Command Deck Update Notification (01/08/2025)

[jerod]

Command Deck Update Notification (01/08/2025)

We are releasing an update today. You will automatically receive these changes on your next visit to the Command Deck. For users who are actively connected, please note there may be a brief downtime of minute or two. 

This update includes an important feature for users who have previously encountered issues claiming their HexOS server due to certain network configurations. These configurations caused communication problems between the server and the Command Deck, preventing automatic server detection after installation due to an IP mismatch.

Manual WAN IP Specification
You can now manually specify the WAN IP address to assist in the server discovery process when claiming your server.

Additionally, we’ve made several minor improvements, including:

• Additional confirmations for destructive actions to help avoid accidental operations
• Improved grammar and spelling throughout
• Clearer instructions for accessing the TrueNAS UI from Settings
• Better logging to help dev/user experience

If you encounter any issues, try clearing your cache first to be sure you are using the latest version:  Instructions for clearing your cache

[Homeslice]

Hey Jerod,

     Im not getting an option to update on my dashboard. When i go to notifications its saying I have an update and to go to settings. but nothing is showing up on my screen(i cleared cache and reloaded). Everything looks the same on the UI side. Is it possible it auto updated?  Bare in mind I dont know how to use linux so i havent look any further into it other than the web ui.

thank you,

[jonp]

Hi there,

There is nothing you need to do to receive the update.  We've updated the command deck and you automatically receive the latest by logging in.  In the future, we will have full OS updates that require a download to your local server, but we haven't reached that point yet.  When we do, we'll add an update mechanism to the settings page.

[Szym2c2]

2 hours ago, jonp said:

Hi there,

There is nothing you need to do to receive the update.  We've updated the command deck and you automatically receive the latest by logging in.  In the future, we will have full OS updates that require a download to your local server, but we haven't reached that point yet.  When we do, we'll add an update mechanism to the settings page.

You were talking about an update by the end of this week. Is this it, or will there be another? 🙂

[jonp]

This is our first update yes. Doubt we will have another this week unless it’s a hotfix. 

[InactiveImmortal]

Cool! I’m not ready quite yet to install HexOS on my main system (I tried), but I have a license and will follow your development closely for the day when it will make since for me to jump ship from UnRaid

[UncleMikey]

What's the plan for hexos apps? community driven? up to the devs of that app? Hexos team thing?

[jonp]

1 hour ago, UncleMikey said:

What's the plan for hexos apps? community driven? up to the devs of that app? Hexos team thing?

We are in phase 1 for apps right now, which means we are curating them by hand. Phase 2 will bring in additional community developers to help further curate. Phase 3 is offering the ability for users to load custom docker containers outside our curation. 

[ATShields934]

Looking forward to being able to run my own docker containers for my AI server! :D Thanks for all your hard work, HexOS Team!

[UncleMikey]

41 minutes ago, jonp said:

We are in phase 1 for apps right now, which means we are curating them by hand. Phase 2 will bring in additional community developers to help further curate. Phase 3 is offering the ability for users to load custom docker containers outside our curation. 

How active is app curation right now? I imagine yall have some other priorities atm 😉 and do you know what the long term timeline of those phases is roughly expected to be? (I know how dev timelines are)

[jonp]

Right now the team is entirely focused on bug fixes, QoL updates, and pool customization. When we go to shift focus onto our next major feature, we will also select another app for curation (maybe a few). We specifically started with Plex because it’s honestly A) one of the most popular and B) one of the most demanding for configuration. By starting with the hard stuff, we can really focus on honing in support and getting that experience just perfect as well as set a template for all future apps to come. As an example of this, we are very focused on improving the plex experience already. There are issues with remote access, resource assignment, and GPU-assisted transcoding. So those types of things will likely be addressed (at least in part) before we add another curated app. 

That being said, I am hopeful to really start cranking on a wider App Library sooner than later. Apps are one of the most important features of the product. 

[FangerZero]

13 hours ago, jonp said:

Right now the team is entirely focused on bug fixes, QoL updates, and pool customization. When we go to shift focus onto our next major feature, we will also select another app for curation (maybe a few). We specifically started with Plex because it’s honestly A) one of the most popular and B) one of the most demanding for configuration. By starting with the hard stuff, we can really focus on honing in support and getting that experience just perfect as well as set a template for all future apps to come. As an example of this, we are very focused on improving the plex experience already. There are issues with remote access, resource assignment, and GPU-assisted transcoding. So those types of things will likely be addressed (at least in part) before we add another curated app. 

That being said, I am hopeful to really start cranking on a wider App Library sooner than later. Apps are one of the most important features of the product. 

