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We are extremely close to releasing HexOS Local, our solution for accessing/managing your HexOS servers through a locally installed application on your server. Before we roll this out to all current users, we are looking for a handful that are able/willing to help us test the migration process. The requirements are pretty simple: 1) Users that agree to enroll in this early access test will have ALL of their servers migrated (we cannot apply the test to just a single server, so if you have multiple, it's all or nothing). 2) Users must have a discord account as those accepted will be invited to our new discord server for the purposes of bug reporting and support needs. If you are interested in helping us test this, please drop a DM to @mill3000 with the subject "HexOS Local Early Access" and be sure to include your Discord username in the message. Any questions, post them here! Thanks everyone!!

I don't know if "many" are thinking that, @vogam7, but I'm not. As @G-M0N3Y-2503 says this is par for the course in software development. "Communication" is a lot more work and headache than you would think and their time is much better spent on making the software.

It also could be the case that they've done a bunch of internal testing and are just gradually rolling it out. But In software development delays occur, and people will be upset. It's way better to phrase an initial role out as early access testing in case there is an unforeseen showstopper. Than say it's good and then be called out for buggy software. So really it's a matter of if they hire PR or a community manager or not. I vote that there are better ways to spend that money. Considering that roadmaps and timelines are just a guess to attempt to make people happy, from my perspective they've been about as inaccurate as I'd expect, so no red flags from my perspective.

Should be no risk to data loss at all. The biggest risk is getting disconnected from our deck for server administration. That's why we want users to be able to talk to us via discord so that we can quickly remediate those types of problems if they occur. The big switch here initially is going to be authentication. We're moving to key cloak and we set up a more robust infrastructure to enable us to migrate users between production and development environments very easily. While we've done a ton of internal testing on this, we just want to be extra cautious before doing a mass migration of thousands of users all at once. Technically this is still pre 1.0, but the only things that really remain for us are hexos local and some improvements to our health monitoring systems.

@Ammonia some people seem to be getting that to work in this thread

Sorry if this has been mentioned already. There needs to be a way to store a boot disk config or recovery file on one of the arrays to allow easy recover of a dead boot drive (all done within HexOS! I shouldn't have to go into truenas if I don't know what I'm doing). I did install on redundant boot drives but bought too cheap and they both failed simultaneously. The only way I could find to recover was a fresh install without the array drives connected, then plug them in and manually recreate the exact share folder names in the HexOS from the list in truenas. Also, I would love to see a way to transfer or transition the boot drive to another drive by simply connecting a new drive. That way if all you had for a boot drive was a 1 Tb but wanted to use that for something else later you could get a smaller drive and transition.

As the title said, I have been holding out since I purchased the key. Recently heard on the LTT podcast that 1.0 was launching at the end of March. Is that still the plan? I haven't seen an official blog update in a few months.

It works

Love this guys content!

if im not mistaken it looks like it isn't a docker application. you'll likely be able to get it running inside of a linux vm

I'm having the exact same issue on 25.10.2.1 — so the update alone doesn't fix it. I dug into it and found the actual root cause: The ix-vendor.service runs /usr/bin/start_vendor_service on boot, which calls vendor_service.py. This script starts a transient systemd unit called websocat.service (the websocket bridge between your local middleware and deck.hexos.com). The problem is that the script doesn't check whether websocat is already running before calling systemd-run --unit=websocat. If websocat is already active, the call fails with "Unit websocat.service was already loaded", but the script always exits with code 0 (it has a finally: sys.exit(0) block). Something then re-triggers ix-vendor, it fails again, and you get a rapid restart loop. Each loop iteration spawns a Python process that opens Docker sockets, and since the middlewared service only has a soft file descriptor limit of 1024, the FDs get exhausted quickly — hence the "Too many open files" error. Here's the fix that worked for me in truenas shell — a systemd override that adds a simple check before running the script: sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/ix-vendor.service.d/ sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/ix-vendor.service.d/no-loop.conf << 'EOF' [Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=/bin/bash -c 'if systemctl is-active --quiet websocat.service; then echo "websocat already running, skipping"; exit 0; fi; /usr/bin/start_vendor_service' EOF sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl restart ix-vendor.service After this, ix-vendor shows active (exited) with status 0, websocat keeps running, and deck.hexos.com works fine. No more loop, no more FD exhaustion. I also raised the middleware FD limit as an extra safety net: sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/middlewared.service.d/ sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/middlewared.service.d/fd-limit.conf << 'EOF' [Service] LimitNOFILE=65536 EOF sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl restart middlewared Both overrides live in /etc/systemd/system/ which - as far as I understand it "so far" - survives reboots. After a HexOS update you may want to verify they're still in place. Hopefully the HexOS team can add the is-active check to vendor_service.py itself so this gets fixed upstream.

