Will FreeNAS 0.7 be a last version? [ NO ]

[zoon01]

I also noticed this message on the page and it's indeed no joke.

Recode the whole freenas to debian is a big process and i only can believe that the reason behind this is not for nothing.

If you look into the source of Freenas than you may or can notice that it's a pain in the **** to maintain it.
Every option that users here want can break a part of freenas functions or needs lots of workarounds to get things working.

I can imagine that this situation is not funny for a devloper to work with, day in and day out.

I think that when the urly freenas was born, they did not count on all the options and services as freenas has today.

I'm shure Volker will explane everything when the time is ready

Regards
Mike

[votdev]

Hello,
seems i have to say something about the current situation.

Since long time many users want to see more and more features in FreeNAS. But this is not possible as it is designed at the moment. The intention of FreeNAS was to be smart and simple. Because the roots of FreeNAS is m0n0 the complete design is to be compact. But for a NAS and all it's features we come to a situation that the complete core of FreeNAs is not able to meet that requirements anymore. It is really a pain to add new features and i'm not willing anymore to deny every request. It is hard to tell someone that it is not possible to add these or those features because of technical reasons if you do not have an overview of how FreeNAS works internally.

Some months ago i started to upgrade FreeNAS to FBSD8.0. I also thought about how to remove all these limitations of the previous versions to make it more enhanceable. The more i thought about it the more i came to the conclusion that it will be necessary to reimplement everything to get rid of these limitations.
The first is there will be no difference between 'embedded' and 'full' anymore. This is one of the reason why FreeNAS is so complex. Every script needs to ensure that the requirements are fullfilled to run without problems. Also the complete build scripts need to reimplemented because i do not want to go the same way as in the current versions. Right at the moment only the required files (binaries and libs) are copied. This is another reason why the maintenance and implementation of new features is hard to do.
To make it short, i was not willing to reinvent the wheel to get a simple build environment. TinyBSD and all the other build envs for FreeBSD does not meet the requirements needed.
Debian LiveHelper was to solution i was searching for. Also the complete Debian infrastructure seems to reduce the work to get a new FreeNAS to a minimum. The FreeBSD ports system is great, but i do not want to waste my time by fixing build problems, i only want to install and use software. Implemenmting the services and WebGUI is time consuming enough.
My decision to use Linux for the next version was because there are too much bugs in the core FreeBSD system. Simply have a look into the bug tracker. FreeNAS does not run on many systems, mainly new hardware makes trouble. The main reason is the driver problem with FreeBSD which seems to be no problem with Linux because there are great companies in the back that support it. Also the Linux developer community is much greater than the FBSD one.
Finally i have to say that the decision was not easy, but if you have to reimplement something from the beginning (and THIS IS NECESSARY to get rid of all the limitations), then you also use the latest technology that is available at the moment. And at the moment this is Debian/Linux (better driver support/maintenance/package system/docs/FUTURE-PROOF). The only limitation is the missing of ZFS, but i think there will be some equal filesystem available in Linux soon.

The main aim of the next generation is to make it as much as possible enhanceable. This does not mean that FreeNAS will include anything out-of-the-box (i plan to reimplement all the services that are available right at the moment), but it can be enhanced easily by the user via interfaces and scripts that can be copied to the system.

I know that there will be some users that will not be happy about that, but does it make sense to have a cool system that does not run on new hardware?

Regards
Volker

A short list of pros:
- Text and grahical installer that can be customized. This means no hand written install scripts anymore which causes some problems in FreeNAS
- WOL works in Linux
- lmsensor - A WORKING sensor framework which is a really needed feature in FreeNAS to check the CPU/MB temps and fan speeds
- Better Samba performance
- Ability to implement HA features
- System can be updated via 'apt-get' or any other deb package manager
- Better driver support
- Maybe 'ZFS' over FUSE (there is already one commercial product available that uses this feature)
- NFS4
- ...

[srogovtsev]

seems i have to say something about the current situation.