I think that's a great idea starting with plex since it's so popular and complex, even if I have no intention of using it. lol but I then am curious what was the reasoning behind immich? Was that super easy? I'm thinking If Immich is super easy it must've been the first one, and then yous went after plex for reasons stated. Got to walk before you can run.

Edited January 9 by FangerZero

[flat4vw]

 I see this in the notifications, is this a hexOS update or Truenas?

 

[bdistin]

16 hours ago, jonp said:

We are in phase 1 for apps right now, which means we are curating them by hand. Phase 2 will bring in additional community developers to help further curate. Phase 3 is offering the ability for users to load custom docker containers outside our curation. 

This may not be the right place to make this argument, and I fully understand your plans may be firm and I am wasting my time by saying this. However, I would argue you almost certainly have a captive base of enthusiasts beta-testing your product rather than a high percentage of normies. (I apologize for that term; I can't think of a better word and don't mean it as an insult to anyone.) Given that assumption, it would seem that the phases are almost backward in an ideal world. Enthusiasts are likely going to go the extra distance to get what they want running on their NAS whether they have a HexOS way of doing it, or if they have to do it from TrueNAS. It would make more sense to have the custom docker/deployment script loader available first, with a suitable warning of dragons and dangers ahead, and provide an open-source example of a curated script so the community can start making and sharing custom app deployment scripts the HexOS way. Maybe have a forum section for sharing and collaborating/improving the scripts. Then you would already have a portfolio of proven community developers once you are ready to recruit, and (if you so choose) you can give out a "HexOS stamp of approval" to well-designed community app deployments. Finally, for the popular yet difficult apps that require a demanding configuration/deployment, work on curating them yourself later. I understand that you might need to make a few curated apps to define the "HexOS" way of app deployment and to develop a best practices guide for the community before allowing custom deployments, but by just opening the door, I suspect you will have a very nice catalog before you know it. Furthermore, I suspect the community will naturally develop deployments for popular apps you may already be internally planning on curating, therefore, saving time and money from having to develop them yourself. This would ultimately allow more development budget for critical features/integrations.

To be clear, if HexOS were in wide release, I would completely agree with your planned phases. However, because this is still a beta, I think it would be advantageous for HexOS to foster community development sooner rather than later.

Edited January 9 by bdistin

[nugglet]

1 hour ago, flat4vw said:

 I see this in the notifications, is this a hexOS update or Truenas?

 

That's a Truenas update notification

[UncleMikey]

23 minutes ago, bdistin said:

This may not be the right place to make this argument, and I fully understand your plans may be firm and I am wasting my time by saying this. However, I would argue you almost certainly have a captive base of enthusiasts beta-testing your product rather than a high percentage of normies. (I apologize for that term; I can't think of a better word and don't mean it as an insult to anyone.) Given that assumption, it would seem that the phases are almost backward in an ideal world. Enthusiasts are likely going to go the extra distance to get what they want running on their NAS whether they have a HexOS way of doing it, or if they have to do it from TrueNAS. It would make more sense to have the custom docker/deployment script loader available first, with a suitable warning of dragons and dangers ahead, and provide an open-source example of a curated script so the community can start making and sharing custom app deployment scripts the HexOS way. Maybe have a forum section for sharing and collaborating/improving the scripts. Then you would already have a portfolio of proven community developers once you are ready to recruit, and (if you so choose) you can give out a "HexOS stamp of approval" to well-designed community app deployments. Finally, for the popular yet difficult apps that require a demanding configuration/deployment, work on curating them yourself later. I understand that you might need to make a few curated apps to define the "HexOS" way of app deployment and to develop a best practices guide for the community before allowing custom deployments, but by just opening the door, I suspect you will have a very nice catalog before you know it. Furthermore, I suspect the community will naturally develop deployments for popular apps you may already be internally planning on curating, therefore, saving time and money from having to develop them yourself. This would ultimately allow more development budget for critical features/integrations.

To be clear, if HexOS were in wide release, I would completely agree with your planned phases. However, because this is still a beta, I think it would be advantageous for HexOS to foster community development sooner rather than later.

Perhaps building out approval pipelines, sdk's, api's, documentation, best practices, etc would be more work than the 'core feature set' would be. Hexos being fairly strongly opinionated (A good thing) a core suite of apps that would cover 90% of average NAS users might be the best way to go. Having a 'default media streamer', 'default photo vault', default vpn etc. so a 'normie' as you put can actually start using it fully and have their needs met might be a best case scenario for eshtek (did I spell that right?). Having a fully featured subscription product will also be better for long term sustainability (Thanks MRR) than all the 66% off lifetime licenses we bought. 🙂 getting to that point where you have "Normies" using and paying for HexOS every month is when they actually get to altitude if you will IMO.

