Release Notes for FreeNAS 9.1.0-RELEASE

1) Version 9.1-STABLE of FreeBSD with performance improvements, bug

fixes, and updated software packages.

2) Many improvements to the ZFS filesystem, including feature flags,

TRIM support, enhanced drive removal notification, LZ4 compression,

improved ARC memory reclamation and reliability improvements.

3) Improved Plugin Jail subsystem which supports multiple jails and

an enhanced UI including enhancements from PC-BSD Warden.

4) Improved Volume manager including auto optimization of volumes

for performance.

5) Improvements to the encryption subsystem.

6) Documentation enhancements.

7) Increased base image size to 3.7GB.

8) GUI UPGRADES FROM FREENAS 8.X ARE NOT SUPPORTED (due to image size #7)

9) **IMPORTANT** Backward compatibility of FreeNAS 9.1 ZFS pools

with older versions of ZFS is not to be expected. Upgrade pools

with extreme caution, as all ZFS pool upgrades are one-way and only

FreeNAS 9.1, FreeBSD 9-STABLE, and FreeBSD 8.4 currently support

this ZFS pool format.

10) To convert 8.* pluginjail to a 9.* pluginjail, please run the

jail migration script like so (prior to configuring jails):

/root/migrate_pluginjail.sh -D

Any plugins installed will need to be updated manually, this can be done

on the services->plugins page.

========================

Release Notes for FreeNAS 8.3.1-RELEASE-p2

*** IMPORTANT ***

- FreeNAS 8.3.0-BETA1 has the FreeBSD base system switched to FreeBSD

8.3-RELEASE-p3. The most noticable affect of this change is the

inclusion of ZFS version 28, but there are a number of other driver

changes as well.

- The mps driver for 6gbps LSI SAS HBAs is version 13, which requires

phase 13 firmware on the controller. This is a hard requirement,

running older firmware can cause many woes, including the failure to

probe all of the attached disks, which can lead to degraded or

unavailable arrays.

************************************************************************

- ZFS v28 includes deduplication, which can be enabled at the dataset

level. The more data you write to a deduplicated volume the more

memory it requires, and there is no upper bound on this. When the

system starts storing the dedup tables on disk because they no longer

fit in RAM, performance craters. There is no way to undedup data once

it is deduplicated, simply switching dedup off has NO AFFECT on the

existing data. Furthermore, importing an unclean pool can require

between 3-5GB of RAM per TB of deduped data, and if the system doesn't

have the needed RAM it will panic, with the only solution being adding

more RAM or recreating the pool. Think carefully before enabling

dedup! Then after thinking about it use compression instead.

************************************************************************

- There is no need to upgrade your plugin jail or plugins if you are upgrading

from FreeNAS 8.2.0-RELEASE-p1. If you do upgrade the plugin jail the plugins

installed in that jail may be lost.

- The GUI upgrade format changed in 8.2.0-BETA3 from xz to txz. What

this means is that if you are attempting to do a GUI upgrade to

8.3.0-RELEASE from 8.2.0-BETA3 or later use the .txz version of the

GUI_Upgrade file. If you are upgrading from any previous version use

the .xz file.

- The image size increased in 8.0.1-BETA3. The new size requires a 2 GB

storage device. The GUI upgrade can be used to upgrade a system from

8.0.1-BETA3or later but upgrades from earlier releases than

8.0.1-BETA3 can only be done from the CD. The other option is to save

the config, reinstall the new version, then restore the config.

- FreeBSD can be really touchy with hardware. Please be sure to update

your BIOS/BMC firmware when upgrading / installing FreeNAS if you run

into OS hang issues. There have been cases identified where a BIOS

upgrade has fixed driver hangs, and/or other issues with FreeNAS; one

such example was with an Intel 82578DC motherboard, as noted in the

FreeNAS 8 forum thread titled "8.0.3-RELEASE coming soon..":

http://bit.ly/rq78Q3 , post # 70-88. Again, please only do this if you

experience booting / runtime issues, as some vendors don't test

FreeBSD interoperability as much as others between major firmware

releases.