If you're seeing 'Failed to start transient service unit: Unit websocat.service was already loaded or has a fragment file', then you can try: sudo systemctl restart websocat

Try the following. Most likely this will fix your issue. If this does, TrueNAS has a fix that is in it's next update. Login to TrueNAS interface. Left side select "system". Then after screen refreshes select "shell" from the list. Paste in the following command. *Can't use normal short cuts* Will need to use Shift + Insert Key for pasting. sudo python /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/scripts/vendor_service.py If that works within about 1 min you should be able to go to deck.hexos.com and see your server or claim it. You might need to run this after reboots. Let us know if this works. Thank you,

I... I was... I would have.... FUUUUUUUU-- Ordinarily, I would absolutely have tried another USB, and I actually was trying a bit ago, but that drive was being funky and wouldn't connect to Windows well and I gave up. I completely overlooked trying Balena Etcher (Rufus has always been rock solid for me so I never bother thinking aoub it) but NOW THAT YOU'VE SAID IT I feel like I remember needing to use it for CORE back in the day TOO! I am an IDIOT! Anyway, I grabbed a third USB, Etcher, and a new copy of the .iso, and set it all up again, and wouldn't you know it, the damn thing worked. Installed HexOS to the SSD, plugged in the HDDs and went to boot, and the box picked up the data drives to boot to. I thought I wasn't out of the weeds yet, but on a whim I tried re-enabling the B120i and going in and deleting the RAID array on the drives but keeping the single "array" on the SSD, which allows me to set the logical array as bootable in the B120i. Rebooted and... LOOK! HexOS!! I am as much at fault as any part of the technology in this thread, but in the end, through all that crap, and with your help, we got there, so... THANK YOU very much!!

Hey, please keep us posted about the progress. Concerning why you shouldn't use a HW Raid in combination with Truenas, the official ZFS documentation has a great section about this you find it here: https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Performance and Tuning/Hardware.html#hardware-raid-controllers

Hey, The quickest check which you can do; when you connect a display to your server, what IP address is shown? 10.0.0.28 or a different one?

Hello, It seems the after the update some systems on reboot are reaching out to our server so it doesn't know your there. Try the following. Login to TrueNAS interface. Left side select "system". Then after screen refreshes select "shell" from the list. Paste in the following command. Can't use normal short cuts Will need to use Shift + Insert Key for pasting. sudo python /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/scripts/vendor_service.py If that works within about 1 min you should be able to go to deck.hexos.com and see your server or claim it.

@G-M0N3Y-2503I think we are going to have to agree to disagree, not for any points either of us brought up. But rather because nothing said here is going to make any difference. I guess we will have to wait and see what long term effect very little communication has, if any.

With the newest deck update that happened today, I'm guessing the actual big update is coming soon since today's deck update referenced prepping it for the update. 🤷‍♂️

with that amount of cores, a gold bar worth of ram and plenty of storage I think you'll have a pretty good time

I'm not sure how much time I can put to all the testing but I access things remotely almost daily so I'll throw my hat in the ring to test things that I can. Missed deadlines suck. Lack of communication sucks. A better system doesn't exist. Learning from it is all we can do not just the developers but the community as well. Most of us are pretty accepting of changes. When I read Q1 2026 I think Q3 2026. If I need to test a few things before getting a second server setup at one of my kids' house so be it. I want to see this succeed. I haven't seen anything that is really delayed or missing. My only two issues that I had in all of this was the first when trying to migrate from Unraid and I lost everything (36TB) which was not the software's fault and I accepted the risk for, and when I lost connection to my server which was apparently something getting gummed in the works between my server and the remote connection. Having a local interface would have meant not even seeing that issue I'm all for getting this working.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you, I was avoiding dealing with my problem for 2 weeks... I had almost the exact same issue and going into TrueNas to delete the folder you mentioned allowed me to reinstall Plex, reclaim then re-add my libraries. Many thanks to you for updating the thread with your resolution!

I forgot to answer about the Hexos license transfer part: Yes, that is possible and even very easier. On the Hexos website you just need to unclaim your old server and can then reclaim your new server, but It might take a couple of hours until your license because available again after unclaiming it from the old server.

I'll just say what many are thinking here.. you're launching a hexos local beta just 9 days before the promised stable release date. How could this be included in 1.0 and called stable in under a week of testing? Refunds seem to be the go-to response for anyone who expresses frustration in other threads.. but that's beside the point for those of us who actually want this project to succeed. Missed deadlines are frustrating enough, but the communication issues that still keep coming up alongside them make it worse.. and for a project that depends on people investing in hardware, that trust matters. Server memory and now drives have nearly doubled since the originally promised end of 2025 release date. Every delay has a cost beyond just frustration. A straight timeline update would go a long way. I don't think you meant it this way, but the timing of this post is pretty telling... are we in for another delay?

