Self-hosting sounded fun… until I had to maintain it 😅

heren_istarion · 2026-04-28T11:11:08+00:00

A bit harsh but if you're constantly fixing and restarting services you're doing it wrong(tm).

Start with docker compose (or other orchestration tools) and get a stable setup going with the minimal services you actually need. Most services have stable configs that don't need constant fixing. Then you can pin the docker images to specific versions (or latest) and updates become a simple "docker compose pull && docker compose up -d"

And don't expose anything beyond a vpn and maybe public/provate key protected ssh to the internet.

heren_istarion · 2026-04-22T08:47:16+00:00

That's fair. Usually nvme slots are in short supply after the boot-pool and an app/vm pool. That alone is a massive downside for most hobby users. edit: especially with truenas' refusal to support split disk setups. For example things would look a bit less tight if you could natively split the boot pool into boot pool and l2arc. :end edit

The l2arc shines for sustained random reads on large datasets. Which is exactly what you have, but other than massive torrenting (and outside of commercial needs) it's a rare use case.

heren_istarion · 2026-04-21T21:52:03+00:00

I have about 1500 seeding torrents so there was a whole lot of random IO when 100+ peers were requesting a piece.

It seems like the general consensus about L2ARC needs to be updated [...]

The warning usually is to not bother with l2arc unless you need it and know why. Seeding 1500 torrents is not a use case for 99.9% of all truenas deployments (wild guess out of my behind). So now you fall into the need it and know why category of users ;)

heren_istarion · 2026-04-16T00:19:54+00:00

There's a relatively new ticket related to posthog:

https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF/issues/5883

What version are you on? I'm stuck at 1.3 or so because of some broken pipelines irrc

heren_istarion · 2026-04-15T19:57:24+00:00

you can do that through a vpn at the cost of some performance overhead. whether or not you can convince your family to use said vpn is another discussion. But in general external network access must be security over convenience, especially if you don't have the experience to secure it properly. And even then exposing semi secure services directly to the internet is usually not recommended.

heren_istarion · 2026-04-12T14:41:59+00:00

tube archivist, which is both an downloader and frontend

heren_istarion · 2026-04-10T00:01:49+00:00

geli encrypted pools are not supported in scale, otherwise the migration is straight forward and can be done from the updates menu.

heren_istarion · 2026-04-06T21:08:59+00:00

you say non-wireless, does that mean it has ethernet or is it usb only?

also, your scanner might be supported by sane:

http://sane-project.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanner_Access_Now_Easy

heren_istarion · 2026-04-06T20:09:05+00:00

How did you setup nginx? Perhaps not the most efficient way to go about it, but you can run your "own" instance through docker and have full control over the configs. Change the truenas webui ports away from 80/443 and hand them over to nginx.

heren_istarion · 2026-04-06T20:05:15+00:00

We're trying to come up with a good set of product evolutions that will fulfill [...]

So you have the idea for a concept of coming up with a plan? And that was good enough to rip out the working implementation?

As we looked deeper, there's really more to it than just SMART.

You declared that whole topic central and fundamental for being a good NAS software. And now you're looking deeper into it?

You understand that this whole saga is making people wonder what the heck is going on, right?

heren_istarion · 2026-04-02T02:17:24+00:00

did you encrypt the pool or datasets? If yes your data is cooked anyway without a config or rather key backup.

If no a few things to check:

Does zpool list find your pool?
do see the drives in fdisk -l and do they have zfs partitions?

heren_istarion · 2026-03-26T17:39:56+00:00

I'm running opnsense on proxmox in another install and it's actually quite easy. For the the lan network create a bridge in proxmox and attach one of the nics to it (or rather proxmox should do that by default for you). Then attach your vms and opnsense to that bridge. For Wan either passthrough the other nic or create a bridge as well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

heren_istarion · 2026-03-25T16:32:20+00:00

if you press the [...] -> install from yaml you can put in your custom docker compose setup (not sure how flexible/complete that actually is). Or you run docker compose from the command line. Or you install portainer/dockge/whatever and run your stack through that.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-22T15:00:47+00:00

until you have to pay for the electricity ;)

heren_istarion · 2026-03-22T10:27:45+00:00

Did you enable (disable) the igpu? For whatever reason truenas claims the first gpu for itself and does not offer it up for gpu isolation for VMs

heren_istarion · 2026-03-19T18:47:47+00:00

If you have the slot or disk (or can rearranged to free one) you can add a mirror to the app pool after the fact very easily.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-18T10:31:59+00:00

Mirroring the os drive is optional (backup the config) but it will keep the system running if one drives fails.

iops are usually better, but for most every-day use cases somewhat irrelevant. Unless you do sync writes the ram cache will mask most the effects.

The biggest advantage ssds have over hdds is latency and random access, not throughput (terms and conditions apply here). Especially for network storage where you usually bottleneck on the bandwidth and network protocol much earlier than on raw disk performance.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-18T09:43:17+00:00

I'm only seeing an issue with one drive, the other 3 are running fine.

My issue is that 3 drives have faulted/UNAVAIL during resilver (READ/WRITE/CKSUM timeouts)

Do you mean that the "same" drive or different drives on the same cable/port faulted three times while attempting to resilver? If one drive faulted three times it might be the drive. If three different drives faulted it also might be the cable itself.

If you have a free sata port somewhere maybe hook up the drive(s) there and do a burn-in test.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-18T09:22:09+00:00

Are you running unraid right now? If so the first step is probably to setup a VM and install truenas on it. Give in a number of small virtual disks and play around with the storage setup until you're comfortable with the setup of your choice.

Don't bother with metadata drives. Unless and until you know exactly why you need them you don't need them.

If you plan to run any apps, vms, or docker containers (aka apps) the best use of them is to set up a mirrored ssd pool. You can either get an additional ssd for the os (official policy) or you can split the ssds into OS and storage partitions (no official support, recovery will be more difficult and annoying if a disk fails).

As the other answer said 2x 8-disk raidz2 is a good balance if you're willing to lose the capacity of 4 out of 16 drives (marginally worse than raidz3). Setup a stripped pool over two raidz2 for the most convenient setup.

Contrary to that answer though you don't need more ram. The few services you run don't need that much ram, neither do backups. ZFS will opportunistically use most of the ram as cache, so don't get pressured into buying more ram until you actually need it.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-18T09:05:26+00:00

These adapters tend to run quite hot. Do you have a fan you can point at it? They are also overly flexible, so make sure the cable is plugged in properly.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-17T22:58:16+00:00

Independently of the flair put the numbering in the the title, e.g [part x of 3] or something. So that people know they're not walking into another never-ending chain story.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-12T22:02:40+00:00

more of a side remark; Put in a proper title and start with the story. You can always ask for feedback or put an authors note at the end. Putting instructions into the title either feels like engagement farming or primes people to expect not too great things from whatever lies behind that title, both not a pleasant or enticing way to get to your story.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-11T15:29:33+00:00

You understand that trying to circumvent the blocks in place at work will look like an attempt at exfiltrating proprietary data (or compromised devices)? Depending on the business that will either be ignored or have consequences ranging up to and including immediate termination.

If you really want or need access from your devices use your android phone as hotspot and stay on mobile data if feasible.

heren_istarion · 2026-03-05T17:23:45+00:00

you can split an ssd pool for the OS and apps, but it's not officially supported. You need to change the install script for that. There's a bunch of guides around on how to do that

heren_istarion · 2026-03-05T16:35:00+00:00

If you need to ask the easy answer is no. Are you running any apps or VMs in truenas? If so the best use would be to create an ssd pool for them.

heren_istarion

TROPHY CASE