So... then the question is: what do we have to do to be able to move our data/config from FreeNAS to CoreNAS as easily as possible. For starters, I suppose that no ZFS at all, because it won't be even readable. What's for UFS?

[danmero]

Maybe we have more important question to ask, like:

• Will FreeNAS development/maintenance stop once CoreNAS will be released ?
• If graid5, istgt, etc create problems on FreeBSD 8.0 can we expect a FreeNAS builds on future FreeBSD 7.x RELEASE.

[votdev]

Maybe we have more important question to ask, like:

• Will FreeNAS development/maintenance stop once CoreNAS will be released ?
  

No, maintenance will be continued

Maybe we have more important question to ask, like:

If graid5, istgt, etc create problems on FreeBSD 8.0 can we expect a FreeNAS builds on future FreeBSD 7.x RELEASE.

FreeNAS will be updated to an newer FreeBSD 7.x version if there will be released any.

P.S.: istgt is another great example why using Linux. There is no iSCSI target implementation available for FreeBSD that works without problems. The old iSCSI target software is not maintained anymore and the istgt author seems to be unaccessible. I spent many times with the author of istgt to integrate it into 0.7, but now where there are any problems he is not available to fix them. What shall i do, i do not know anything about the code to fix the bugs.

[danmero]

If graid5, istgt, etc create problems on FreeBSD 8.0 can we expect a FreeNAS builds on future FreeBSD 7.x RELEASE.

FreeNAS will be updated to an newer FreeBSD 7.x version if there will be released any.

Let's face the facts:

• Arne already decided few years ago to stop graid5 development with FreeBSD 7.x once ZFS will be implemented on FreeBSD(note for graid5 users).
• istgt interface and scripts are not finis but operational.
• The next FreeBSD 7.x RELEASE will include the new ZFS , see ZFS - FreeBSD Wiki.
• FreeNAS project will be OK for another few years even if Volker will start working on CoreNAS.

Anyway in the future a 64bits CPU and few Gig's of RAM will be a MUST.

[lornegaetz]

From a hardware compatibility point of view, I welcome the switch to Linux. You can see lots of people posting in these forums (fora?) whose problems stem from lack of FreeBSD hardware support that would less of an issue with Linux. With a lot of luck, once google steps up with their Linux OS, maybe we will see Linux drivers for most consumer hardware (perhaps deluding myself there).

I also applaud the elimination of separate full and embedded installations. The concept of "small footprint" today is quite different then even a few years ago. Flash devices in the 16gig range can be had for very affordable prices and it shouldn't be long before solid state drives are also cheap. Desktop RAM can be had for peanuts and will only get cheaper as long as M$ churns out bloatware that needs the latest and greatest hardware to animate mouse pointers.

In case I haven't said it enough, big thanks to the FreeNAS team.

Lorne

[danmero]

From a hardware compatibility point of view, I welcome the switch to Linux.... You can see lots of people posting in these forums (fora?) whose problems stem from lack of FreeBSD hardware support that would less of an issue with Linux. ... maybe we will see Linux drivers for most consumer hardware (perhaps deluding myself there).

FreeBSD moto: Buy only what's supported, else don't and anyway Linux world have other stability and incompatibility problems.

I also applaud the elimination of separate full and embedded installations.

Be ready to fix your own mistakes. Right now(embedded) you are protected by WebGUI when you change the configuration and-if you delete/corrupt system file , just reboot and you are back online.

I already have my part of cake with RedHat 3 > RHEL , Mandrake > Mandriva and lately Nexenta > NexentaStor
Personalty I rather go for OpenSolaris base NAS that Linux if you want ZFS and iSCSI Target.

[srogovtsev]

I also applaud the elimination of separate full and embedded installations.

Be ready to fix your own mistakes. Right now(embedded) you are protected by WebGUI when you change the configuration and-if you delete/corrupt system file , just reboot and you are back online.

Yepp, my point exactly. Although from what I was able to understand in votdev's explanation, there'd be some kind of livecd-run, which means...

[disk_man]

any my question is:
When will we move to corenas?
can i copy my config to it?

i guess the debian way will be the better way. keep on you great work.

disk