Earlier this week, the iXsystems team released a new version of FreeNAS. We covered that in FreeNAS 11.3-U3 Maintenance Release Fixing Over 100 Bugs. Only a few days later, we are seeing a critical update that arose with 11.3-U3 wherein SMB shares were not showing up after the update. We now have the FreeNAS 11.3-U3.1 dot release rushing the SMB fix into the ecosystem.
Hinting at a SMB Problem in 11.3-U3
There were a number of sources, including the comments in our piece earlier on 11.3-U3 and in the iXsystems community forums. That led to ticket NAS-106167 being created and duplicate ticket(s) such as NAS-106192.
When we look at the dot release in the JIRA we can see this was the reason for the fix and that it was significant enough that iXsystems pushed the dot release out to fix this issue.
How to Get FreeNAS 11.3-U3.1
If you want to upgrade to FreeNAS 11.3-U3.1, you can do so navigating to the System->Upgrade panel. The new version will automatically populate.
After a reboot, the update will be applied.
If you are installing a new system, then this will be part of the ISO you download, however, we would caution our users that if they downloaded 11.3-U3 in preparation for a future installation, now is a good time to re-download and remove the prior release.
Final Words
As you will note, we normally do not cover small dot releases like this. In this case, SMB is a key functionality for many using FreeNAS as their NAS software, and it was hitting the STH community so we made an exception. In the previous piece we noted:
We know many readers will want to hold off on updates, even maintenance bugfixes like this to let others test the upgrade first and find any issues. (Source: STH)
With FreeNAS, upgrading to the newest versions can be a roller coaster ride, even when it is as simple as installing a release that is not giving new functionality and is instead delivering 100+ bug fixes as U3 did. It has been three years since the infamous FreeNAS Corral Canned abandoning the then mainline direction of the project. That was likely the right decision for the project as a whole, but the lesson learned is that if you are using FreeNAS for anything critical, hold off on updates which is why we put disclaimers like the above in our FreeNAS coverage.
We covered how later this year FreeNAS will give way to TrueNAS CORE. Perhaps that unification will help fix these types of issues as iXsystems will not want these types of release issues showing up with the TrueNAS name, its commercial line today, attached. With FreeNAS, you get much more than you pay for, but being on the latest release seems to introduce new challenges from time to time.
uh no. The unification wil NOT help these issues. If you read the unifying NAS post quickly it is because they want to go to a more rapid dev cycle. They have apparently already started this rpaid cycle. This rapid dev cycle will only lead to more regressions nad bugs and reduce the ability of folks to be able to count on Free/TrueNAS to be a stable/reliable platform that is safe for their data by default.
I ma now applying my slow update install policy to FreeNAS. Ever since they announced the merging of FreeNAS and TrueNAS into TrueNAS core and TrueNAS…the one thing that stood out to me was..to allow for a more rapid development pace. Sounds like something akin to agile..which means release..and let the users test..then we fix and release again. For something as critical as storage(especially ZFS) a rapid release policy is dangerous. it has now given us two emergency patches to fix regressions that never happened on such a regular schedule until this rapid dev pace started. First it was 11.3u2 which was followed immediately by 11.3U2.1 to fix a regression in ZFS pool destroying and creation. Seriously? You screwed up ZFS in your rush to release? That’s inexcusable. Now they released 11.3-U3 and i saw all of my SMB shared disappear after that was applied. Luckily Freenas makes it easy to revert back which i did. Now they have released 11.3-U3.1 to fix this regression. This issue was fixed back in version 9!. So yet again this rapid dev system has caused more software issues that were solved before hand. As good as FreeNAS is…it looks like the rapid dev cycle is going to wind up destroying the confidence I had in it’s dev competency.
I totally agree with your comment. We now had TWO critical bugs in just a couple of weeks timeframe. If there will be another critical bug caused by rushed development cycle in the near future I will have to abandon my plans on starting a business and resell TrueNAS (merging the two products will not just autoMAGICALLY improve the quality.
While a pretty major issue, it could be easily resolved by restarting the SMB service in freenas. I hit it as soon as I upgraded and that’s the first thing I tried.
I install truenas and will test it. So thankfull for having freenas 11.1 u7 that one is uber stable no doubt. It was made by all of us helping iXsystem team with user input. People complain about releases and fixes that happens quick, I don’t bother eith that better quick than slow. Go! Go! guys Thank you so much!