Hi i just got Hexos up and running with a few apps and wanted to start getting my media server up and running. I installed jellyfinn and the Arr apps and got gluetun setup through dockge. I think now i just need to add gluetun into the networking in the .yml file for each arr app. For the life of me i cant find the .yml files to edit as they are made through hexos curated apps. Any way to access them to add gluetun for networking?

At this point, just using HexOS to create folders, users, install apps, etc. just like normal. Use it both locally and remotely. That's really it. At this point, the main thing we're testing is that it works correctly, navigating you to the local interface when on LAN, and giving you remote access via the deck when away. If you can break your system (non-critical data only), there are a few specific cases we would like to see users test like destroying the pool used by apps (Docker) manually via TrueNAS, then renavigate to deck.hexos.com to see if you can remediate the issue. Obviously not asking anyone with real data on their systems to do this, but for those that have test setups, just beat the heck out it and see what breaks. We test internally pretty rigorously, but there's always edge cases that we can miss and this is the chance to find those as best we can.

An example of it failing to deploy an app

Hello all! We are excited to announce HexOS Local, powering the new local UI/UX for HexOS and capable of so much more. Read more about it on the Blogpost - Introducing HexOS Local

i have this issue as well..march 2026 and still not fixed...i give up

Ignore me, I just found the 'expand' button 🤦‍♂️

Hello, One way that could fix this is to do the following. Update to TrueNAS version 25.10.2.1. which applies permanent resource limit fixes. Thank you

I can confirm that if you do a fresh install you can set up the folders again and have access to all data, but you need to do things in a specific order and with the array disks unplugged (if you try to set up a new array through HexOS interface it will wipe the drives). If you know all your folders now you won't need to go into into truenas. I really think there needs to be a recovery feature in case of boot drive failure. Here's a link to a thread with good instructions on how to recover, but it would work to "downgrade" as well, though kinda janky. I would assume cloning would work as well but haven't tried it. https://hub.hexos.com/topic/3227-restoring-hexos-from-a-dead-boot-drive/

The reason Tailscale gets recommended so often is because it (and VPNs in general) is the most secure ways to access your services remotely. It's also pretty easy to install and get running. Nginx, on the other hand, is a completely different approach. To make lives a bit easier, let's take Nginx Proxy Manager instead of plain Nginx. Installing it is the easy part. The real work starts afterwards. You’ll usually need a domain, set up a DNS token for the certificate DNS challenge, configure something to keep your public IP updated, and create and manage all your subdomains. And all of that just to make your services reachable from outside your network. Once you’ve done that, your services are basically exposed to the entire internet. That means any device online can try to reach them. Because of that, you also need to put additional security measures in place to protect them from people trying to access or exploit them. Therefore only expose what you absolutely need to expose.

You rock, interesting fact, Chat GPT highlighted this post. Giving you Credit because i was also trying to fix this.

I had the same issue where HEX Deck would not recognize my server (deck said it was offline) but TrueNas UI worked. I realized it was my fault, I blocked it on my ubiquiti firewall accidentally when i was troubleshooting another issue. That's why truenas works because the HEX OS Deck has to call to Eshtek's server and the truenas ui does not. to answer another question in this forum, the local ui will mask this issue, not fix, because it will allow local connection, but wont change the fact that your server is blocked from external internet firewall level so connected to Eshtek wont work (only for this exact issue though). Another symptom of this exact issue was truenas did not have external internet access either, the app catalog was failing to update. Good luck to you guys hopefully this helps.

Hi I wrote the next blog https://www.gingerling.co.uk/how-easy-is-hexos-to-resurrect-when-youve-ignored-it-for-3-months-because-you-had-a-new-boyfriend/

I have always purchased new exos drives from ebay. My last batch came straight from seagate themselves.

Nor do I! As I said I've always had a great time with Rufus so I didn't even think about it - that said, Rufus DOES, of late, pop up a note about the ISO image type, and not having all the files it needs when preparing to write the HexOS ISO - see below: This reads to me as "click yes and everything will proceed according to plan" but, there could easily be something going wrong during the 'attempt to download' the required GRUB file(s). I should really have thought more about these when I saw them but, because HexOS load(ed) at least initially, and because the image seems to show up fine, I assumed it wasn't a problem, and made the proverbial ass of myself. Thanks again for all your help here, sincerely! I still might reserve the right to be mean to my NAS for a while just to let out my frustrations 😆

Happy to see that it's working now for you. 🙂 I still don't understand why this makes a difference which software you are using to create the USB drive, but hey at least it's running now. =D

In that case, did you try another USB drive or just 1 single drive? Also try using Etcher instead of Rufus.

The above messages are coming after selecting the boot drive where Hexos should be installed or beforehand?