- Previous builds were branded as i386/amd64 (32-bit and 64-bit

respectively). 8.0.3-RC1 rebranded the architectures as x86 and x64,

respectively.

- 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 images advertised CIFS shares to Macs by default but

8.0.3 and later images don't advertise CIFS shares by default. If you

want to advertise CIFS shares in 8.0.3 and later, be sure to turn on

"Zeroconf" support in the CIFS global settings.

- Builds prior to 8.0.3-RELEASE with 'CIFS' didn't actually have AIO

(asynchronous I/O) enabled. So, if you experience performance

degradation after upgrading from prior versions of FreeNAS to

8.0.3-RELEASE or newer, turn off AIO or tune the AIO size from '1' to

something more reasonable (the new default in 8.0.3-RELEASE-p1 is 4096

or 4kB).

Changes in the 8.3 branch versus 8.0.x

Overview ========================

The 8.3 branch of FreeNAS introduces many functional changes when

compared with the 8.0.x releases.

ZFS can be manipulated from the CLI, and changes for supported items

tracked by FreeNAS will be reflected in the GUI. zvols, datasets, and

entire volumes can be created, destroyed, or manipulated on the CLI and

will be propagated to the GUI.

The GUI now supports active-passive multipath capable hardware, which

targets mainly SAS drives on dual expander backplanes. Any multipath

capable devices that are detected will be placed in multipath units

which are then exposed to the GUI, and the parent devices will be

hidden.

Plugins are now available. Third party modules can be added to FreeNAS

which will persist across upgrades and can be manipulated and configured

from the GUI. Documentation on using and creating plugins is available

at http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Plugins . BitTorrent, DLNA/uPNP, and

iTunes plugins are available as of this writing.

The GUI now includes a webshell, which allows you to access a root shell

from within a web browser.

The "Create Volume" modal was renamed to "Volume Manager". Extending

existing pools is more intuitive than it was previously; selecting

multiple disks for a storage volume is now done via a multiselect widget

instead of checkboxes to improve ease of use when creating volumes.

ZFS volumes now have periodic scrub tasks configured for them; the

default is set to 35 days to be consistent with the OS default.

An autotuning script is now available -- disabled by default. It sets

various tunables and sysctls based on system resources and components.

The predetermined values are exposed through the GUI from the Sysctls

and Tunables panes.

A newer web toolkit is used, which behaves better with modal dialogs and

more intuitively in general when compared with older versions. It also

has better browser compatibility, including compatibility with Android /

iOS mobile devices!

A more responsive service state detection mechanism was added to improve

FreeNAS interoperability in VM software (VMware, VirtualBox, etc).

Errata

========================

Encrypting a volume implies forcing a 4K block size. This is enforced by

the GUI. However, clicking the encrypt volume checkbox then unchecking it

will leave the Force 4K checkbox checked, which is not the default.

The plugin jail networking has been switched to VIMAGE, which requires

bridging the plugin jail with an external interface. On systems with

multiple interfaces there is currently no way to specify which interface

is used. The current system chooses the interface with the default

route.

The plugin jail currently doesn't work properly if the external interface is

a vlan pseudo-device.

Changes since 8.3.1-RELEASE-p1:

Bugfixes

========================

1. Fix volume manager when there is no other volume to be extended

Changes since 8.3.1-RELEASE:

Bugfixes

========================

1. Fix smartd with ciss based RAID controllers.

2. Remove SVN revision checker from downgrade script. This

is pointless in a git universe.

3. Fix a kernel panic when the plugin jail is used with a

lagg interface.

4. Remove testdisk from the image. It's a great tool, but the distfile

keeps getting rerolled which breaks the build.

5. Reset the passphrase and warn the use when extending an encrypted volume

6. Fix regression that prevented disk serial numbers from appearing

in the view disks screen.

7. Update samba to version 3.6.13

Changes since 8.3.1-RC1:

Bugfixes

========================

1. Improve handling of UPS events.

2. Fix permissions on istgt files so they aren't world readable.

These files can contain plaintext passwords for targets.

3. Start nut with the ups identification from the GUI, not the generic

default.

