Well, it really is a long time since the last blog, which was at the start of 2022! Life just seemed to get in the way as things started to get back to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic, but that’s really quite a poor excuse. I did start a new permanent job, something I’d last done all the way back in 1995, although I just missed the 20 years working as a Contractor by less than a handful of months.

So why am I back? To be honest, I’ve missed blogging and thought I needed a New Year’s resolution, so what better than to restart this blog? And why not start as we ended, with a TrueNAS 2024 update?

The first thing to comment on is the version of WordPress, which has jumped from 5.8.2 to 6.4.2, and the block editor already feels somewhat alien! It’s going to take some time to get back into things!  The Divi theme has also seen some updates, so you’ll have to excuse some of these early blogs as I get back up to speed!

TrueNAS has received a few updates and is now running 13.0-U6, although feature-wise, it’s very much the same. IXsystems seems to be focusing their development on their Linux-based SCALE product rather than the long-serving FreeNAS-based CORE product, but I’ve not been tempted to switch and still love the flexibility of running both FreeBSD jails and Linux-based virtual machine.

I’m going to keep this first blog reasonably short, so let’s start with a table for the jails:

And another one for the VMs:

I have a few dormant VMs running ONLYOFFICE Suite, a test version of TrueNAS Scale and Windows 2016 Server, but none are running, and I can’t remember the last time I started them up.

I’m still running a Raspberry Pi 4 from an SSD running a pretty up-to-date version of the Home Assistant Operating System (11.2) and an equally up-to-date version of Home Assistant Core (2023.12.3). As well as providing all the home automation for my Philips Hue lighting and TP-Link switches, I have various integrations for my Tesla and Octopus Energy. Still, the most important is probably the Addon for NGINX Proxy Manager, which controls all access to my network and the Certbot certificate renewals every three months. This has worked brilliantly since I switched from doing this semi-manually in a jail, which I think I blogged about here!

So that’s about it. My TrueNAS system main pool uses 70% of its capacity but still has over 12TB of storage, and the SSD pool is 62% with ~340GB of storage. Both should be good for another few years, and the server performance is still fine even though it’s now four years since I built it and blogged about it a lot here.

I will try to blog once a month, so this covers me for at least 50 days! I’ve got much more to say about Whisky than I did in 2022, and I have built up a small collection of about ~75 bottles in the loft! A Raspberry Pi 5 arrived last month, too, so there might be some blogs about that. And the Tesla I’ve been driving since this blog is due to return in June, so there might be something to say about that. And perhaps something about my new Office, which I mentioned earlier, and some of the new things displayed? I’ll let you know before the end of February….

HAPPY NEW YEAR 

This has now become a regular annual update, but I really didn’t think after the crazy year of 2020 (blogged about here), that we’d be in a very similar situation at the end of 2021.

I’ve spent the whole of 2021 working from home, working for the same customer, which might become more permanent in 2022, but that’s for another blog.  Before starting to write this blog, my impression is that not much had changed, but let’s see…

As with my 2021 update, I start 2022 with most things up to date.  There was a TrueNAS Core update in December which I still haven’t applied yet, as once again it’s broken some of the reporting functionality on the dashboard.  Nothing major, but frustrating nonetheless, especially as this has been an ongoing issue with quality control for much of 2021.  I’m still running 12.0-U6.1, so not too far behind.

There hasn’t been a major update to TrueNAS during 2021, so no need to upgrade the version of FreeBSD running in any of the jails, although I’ve tried to keep them reasonably up to date.

I’ve had no hardware issues with my main FreeNAS machine, and only replaced one of the case fans on my backup machine which was causing the others to run too quickly and noisily!

Given the increasing cost of electricity, I’ve switched to running my backup server once a week (rather than 24×7) and only backup at the weekend, which I’m sure is saving me some money, although you wouldn’t tell from my ever-increasing utility bill!  The UPS replaced in 2020 has continued to work perfectly, and helps with keeping an eye on the energy used.

