Mawson

Hi everyone! I'm Mawson, AKA /u/Bunnehznipr on reddit, I live in the greater Seattle area where I work for a high end home AV +home automation integration company. My hobbies include gaming, fighting I-5/I-405 traffic for 3 hours a day, aquariums/aquascape, as well as getting out doors to local state and national parks + wilderness areas.

Hi Folks, This post will go over the basic requirements for running HexOS, then cover a few frequently asked questions. If you come across frequently asked questions that are not included in the main post please comment below! NOTE: Please keep comments here directly related to the post/FAQ itself. and create separate topics to discuss specific use cases and issues. Thanks! Updated 12/4/24 ---------------------------------------------------- Minimum Hardware Requirements: x86 compatible hardware (Intel or AMD) (HexOS is NOT ARM or RISC-V compatible) 64 bit Processor with 2+ cores 8GB or more of system memory 16GB boot SSD Larger is OK, but not necessary. 3+ storage drives recommended 2 storage drives is the current minimum. (Pools created with 2 drives are not expandable. See details below.) Single drive configurations are not supported at this time. Please visit https://hexos.com/early-access-faq for more info Also, please check out the roadmap web page for info on upcoming features; https://hexos.com/blog/the-road-to-10 ------------------------------------------------------- FAQ: Q: Can I install HexOS on a virtual machine? A: Yes. While HexOS is meant to be installed on physical hardware, it can be ran as a VM. Please see TrueNAS SCALE documentation for details on running TrueNAS as a VM. Q: can I install HexOS on a UGREEN or ASUSTOR NAS? A: Yes. To the best of my knowledge, UGREEN and ASUSTOR NAS devices all support installing 3rd party operating systems. Google "Installing TrueNAS on [insert brand name here] NAS" to find guides and forum posts with other users experiences. Q: Can I install HexOS on my old Synology NAS or Netgear Ready NAS? A: No. Unfortunately many consumer NAS solutions do not support installation of 3rd party operating systems. NOTE: It appears that some Ready NAS devices are capable of using 3rd party operating systems through advanced techniques, but the jury is out currently on exactly which models, and whether or not the hardware is performant enough for a good user experience. Q: Can I run HexOS on a Raspberry Pi or equivalent? A: No. Raspberry Pi devices are built using ARM processors. HexOS requires x86 hardware. Q: Can I start with only a few (3+) drives and expand later? A: Yes.You can add more drives of the same capacity to a pool to increase its available space. Q: Can I expand my storage pool if I started with only 2 drives? A: No. While OpenZFS has support for expanding a 2-device RAIDz1, that capability has not been enabled in TrueNAS SCALE. Q: Can I set up a storage pool using a single hard drive? A: No. Single drive configurations are not supported at this time This may change in the future, but either way it is discouraged due to single drive configurations being susceptible to data loss from hardware failure. Q: Can storage pools use drives with different capacities without loosing space? A: No. While mismatched drives can be used, in any one pool the maximum usable capacity per drive is limited by the size of the smallest drive in that pool. Example: A storage pool with 5x 256GB SSDs and 1x 250GB SSD will have the same usable capacity as a pool with 6x 250GB drives. Q: Can I change small drives our for larger ones to increase my storage pool's capacity? A: Yes. Drives can be exchanged one at a time to gradually copy all the data onto larger drives, Once all drives have been exchanged the pool's capacity will grow all at once. Example: Lets say we have a pool with 6x10TB drives in RAIDz1, and we swap those out one by one for six 20TB units. When the last 20 TB drive has been installed, and the pool has finished re-silvering (copying data to a drive to re-construct the pool) then the pool's total capacity will jump from ~50TB usable to ~100TB usable!

Your "old" server does not have to be online to disconnect/ un-claim it. That server will show as offline on the command deck, and there is a button right there to disconnect. Like this:

Shocking, right?? LOL

Hi Kaden, Jellyfin is on the short list of apps to curate in the future

Hi Enrique, Licenses are easily transferable between servers by "disconnecting" the server via the command deck, and then claiming the new server.