4. Do not automtically detach geli, this can cause problems for offline,

replace, etc.

5. Fix a bug that prevented the plugin jail import from working.

6. Remove the option to disable large read/write for CIFS. Disabling this

could only cause pain and suffering.

7. Do not unlabel the disk when deleting device extents. This could cause

problems when moving the disk to a different system.

8. Add the ability to delete the password from an AFP share.

Changes since 8.3.1-BETA3:

Enhancements

========================

1. Improve handling of user uploaded SSL certs, including certs that require

a passphrase.

2. When upgrading, offer to save the config file.

3. Always use 4K sectors when volume encryption is used.

4. Add testdisk and photorec to the image. These are useful tools for recovering

damaged partion tables or recovering files from damaged filesystems.

5. arcstat.py and arc_summary.py have been moved into /usr/local/bin which

places them in $PATH. No more specifying /usr/local/www/freenasUI/tools

Bugfixes

========================

1. Handle single and double quotes in AD passwords properly.

2. Fix a bug that prevented snapshot replication times from working properly

if the start time and end time crossed midnight.

3. Fix a bug that sut down FreeNAS unnecessarily when UPS status was LowBattery

but OnLine.

4. When updaing a plugin jail be extra paranoid about unmounting any null mounts into

the plugin jail to ensure no data is lost from a missed null mount.

5. Fix a bug that prevented users or groups from being deleted with UTF-8

characters in the name.

6. Volume encryption forces a 4K sector size. Reflect this in the GUI by forcing the

"Force 4K sectors" box to checked when the encryption box is checked.

Changes since 8.3.1-BETA2:

Enhancements

========================

1. Add additional AD fields to allow finer grained control of the AD

integration via the GUI.

2. Update dojo to version 1.8.3

3. Update the transmission plugin to version 2.76

4. Sort snapshots by bytes used instead of using a string comparison.

5. Add the isci driver for intel C60 SAS HBAs.

6. Add ZFS ARC stats to top(1)

7. Update samba to 3.6.12

Bugfixes

========================

1. Improve detection of the default interface, which improves connectivity

to the plugin jail.

2. Change the example iqn of iSCSI targets to actually be a legal iqn.

3. Disallow a locked volume to be used for uploading PBI or firmware images.

4. Restart services after an encrypted volume is unlocked.

5. Fix the suffix for G and T when setting ZFS quotas or reservations.

6. Fix logic in volume detach for encrypted volumes.

7. Allow a volume to be decrypted with the recovery key.

8. Fix several issues related to the recovery key and either rekeying a volume

or setting a passphrase on the volume key.

9. Do not unlabel a disk being used as an iSCSI device extent.

10. Use the correct ssh port with rsync if one is specified in the GUI.

11. Fix start time and end time of snapshot replication.

Changes since 8.3.1-BETA1:

Enhancements

========================

1. Add a feature to initialize disks with random data.

2. Add the iconv option to rsync.

Bugfixes

========================

1. Fix a bug that was preventing multiple destination address for

SMART from working.

2. Create an empty /var/db/pkg to silence warnings from the SNMP

service.

3. Fix a bug that was preventing the default scrubs from running.

ZFS scrubs are very I/O intensive, and this update will fix many instances

where the default monthly scrub wasn't running. It's recommended to check

the scrub schedule and be aware of it's impact on FreeNAS.

4. Disable the ZFS encryption option when extending a volume. The system will

automatically match the encrrption state of the existing pool.

5. Commit changes to ataidle immediately rather than requiring a reboot.

6. Fix a bug that prevented creation of RAIDZ volumes.

7. Fix a bug that prevented stopping the CIFS service.

Changes since 8.3.0-RELEASE-p1:

Enhancements

========================

1. Add volume encryption to ZFS.

2. Upgrade istgt to version 20121028

3. Upgrade samba to version 3.6.9

4. Add the ability to specify the MAC address to the bridge interface.

5. Upgrade dojo to 1.8.1

6. Add the ability to delete a VLAN from the console menu.

7. Add the snp device to the kernel so watch works.

8. Warn when adding a vdev to a pool that is of different size or type from

the existing vdevs.