[Szym2c2]

On 1/9/2025 at 6:48 PM, UncleMikey said:

Perhaps building out approval pipelines, sdk's, api's, documentation, best practices, etc would be more work than the 'core feature set' would be. Hexos being fairly strongly opinionated (A good thing) a core suite of apps that would cover 90% of average NAS users might be the best way to go. Having a 'default media streamer', 'default photo vault', default vpn etc. so a 'normie' as you put can actually start using it fully and have their needs met might be a best case scenario for eshtek (did I spell that right?). Having a fully featured subscription product will also be better for long term sustainability (Thanks MRR) than all the 66% off lifetime licenses we bought. 🙂 getting to that point where you have "Normies" using and paying for HexOS every month is when they actually get to altitude if you will IMO.

 

On 1/9/2025 at 6:11 PM, bdistin said:

This may not be the right place to make this argument, and I fully understand your plans may be firm and I am wasting my time by saying this. However, I would argue you almost certainly have a captive base of enthusiasts beta-testing your product rather than a high percentage of normies. (I apologize for that term; I can't think of a better word and don't mean it as an insult to anyone.) Given that assumption, it would seem that the phases are almost backward in an ideal world. Enthusiasts are likely going to go the extra distance to get what they want running on their NAS whether they have a HexOS way of doing it, or if they have to do it from TrueNAS. It would make more sense to have the custom docker/deployment script loader available first, with a suitable warning of dragons and dangers ahead, and provide an open-source example of a curated script so the community can start making and sharing custom app deployment scripts the HexOS way. Maybe have a forum section for sharing and collaborating/improving the scripts. Then you would already have a portfolio of proven community developers once you are ready to recruit, and (if you so choose) you can give out a "HexOS stamp of approval" to well-designed community app deployments. Finally, for the popular yet difficult apps that require a demanding configuration/deployment, work on curating them yourself later. I understand that you might need to make a few curated apps to define the "HexOS" way of app deployment and to develop a best practices guide for the community before allowing custom deployments, but by just opening the door, I suspect you will have a very nice catalog before you know it. Furthermore, I suspect the community will naturally develop deployments for popular apps you may already be internally planning on curating, therefore, saving time and money from having to develop them yourself. This would ultimately allow more development budget for critical features/integrations.

To be clear, if HexOS were in wide release, I would completely agree with your planned phases. However, because this is still a beta, I think it would be advantageous for HexOS to foster community development sooner rather than later.

I feel like the core "nas" part should be finished first as mentioned. currently there are a lot of bugs like in my case the pool itself keeps dissapearing. 

"Normie" users likely won't be installing tons of apps, but rather use the core nas part, which has to walk flawlessly. That's the point of hexos. If an error pops up, all of a sudden you have to start getting into forums, and currently also truenas. All they do has to work perfectoly. And so apps and similar "add ons" should only come after that. 

Both plex and immich might be simple, but for the "normie" they are still a project, vpn's and other functions are greately appreciated by us beta testers, but fot the "normie" it likely won't matter that much, and "no errors" is much more important

Edited January 10 by Szym2c2

[bdistin]

5 minutes ago, Szym2c2 said:

 

I feel like the core "nas" part should be finished first as mentioned. currently there are a lot of bugs like in my case the pool itself keeps dissapearing. 

"Normie" users likely won't be installing tons of apps, but rather use the core nas part, which has to walk flawlessly. That's the point of hexos. If an error pops up, all of a sudden you have to start getting into forums, and currently also truenas. All they do has to work perfectoly. And so apps and similar "add ons" should only come after that. 

Both plex and immich might be simple, but for the "normie" they are still a project, vpn's and other functions are greately appreciated by us beta testers, but fot the "normie" it likely won't matter that much, and "no errors" is much more important

I didn't mean that app deployment should move ahead of planned critical features and bug fixes. I was just suggesting that the current community could help with apps if the app-specific phases were reordered. Not that the average person would install "tons of apps" either. But some very good apps are being worked around to get going before the proper HexOS way or curated deployment is out. HomeAssistant in particular stands out to me, as I am guilty of getting a VM of it running through TrueNAS myself, but there are many docker containers/apps that would be appealing to other regular people such as mealie, gramps-web, romM, actual, etc.

[Goatgarien]

7 hours ago, bdistin said:

I didn't mean that app deployment should move ahead of planned critical features and bug fixes. I was just suggesting that the current community could help with apps if the app-specific phases were reordered. Not that the average person would install "tons of apps" either. But some very good apps are being worked around to get going before the proper HexOS way or curated deployment is out. HomeAssistant in particular stands out to me, as I am guilty of getting a VM of it running through TrueNAS myself, but there are many docker containers/apps that would be appealing to other regular people such as mealie, gramps-web, romM, actual, etc.