Hey, You changed the Truenas GUI ports, that's the problem. The Hexos button is pointing to the port 443 (https) or 80 (http) but nothing on the server is listening at that port thus the rejection. You currently cannot change the destination ports of the truenas gui button in Hexos. To keep its functionality, you need to revert back to the ports 80/443. If you want to keep your custom ports, bookmark the page in your browser 🙂

Next cloud has already been curated by HexOS

First, let me start by saying I actually really appreciate this question and I hope my answer gives you faith in our long-term sustainability, exactly as you mention in the title of this thread. The lifetime license model is appropriate for a very particular type of customer with very specific priorities: Bring your own hardware Doesn't want an ongoing subscription Will mostly support themselves It was the appropriate model to launch with as well because it allowed us to inject a larger cash infusion at the start. However, we see multiple additional revenue streams available to us in the future: Subscription-based licensing. A lower price of entry for customers that aren't ready to make the lifetime commitment. Support. A more premium support model that can help you on a 1:1 basis when you have issues with your server. Cloud-based Services. Things like cloud backups (as an alternative or in addition to buddy backup). There are other cloud-assisted services such as reverse-proxy/relay that may warrant a subscription as well. Hardware products We will never force anyone to buy a specific hardware product to use HexOS, but we may offer some for those that don't want to build their own in the future. We actually have a few other ideas for additional offerings as well that would add additional revenue streams to Eshtek, but those are a little premature to discuss at this point. Bottom line: we don't just have a product plan, we have a full business plan for the future of this company and it has been designed to ensure a few key things: We don't run out of cash. We don't have to take on outside investors. We can remain true to our mission and vision. I hope this answers your question and gives you more confidence in our plans for the future. And if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Hey there, unsure if this is the correct channel to post a suggestion, please direct me elsewhere if not. I was just expanding an existing pool from inside the UI after adding a new drive to my NAS, and after doing that I (wrongly) assumed it would be almost instant to expand the ZFS pool, because it isn't something I have done before. When I did it, I was surprised to see it stay on 25% for a long time, because I didn't know any better, and assumed something had gone wrong/got stuck with HexOS being beta software, which wasn't helped when I checked the TrueNAS interface and the running jobs said it was created by [object Object] which really made it feel like an error had happened somewhere.... After a bit of research I realised how expanding pools actually worked, and could see in the CLI that it was actually working and there wasn't an issue at all. I suspect it being stuck at 25% is an upstream TrueNAS issue, but a warning message that this process will take a long time to copy the data to the new disk (and maybe warn it will be stuck at 25%) within the HexOS dashboard would probably be a good idea to ease the worries of less savvy people who would see that and assume something went wrong, and potentially cause themselves issues by rebooting or something like that. Thanks, loving the software so far and I hope my suggestion can make it just a little bit better, keep it up!

I’m currently trying to migrate from Synology to HexOS/TrueNAS, and I’ve run into a major adoption hurdle. While TrueNAS is clearly powerful, the migration experience is not approachable for users who don’t fully understand every feature and configuration detail. Despite trying multiple approaches—including rsync/rsyncd and several YouTube tutorials—I wasn’t able to complete a successful migration from my Synology system to HexOS/TrueNAS. The tooling assumes a level of familiarity that many prospective users simply don’t have, especially those coming from more turnkey platforms like Synology. What’s critically missing is a guided migration wizard: something that can automatically discover or map existing Synology file shares to target shares on HexOS/TrueNAS and handle the data transfer with sensible defaults. This would dramatically reduce irritation, shorten time-to-value, and prevent users from abandoning the platform during their very first experience. In my view, a first-class migration experience should be a top-priority feature. Making it easy to move data from popular platforms like Synology would directly lower the barrier to entry, increase confidence for new users, and significantly accelerate adoption of HexOS/TrueNAS.

@Dylan OMG OMG OMG I figured it out! I went into TrueNAS and found the Applications dataset, found the permissions and everything looked fine there, but I also noticed that under the Applications folder there was the Plex folder. Only the Plex folder. Because I had only installed Plex, nothing else. And since I uninstalled it, it shouldn't still be there. The fact it is still there, I reasoned, could be causing issues when it tries to install. I figured it must not have fully deleted the folder during the uninstall. So I deleted that folder and then tried to install Plex again through HexOS and IT WORKED! So happy! Thank you for pointing me in the right place!

I just recently started building my NAS and many of the containers I run I have seen in this form but I also have been using audiobookshelf to host my own library of audiobooks. I have to use it in conjunction with tailscale to access it out of my network so maybe it is not ideal for "simplicity", but I would love to see something like this come to HexOS in the future.

Currently doesn't look like there is one - I would definitely like a search as well. Maybe if they swap to Discourse?

We're thinking of supporting the install of something like Portainer. Would that satisfy your needs? If not, what platform would you prefer?