9. When deleting a lagg in the console menu cascade that delete to any children

of the lagg. (vlan interfaces are the likely candidate here)

10. Multiple interfaces in the same subnet is generally a bad idea on FreeBSD.

Constrain the GUI to only allow one interface per subnet.

11. Update ntfs-3g to 2012.1.15

12. Update netatalk to 2.2.4

13. Add some snapshot task intervals shorter than 15 minutes, useful for snapshot

based replication.

14. Update django to 1.4.2

15. Add vimage support to tap devices. This fixes a panic when running openvpn

in a plugin jail.

16. Add support for the Marvell 88SE9220/9230/9235 PCIe 2.0 x2 6Gbps SATA controllers.

Bugfixes

========================

1. Fix a bug that kept asking if you want to shutdown or reboot from the

console menu even when you answer yes.

2. Destroy snapshots recursively in the autosnapper. This prevents snapshots

from persisting past their specified retention period.

Changes since 8.3.0-RELEASE:

Bugfixes

========================

1. Improve the config generator for nginx. This resolves a bug

that caused a welcome to nginx screen to be displayed instead

of the GUI.

2. Fix several bugs with the check-space.py script, including one that

kept it from working with datasets and a case of inverted logic.

3. Fix a kernel panic that could result from importing ZFS pools created

on Solaris systems.

4. Fix the help text for the dynamic dns domain field.

5. The colon is not a valid character for a user's home directory. Validate

this in the GUI.

6. Ensure that the SSL certificate provided by the user for the web interface

is valid. If it isn't fall back to HTTP to allow access to the GUI.

7. Add a timeout for Active Directory. This prevents a broken AD setup from

hanging a FreeNAS box indefinitely at boot.

8. Exclude the virtual devices used when creating a 4K ZFS pool so they don't

appear in the GUI as options for new pools.

Enhancements

========================

1. Add traditional chinese character set as a choice for the console.

Changes since 8.3.0-RC1:

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Fix IP address binding feature of the GUI.

It was broken by the change of webserver from lighttpd to nginx.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Ensure iSCSI file extents exist before trying to delete them.

2. Regenerate ProFTPD SSL certs if needed.

3. /dev/ada1 was hardcoded in the ataidle script. Pass in the

disk name instead.

Changes since 8.3.0-BETA3:

Enhancements

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Add zle as a ZFS compression option.

2. Bump maximum upload size for installing PBIs.

3. Add a bandwidth cap to snapshot replication.

4. If a GUI upgrade fails due to failing a pre-upgrade check

display the reason.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Create new pools with the autoexpand property set.

2. Use the LUC to reload iSCSI targets only if it's enabled.

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Fix a bug in the bulk deletion of snapshots.

2. Fix a bug in the IPv4 address cleaning when

importing a jail.

3. Fix a typo that prevented the alert icon from

returning to green status.

4. Properly disconnect from the webshell.

5. Fix backspace causing a double input in the webshell

when using Firefox or IE.

6. Fix a traceback in the NFS sharing screen when the

first part of the form doesn't validate.

7. Adjust dojo config so it handles upgrades better, by invalidating

the old javascript. This should stop issues with the GUI after

upgrading FreeNAS.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Unmount any null mounts in PBI directories before updating.

2. Ensure upload paths have the execute bit set to avoid an error

uploading files.

Changes since 8.3.0-BETA2:

Enhancements

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Add support for setting the serial port speed in the GUI.

2. Switch webshell to POST which allows using the django CSRF protection.

3. Add read/write/checksum errors to volume status.

4. Fix CSRF protection that was being skipped in the whole GUI.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Update the arcmsr driver to version 1.20.00.25

2. Allow nonroot NFS mounts and the ability to specify a listen address

for NFS.

3. Backport fixes to the mfi driver to add support for the LSI 9265/9285

4. Additional AD/LDAP changes to complete the refactoring of these features.

Plugins

------------------------

1. Update transmission to 2.61

2. Allow sysvipc in jails.

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Fix a bug that was preventing a recursive permission change

on a volume with unix permissions from working.

