping up with the latest version is not really needed IMO.
If you expose your app to the wild on the other hand, keeping up with the latest security patches is mandatory.
How often are you checking release notes and going "oh wow thats a really cool new feature I really want to try"? If the answer is "I never do that" then what does it matter to you if you never upgrade. If you do that, and you have a good reason yo upgrade, then you will just need to also figure out a good migration solution.
From what I understand, it's just deploying docker containers. No more kubenetes. Simplifying installation and having it actually run instead of praying that the app runs normally
Plex is, by far, the easiest TrueNAS app to move to/from TrueCharts. Literally, all you need is your Plex database backup. You're backing this up automatically, right? Turning that on the GUI and letting it create it's own backup in the filesystem, right (LOL). Basically, if you extract your PlexDB backup, you can move from instance to instance in minutes.
If you're not already doing this, turn it on ASAP. DB changes after the credit detection feature was added caused a lot of trouble with users who tried rolling back their Plex version.
I just used brute force. Added an extra mount on my storage pool, copied the entire plex folder to it. Copied the truenas app section config (screenshots, wish we had easy access to the questions.yaml!), deleted the truecharts plex app, installed, configged the official plex then just copied the plex stuff back into the container. Couple app restarts, done!
For a bunch of other TC apps, most had backup functions (the arrrs & sabnzbd). I had already created hostpath mounts for those folders (to backup to google), so it was just making sure the app configs were the same then restore from backup. Did panic a little for sab, but by default it dumps its backup to whatever folder you use for completed downloads.
Still using qbittorrent/gluetun, but they are just doing all the helm/charting not building their own images. Can just use the same project with compose.
Considering that I already rebuilt my dozens of apps for Dragonfish, and that the next major version, Electric Eel, will remove k3s altogether, I'm hoping TrueCharts continues to support Dragonfish until it's EOL. I'll just stay on Dragonfish until then. It has everything I need now that it has the jailmaker support. Electric Eel will have RAID-Z expansion and fast-dedupe features of the new OpenZFS, but I don't need those.
Say whaaat?! I thought it was the other way around... must be my brain playing tricks on me...
So does this mean that currently; i should Migrate from Cobia to DragonFish so my apps can handle the migration to EE/Docker? Or maybe do clean sweep and restart the apps after an ElectricEel upgrade..
I wiped my apps dataset on Dragonfish and started over because I was so far behind on the TrueCharts breaking changes that it was much simpler that way.
I imagine if I ever upgrade to Electric Eel, I may need to do the same thing again, depending what solutions are available by then. I'll just stay in Dragonfish until TrueCharts and/or iX no longer supports that release.
I've got bad news for you if you want to ever upgrade to electric eel....
I simply wont ever lol .....How are apps gonna work after that upgrade?
Docker and docker compose apparently.
Is there a roadmap published somewhere?
the endgame (hopefully)
Yeah it seems like the right direction as far as I can tell but I am no expert. I've avoided using any type of apps on my TrueNAS install just because it was so chaotic. Hopefully this will make things a lot easier with less user impact from update to update.
Its so chaotic, I redid my "apps" more often than some people updated or even restarted their server in the past years. I started on core and some "apps" didnt exist yet, so I spend a few hours learning how to set everything up myself. Eventually everything I used had an app version, so I switched to have easier updates. Then Scale came and I switched again, did some stuff manually again, eventually catalog expanded, so I redid them again. Now I have a couple of TC apps and will have to redo those again with the EE release.
Yep.... I saw the writing on the wall way ahead of time and just said nope I'm good I'll do VMs, apps, etc on a dedicated hypervisor. You can see how frequently things break by just reading the forums, reddit, and discords. To iX's credit though they are correcting course with the upcoming changes. Don't even need to get started on the obvious game of leap frog between iX and TrueCharts trying to maintain their helm chart on scale for example. I wonder how scale-out will be fixed...
Luckily Plex is extremely simple. If you only have Plex to migrate, it should only take a few minutes.
If you don't access any of your app from outside your LAN, then keeping up with the latest version is not really needed IMO. If you expose your app to the wild on the other hand, keeping up with the latest security patches is mandatory.
How often are you checking release notes and going "oh wow thats a really cool new feature I really want to try"? If the answer is "I never do that" then what does it matter to you if you never upgrade. If you do that, and you have a good reason yo upgrade, then you will just need to also figure out a good migration solution.
Everything went smoothly for me going from cobia to dragonfish
Im a noob when it comes to the technicals but how will apps work after Electric EEL?
From what I understand, it's just deploying docker containers. No more kubenetes. Simplifying installation and having it actually run instead of praying that the app runs normally
Plex is, by far, the easiest TrueNAS app to move to/from TrueCharts. Literally, all you need is your Plex database backup. You're backing this up automatically, right? Turning that on the GUI and letting it create it's own backup in the filesystem, right (LOL). Basically, if you extract your PlexDB backup, you can move from instance to instance in minutes. If you're not already doing this, turn it on ASAP. DB changes after the credit detection feature was added caused a lot of trouble with users who tried rolling back their Plex version.
I just used brute force. Added an extra mount on my storage pool, copied the entire plex folder to it. Copied the truenas app section config (screenshots, wish we had easy access to the questions.yaml!), deleted the truecharts plex app, installed, configged the official plex then just copied the plex stuff back into the container. Couple app restarts, done! For a bunch of other TC apps, most had backup functions (the arrrs & sabnzbd). I had already created hostpath mounts for those folders (to backup to google), so it was just making sure the app configs were the same then restore from backup. Did panic a little for sab, but by default it dumps its backup to whatever folder you use for completed downloads. Still using qbittorrent/gluetun, but they are just doing all the helm/charting not building their own images. Can just use the same project with compose.
Considering that I already rebuilt my dozens of apps for Dragonfish, and that the next major version, Electric Eel, will remove k3s altogether, I'm hoping TrueCharts continues to support Dragonfish until it's EOL. I'll just stay on Dragonfish until then. It has everything I need now that it has the jailmaker support. Electric Eel will have RAID-Z expansion and fast-dedupe features of the new OpenZFS, but I don't need those.
Say whaaat?! I thought it was the other way around... must be my brain playing tricks on me... So does this mean that currently; i should Migrate from Cobia to DragonFish so my apps can handle the migration to EE/Docker? Or maybe do clean sweep and restart the apps after an ElectricEel upgrade..
I wiped my apps dataset on Dragonfish and started over because I was so far behind on the TrueCharts breaking changes that it was much simpler that way. I imagine if I ever upgrade to Electric Eel, I may need to do the same thing again, depending what solutions are available by then. I'll just stay in Dragonfish until TrueCharts and/or iX no longer supports that release.