End of an era - TrueNAS kills off their FreeBSD-based product

[OVERKILL]

https://www.heise.de/en/news/TrueNA...gtooth-only-with-GNU-Linux-base-10363267.html

I discovered this the other day when I backed-up my NAS's config and went to install the OS again and restore it. It was all of a sudden a Debian installer instead of FreeBSD. Went hunting and discovered that Core 13.3 was the last BSD-based version and the company has now gone all-in on their Linux-based SCALE product (2x.xx series). This is truly an end of an era, as FreeBSD has underpinned the various iterations of this product, originally starting as a code evolution of the m0n0wall firewall series back in the early 2000's, through to the FreeNAS product lineup and then the TrueNAS/TrueOS NAS/Desktop product offerings.

Many people, who have spent much of their lives coding for BSD-based products have ended up at iXSystems working on this product, in many instances, specifically because it wasn't Linux, and now, here we are.

As someone who uses BSD and Linux daily, I am disappointed in this decision. The light resource footprint of the FreeBSD-based product was part of the reason for its success in the prosumer and SMB space, using repurposed server hardware, on which it absolutely flew. ZFS support, which was a key part of the product, natively supported in FreeBSD, is now a module, as licensing prevents it from being part of the kernel from what I recall.

 

[Pew]

What does this mean for the end-user/administrator? We were looking to move to TrueNAS after our server upgrade this week but I know nothing of Linux and any iterations of it.

 

[dogememe]

It makes sense. RAM is dirt cheap, I just paid like $300 for 128GB of DDR5 RAM for my new AI server that I’m putting in my bedroom. The point I’m making is slightly lower resource usage is not really a useful benefit when you can use Linux and take advantage of its massive developer community. And ZFS is very well supported on Linux.

 

[OVERKILL]

What does this mean for the end-user/administrator? We were looking to move to TrueNAS after our server upgrade this week but I know nothing of Linux and any iterations of it.

Means if you are used to admin'ing BSD, well, you better get used to doing it in Linux instead, if you are using this product, lol. I'm familiar with both, so that's not a problem, but I am one who appreciates the much slower development cycle of BSD, which means far fewer reboots, something that isn't the case with Linux where even the server versions of Ubuntu seem to get a new kernel a week.

 

[dogememe]

Means if you are used to admin'ing BSD, well, you better get used to doing it in Linux instead, if you are using this product, lol. I'm familiar with both, so that's not a problem, but I am one who appreciates the much slower development cycle of BSD, which means far fewer reboots, something that isn't the case with Linux where even the server versions of Ubuntu seem to get a new kernel a week.

In theory you can use kernelcare and avoid most reboots. I don’t bother with that though, I’m cheap and that two minutes of downtown once every few months doesn’t bother me.

 

[OVERKILL]

It makes sense. RAM is dirt cheap, I just paid like $300 for 128GB of DDR5 RAM for my new AI server that I’m putting in my bedroom. The point I’m making is slightly lower resource usage is not really a useful benefit when you can use Linux and take advantage of its massive developer community. And ZFS is very well supported on Linux.

When you say server do you mean "server" or actual server hardware? Because a 64GB DDR5 server DIMM is over $400 USD:

Most of the old servers being repurposed as NAS devices using this product are not running DDR5. I'm using an old HP ML series running DDR3 for example.

 

[dogememe]

When you say server do you mean "server" or actual server hardware? Because a 64GB DDR5 server DIMM is over $400 USD:
View attachment 301737

Most of the old servers being repurposed as NAS devices using this product are not running DDR5. I'm using an old HP ML series running DDR3 for example.

Just a Lenovo workstation haha. I’m not running mission critical stuff at home.

Power costs being what they are around here, anything DDR3 went into ewaste long ago. New stuff is just so much more efficient.

 

[OVERKILL]

In theory you can use kernelcare and avoid most reboots. I don’t bother with that though, I’m cheap and that two minutes of downtown once every few months doesn’t bother me.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I migrated my Ontario energy database and grafana system to BSD, which had previously been on Ubuntu server, staying on top of the updates was worse than Windows, while with FreeBSD the updates are far less frequent. My AdGuard DNS server runs on OpenBSD for the same reason.

 

[OVERKILL]

Just a Lenovo workstation haha. I’m not running mission critical stuff at home.

Power costs being what they are around here, anything DDR3 went into ewaste long ago. New stuff is just so much more efficient.

Oh yes, I forgot you were in Cali and pay like 10x what I do for electricity, lol.

 

[wwillson]

I’m not running mission critical stuff at home.

Just the AI server in your bedroom.

 

[dogememe]

Just the AI server in your bedroom.

I mean it’s just for my personal development use for now. I’m going to start with quantized models and if it works well eventually will upgrade to a bigger GPU. But they’re so expensive haha!

 

[ka9mnx]

Being very familiar with and user of Debian, I think this is a big mistake. BSD has always been lighter and more secure than any Linux distribution. Probably why updates are less frequent.

 

[dogememe]

Being very familiar with and user of Debian, I think this is a big mistake. BSD has always been lighter and more secure than any Linux distribution. Probably why updates are less frequent.

But is it really more secure or is it secure because it’s used by such a small percentage of the systems in the world? I’m not saying BSD is bad… I simply suspect that it’s similar to how it used to be with Macs. “Macs don’t get viruses” or “don’t need anti-virus software” was a big thing for many years. But as they got more popular, that began to change. After all, why waste your time with Mac malware when they have 1% market share…

Again I am not against BSD but I just think that reasons like “it may be more secure” and “it may use less resources” are not good reasons to use something.

 

[OVERKILL]

But is it really more secure or is it secure because it’s used by such a small percentage of the systems in the world? I’m not saying BSD is bad… I simply suspect that it’s similar to how it used to be with Macs. “Macs don’t get viruses” or “don’t need anti-virus software” was a big thing for many years. But as they got more popular, that began to change. After all, why waste your time with Mac malware when they have 1% market share…

Again I am not against BSD but I just think that reasons like “it may be more secure” and “it may use less resources” are not good reasons to use something.

I'd argue that an intentionally lean product focused on security like OpenBSD used for a specific role offers up a smaller attack surface than a full-blown Linux distro, with all of its additional libraries and services.

Example, this Linux-turned-BSD dev found a bug in systemd the other day that can make a Linux system vulnerable to DoS attacks, affecting apps that perform group or user lookups in parallel:

 

[spackard]

I just read this, and I’m saddened by it. I’ve been using iXsystems for close to 10 years, if I remember correctly. I came over from Nexenta because I didn’t have to drop to the command line for stuff. I bought one of their mini systems, for power savings. I seem to remember it’s about 50 watts.