OK, wow. I read just enough to get a tiny sliver of understanding and it seems super cool!

I haven't heard of dRAID. How is it structured?

Hi Folks, We have had a number of reports and threads regarding the forum's downloads feature allowing all users to upload files. That feature has been disabled for now. Thank you everyone for your care and diligence in reporting these issues!

Download functionality has been disabled.

The link is kind of hidden. It's down and the bottom of the page. https://hexos.com/terms

Doing this is EXACTLY the concept for how the curated apps work!

Does the 14" mainboard have a way to expose PCIe lanes so that one could plug in a commonly available HBA and be able to run multiple drives? Maybe via a USBC adapter of some sort?

The one trick UnRAID has that HexOS doesn't is the ability to use mismatched drives. HexOS has to have drives that are close in size or you loose out on capacity in a big way. For example, say you have a pool with 5 SSDs. 4 are 120GB, and one is 110GB. HexOS would only be able to utilize 100GB of the larger drives, since all drives in a ZFS pool need to be the same size. The same would be true with HDDs. A single smaller drive will limit the space of the whole pool. (And that's why in the previous example ALL of the drives have to be swapped out when "upgrading" before the pool expands)

This is actually a super exciting topic! Pool expansion is working RIGHT NOW! I tested it the other day when I did a fresh install. I started with 3 drives during initial setup, and added two more once the server was up and going, which expanded my pool capacity! Another neat trick that ZFS (HexOS' and TrueNAS' filesystem) has is the abiliity to "upgrade" a pool. For example, if you were to take a RAIDz1 pool with 8x 10TB drives (70TB usable) and sequentially swap those drives out for 20TB units, then when you are done the available pool size will jump up to 140TB!

Pool and whole server migration/adoption is something that is not supported right now, but that the team will be looking into in the future. They haven't promised the features though to my knowledge. I expect pool adoption should be possible reasonably easily, server adoption though might be tougher. Either way those features are not likely to be included before 1.0 I'm not on the dev team though so don't take my thoughts as gospel truth. I'm just making a decently informed guess based on what I know of how TrueNAS and HexOS work lol

Should be. I can't see any reason SAS wouldn't be supported.

The lifetime license is a permanent license for the full OS, and it includes the opportunity to participate in the early access beta to test the OS while it is being developed.

Hi bud, I know JonP has mentioned that there are some parts of HexOS that are/will be open source, but I don't believe the whole project will be. As for bug and feature request tracking, I think having a bit more structured of a platform may be a good idea. I don't know if the team has a ticket system yet, but I'm sure that will come with time as the team grows and the project progresses. Over the last few days we have had a HUGE influx of users, and I sense that it may be becoming a lot to keep tabs on all of the thoughts, suggestions, and comments that have been made, so this is a good idea at it's core, even if the details might not end up exactly how you are imagining 😊 P.S. I removed the duplicate thread you posted in the other sub forum. I think it makes the most sense in this one.

Confirmed. I'm seeing this occur if the page is being rendered at more than ~1100px wide

Hi gents. We're working on this. Thanks for your reports! Elio, in regard to your post needing approval, I think that may have to do with forum roles and how new a user's account is. In this case I have deleted the post since it's a duplicate.

Are you imagining that this would work kind of like a difficulty setting in a game? As in your would set your proficiency level when you first installed the app, and that would modulate the level of features available and the amount of hand holding that the UI would do?

The site is getting the hug of death due to the LTT video dropping 😅

For now you do have to start fresh. Jon has said that it might, MAYBE, be possible to convert existing TrueNAS SCALE installs in the future, but not any time soon, and certainly not before 1.0.

Agreed. The ability to Show/Hide apps would be a nice quality of life feature. I'm imaging not just hiding the non-curated apps, but also being able to hide curated apps that are not installed, or those that are running or not. Hiding the not installed apps will be more useful once there are dozens of curated apps of course.