2. Restore missing tooltips in plugin jail setup.

3. Fix a bug that was causing the graphing backend to bail out. (Ticket 1786)

4. Fix this field is required error in the ZFS snapshot replication task screen

when unchecking high speed ciphers.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Fix a bug generating plugins.conf with nginx_location on startup. (Ticket 1787)

2. Fix keymap rc.conf output.

3. Fix a bug in netcli that generates console error messages when

non ASCII charsets are used.

4. Refactor user lock/disable mechanism to not overwrite previous password.

Changes since 8.3.0-BETA1:

Enhancements

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS when SSL is enabled.

2. Fix bugs with the webshell and IE.

3. Update to dojo 1.8

4. Add the ability to specify a snapshot replication window.

5. Add the cert and key fields to FTP for SSL.

6. Add a memory device as a choice for a firmware upgrade.

7. Add option for samba "Use Default Domain".

8. Refactor NFS sharing to only allow what the backend will

allow.

9. Add support for UNIX extensions for AD.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Add additional SNMP MIBs

2. Add support for the HighPoint 27xx cards.

3. Tweak the settings for network memory such that multiple

intel network interfaces won't cause the system to hang at

boot.

4. Add the ability to do a plugin jail update without blowing

away the installed plugins.

5. Disable Nagle's algorithm. Provides better LAN network performance

at the expense of WAN performance.

6. Add CARP modules to kernel.

7. Update to samba 3.6.7

8. Add support for SMART over various RAID controllers.

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Fix a bug in the GUI that would cause seemingly random

"This field is required" errors when using the permissions

widgits.

Installer

------------------------

1. Fix a bug where the installer always asked to upgrade,

even when that wasn't possible.

Changes since 8.2.0-RELEASE-p1:

Enhancements

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Add ZFS v28 enhancements to the GUI, such as RAIDZ3, dedup, the ability

to detach a ZIL device.

2. Show an enabled column in the view all rsyncs screen.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Refresh the third party ports used in FreeNAS.

2. Add the ability to use higher speed lower strength ciphers to ZFS snapshot

replication.

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Fix some inconsistancies between the iSCSI tabs and tree menu.

2. Fix some special keys in the webshell when used with Chrome.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Fix a bug that affected FTP with SSL

2. Fix "unable to write random state" error at boot.

3. Fix recursive snapshots when there are multiple snapshot tasks.

4. Fix some bugs in configuring network interfaces from the CLI menu,

such as vlan interfaces with lagg parents.

Changes since 8.2.0-RC1:

Enhancements

========================

Plugins

------------------------

1. Check jail arch against base system arch to ensure the 64 bit jail

isn't installed on a 32 bit system or vice-versa.

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Consistently name iSCSI fields between the tabs and tree menu nodes.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Fix bugs that prevented upgrades from working.

Plugins

------------------------

1. Eliminate the commas in the port numbers of the minidnla and firefly

plugins.

2. Set a uid/gid range for the jail users so they don't overlap with the

base system.

3. Fix the minidnla plugin so it works properly on 32 bit systems.

Changes since 8.2.0-BETA4:

Enhancements

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Add missing tree icons when adding/viewing ntp servers and tunables.

2. Added icons for mountpoints, plugins, shell, sysctls.

3. Add alert if jail ip is unreachable.

4. Add check and alert for non-optimal multipath states.

5. Simplify replication setup with button for target host key scan.

6. Added options for save debug.

7. Add HTTP error 404 redirection page.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Create zpools using gptid instead of device names.

2. Include sudo in system.

3. Improvements to save debug.

4. Allow multiple rsyncs to run in parallel.

Plugins

------------------------

1. Removed need to have pbi-manger installed to build PBIs.

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Fix for mounting filesystems with spaces in the name.

2. Fix issue with OAuth with http(s) ports.

3. Fix parsing of zpools with mixed striped disks and vdevs.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Workaround for jails refusing to start when spaces are in filesystems names.