At the beginning of 2021, I had one VM running Docker that had several services running as containers within that.  I’ve split some of those out, so have a few more VMs running fewer things, but with pretty much the same services:

• Ubuntu Server 18.04.6 LTS running ONLYOFFICE Docs Community Edition (updated around the middle of the year) for integration with Nextcloud
• Ubuntu Server 20.04.2 LTS running Mattermost Team Edition 6.0.3, so pretty up to date!
• Ubuntu Server 18.04.5 LTS running Docker/Portainer which is mainly used for Bitwarden and Calibe-web, although does have a few other containers for testing things (this was the main one at the start of 2021)
• Ubuntu Server 18.04.5 LTS running Pi-hole which I update every few months
• Ubuntu Desktop 18.04.6 LTS running Crashplan

I still have a Raspberry Pi running Hass.io for all my home automation, which also runs NGINX Proxy Manager, and that’s been upgraded to run from an SSD rather than an mSD card.

And I still have a couple of VMs to run Windows Server 2016 and test different versions of TrueNAS, although if they’ve been started more than a couple of times this year I’ll be surprised.

I should probably think about updating some of the 18.04 systems in 2022 given standard support finishes for these in 2023, but I’ve not had much luck with upgrades in the past, so might end up rebuilding them at some point with a 22.04 LTS version when it lands. 

In terms of the iocage jails, this list is identical to last year, with just jail and application updates:

Airsonic

It’s rarely used or updated, as I don’t think Airsonic is well supported anymore, or at least not the Java version I’m running.  I used iTunes at home for listening and cataloguing music until a few months ago, but I am now tending to listen using Spotify, Apple or Amazon Music.  I can also access my library through emby, so this might not see the end of 2022.

emby

emby is still my media server of choice and something I would be lost without. It’s running 4.7.6.0 (from 4.5.3.0) which is the latest stable release.

Nextcloud

It’s a close call between this and emby as the jail I’d be most lost without, although the WordPress one might put up a strong case too.  I use this for syncing files across all of my devices but also for accessing files remotely when I’m not on my own devices.  The integration with ONLYOFFICE just adds the cherry on top!  I’m almost up to date running the latest 22.2.3, PHP 7.4.22 and am now using this for a charity I help out with IT.

(Lime)Survey

I’m still keeping this up to date manually, and although it’s not used heavily, it’s handy to have an online survey tool.  My partner ran a survey for the charity she helps out with and I’m sure we need to run a few more for my daughter Out Of School Club in 2022.

(Open)VPN

Working from home means this gets used less frequently, but it’s still really useful to have when I’m away from home.   I think it’s a version behind on 2.5.3, but that’s not bad for this one which I tend to avoid updating unless I really need to!

WordPress

As with last year, I’ve still got the same WordPress jail for my company website and this blog, and a Docker container running another version of testing.  They are both up to date running 5.8.2, although my test instance is a little behind on PHP 7.3.12 while the live system is running 7.4.22.

I have jails for Bitwarden, Calibre, MediaWiki, Minecraft, Photoprism and Plex, but none are running.  Bitwarden and Calibre are covered by VMs.   Minecraft and Photoprism were just to test what was possible, but are too resource-intensive to run 24×7.  I’m not sure why I keep my old Plex jail running as there’s no going back from emby, and it’s not been updated at all this year.

So I was right at the start.  Very little had changed, other than keeping most things up to date!

And as with 2021, almost everything is up-to-date and running well.  I still have around 17TB of storage capacity on FreeNAS0 and the jail SSDs are still only running around 60% capacity, although probably a little higher than I’d really like.  FreeNAS1 on the other hand is approaching 90%, although given that’s really just a backup target, I don’t think I need to worry about that limit.  So long as I don’t hit 100% everything should be fine, and I can always be a little more selective about what I backup.  I had planned to replace the 4TB drives with the 8TB drives in FreeNAS0 when I upgrade them, but I suspect I’m more likely to retire it all together and rely on Crashplan.

Anyway, that was my New Year TrueNAS update!  Have a prosperous New Year and hopefully, 2022 will see the world return to ‘normal’ and start like that when the end of the year comes around again.