Can confirm that more native apps would be nice to have after adding critical features (like being able to change boot drive without data loss. I initially installed HexOS on an old hard drive while i waited to get an SSD, then I got the SSD and wasn't able to figure out how to move over with no risk of data loss...)
I've personally gone ahead and installed tailscale (So that I can access immich and other files from anywhere) and qbittorrent (So i can move active torrents off my main PC)
I imagine tailscale in particular would be huge for many users to be natively supported. I'd argue qbittorent too, but less so than tailscale or something equivalent.

[Szym2c2]

20 hours ago, bdistin said:

I didn't mean that app deployment should move ahead of planned critical features and bug fixes. I was just suggesting that the current community could help with apps if the app-specific phases were reordered. Not that the average person would install "tons of apps" either. But some very good apps are being worked around to get going before the proper HexOS way or curated deployment is out. HomeAssistant in particular stands out to me, as I am guilty of getting a VM of it running through TrueNAS myself, but there are many docker containers/apps that would be appealing to other regular people such as mealie, gramps-web, romM, actual, etc.

Yeah, don't know exactly how they would do that, but if they can do that without too much trouble i guess i could be nice to have it work a bit like mods for games

[MinneapolisJoe]

I can now log in, but the dashboard says my server is not available. I can login on the TrueNAS side and the server is online

[lindystop]

On 1/9/2025 at 12:28 PM, nugglet said:

That's a Truenas update notification

hey so should i apply this update? everything in my tech brain says you install softwere, you immediately chack and apply all updates. but this it a truenas, not hexos update.

will it affect hexos at all?

beneficially?

negatively?

 

i am generaly familiar with truenas, so i would be comfertable

[Zizuar]

While I agree with some of the 'let the enthusiasts and developers' in the community start working on stuff there was a key point in what they mentioned as their current goals. Remote access and resource allocation need to be well in place before others start 'tinkering' with apps and stuff.. plus there is no pool encryption currently available using Hex and many apps require certain setups in your data pools. So I have to agree with them they are focused where they need to be. IMO I just wish we had more communication on progress and timing. Unless more focus is given to that while they work behind the scenes they will lose momentum and buy-in with the community they have begun to foster. Just telling everyone 'it's coming' or 'soon.. and not giving us deadlines/goals or continual progress status updates is gonna lose the vast majority of those you'll need very soon.

[jonp]

3 hours ago, Zizuar said:

While I agree with some of the 'let the enthusiasts and developers' in the community start working on stuff there was a key point in what they mentioned as their current goals. Remote access and resource allocation need to be well in place before others start 'tinkering' with apps and stuff.. plus there is no pool encryption currently available using Hex and many apps require certain setups in your data pools. So I have to agree with them they are focused where they need to be. IMO I just wish we had more communication on progress and timing. Unless more focus is given to that while they work behind the scenes they will lose momentum and buy-in with the community they have begun to foster. Just telling everyone 'it's coming' or 'soon.. and not giving us deadlines/goals or continual progress status updates is gonna lose the vast majority of those you'll need very soon.

I definitely feel you on this.  I simply ask for a little grace and patience with us in Q1.  We were a 2-person organization not but 45 days ago and have already over doubled our headcount with additional hires on the way.  Ramping up new team members takes time and our entire roadmap is shifting based on the level of investment we have received from customers.  Providing a more comprehensive roadmap with estimates on delivery of functionality is definitely something we are going to do, but predicting how fast we can deliver with a substantially larger team while we're still ramping up isn't really tenable.

We also have plans to hire a community manager this year, which will also greatly help with communications.

[LarsJ]

On 1/15/2025 at 1:40 PM, jonp said:

I definitely feel you on this.  I simply ask for a little grace and patience with us in Q1.  We were a 2-person organization not but 45 days ago and have already over doubled our headcount with additional hires on the way.  Ramping up new team members takes time and our entire roadmap is shifting based on the level of investment we have received from customers.  Providing a more comprehensive roadmap with estimates on delivery of functionality is definitely something we are going to do, but predicting how fast we can deliver with a substantially larger team while we're still ramping up isn't really tenable.

We also have plans to hire a community manager this year, which will also greatly help with communications.

Both good points, and you are certainly deserving of the grace your asking for, after all, what your doing is massive undertaking with the continued progress as well as increasing the team size, but I would also argue something as simple as a twice weekly or even weekly update post simply saying "heya! Here's the exciting news from us" would work wonders.

I'm one of these new but super excited individuals who can't wait to see where this goes, but I'll admit that with the lack of regular updates about going on's I have unintentionally been checking the forums less and less as time goes on. For me at least it would make a huge difference to simply see a "this is happening this week" kinda post, even if an actual software update is a ways away still.

Please don't take this as negative criticism, I'm super excited and just want to keep the community as involved as possible, because I feel that's the best for long term success