2. Make jails persist while inactive for running init commands.

3. Fix potential deadlock with LoR in IPv6 routing.

4. Fix ZFS auto import crash.

5. Fix lagg to work with bridged networking.

Plugins

------------------------

1. Fix permissions for minidlna sudoers file.

2. Fix mindlna with https.

Changes since 8.2.0-BETA3:

Enhancements

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Add functionality to upgrade the plugin jail.

2. Add functionality to upgrade plugins.

3. Shuffle around a number of plugin related items.

4. Switch the widget used for rsync extra options to one that allows

arbitrary length input.

5. Limit the path length used in mount points to what the OS will allow.

6. Fix tab completion in the webshell for chrome.

7. Warn that the root email address isn't configured when configuring

email.

8. Add the ability to switch the console locale through the GUI.

9. Log failed attempt to create automatic snapshots.

10. Add the ability to set up SMART tests on multiple disks

simultaneously.

11. Add a disk wipe feature.

12. Show datasets in tree menu.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Add support for the qlogic 10Gbe ethernet driver.

2. Change JSON-RPC API to support versioning.

AFP

------------------------

1. Add the ability to set the fperm and dperm in the GUI.

Samba

------------------------

1. Update to Samba 3.6.5

Bugfixes

========================

Middleware

------------------------

1. Fix a bug that caused a traceback getting UFS volume status.

2. Improve logging for LDAP or AD integration.

3. Fix default clone path for Zvols.

4. Fix issue with jail install to keep the jail from being copied twice.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Fix remote syslogging.

2. Fix basic/advanced view for forms.

3. Fix ataidle functionality.

4. Remove the arbitrary FTP passive port minimum.

5. Fix setting permissions from the GUI for UTF-8 filenames.

6. Fix UPS email notification.

7. Fix the defaults for the autotuner.

8. Fix database permissions/ownership.

GUI

------------------------

1. Filter out multipath units from view disks screen.

2. Set the replication SSH port in the OS properly.

3. Fix webshell environment and locale.

4. Fix a bug that would leave ghost volumes on delete/export.

5. Fix bug in firmware upgrade.

Changes since 8.2.0-BETA2:

Enhancements

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. A major refactoring of the plugin structure has been done.

iSCSI

------------------------

1. Target reload is now supported for adding and removing (but not

changing) targets on the fly. The Logical Unit Controller is used

for this, reload will not function if the LUC is not enabled.

CIFS

------------------------

1. Samba has been upgraded to 3.6.4 to address the security issues in

3.6.3

Bugfixes

========================

GUI

------------------------

1. Fix a javascript error that affected IE8

Changes since 8.0.4-RELEASE:

Enhancements

========================

Build

------------------------

1. Refactoring of the build system was done to ease release engineering

and make FreeNAS software development easier, faster, and more

deterministic.

2. Plugin jail generation was integrated into the build system.

GUI

------------------------

1. The current password box for changing the admin password is hidden

when there isn't an admin password set.

2. Adding users allows for placing users into additional groups, as

well as greater clarity about the primary group the user will be in.

3. The NTP configuration fields are split in to separate fields instead

of overloading a single field.

4. Create Volume is now renamed to Volume manager, and has a different

widget for selecting multiple disks, as well as a better GUI for

extending existing volumes versus adding new volumes.

5. Create dataset and create zvol are now buttons listed per pool, in

addition nested datasets can be created as a dataset has an add

dataset button.

6. Deleting volumes and datasets properly cascades to shares and

services; notification is provided if a filesystem is in use and the

configuration database is guaranteed to be more consistent with the

system state.

7. Update the GUI to reflect the fact that the dynamic DNS update

period is in seconds, not milliseconds.

8. Add the ability to enable or disable the autotuner to system ->

settings -> advanced.

9. Alias IPs are displayed in the interface configuration screen.

10. ZFS scrubs can be scheduled via the GUI.

11. The IP address used to connect to the FreeNAS box is displayed in

the GUI.

Middleware

------------------------

1. Significant refactoring of the middleware was done to support

various changes made to the GUI.

OS/Third party

------------------------

1. Add the iSCSI initiator kernel module to the system.