Written by Simon

How to update the Plex plugin (and others) on FreeNAS 11.2

When ixsystems released FreeNAS 11.2, we lost the ability to updates of plugins automatically from the web console. On the other hand, ixsystems are now updating the plugins monthly.

Before updating the plugin, it’s a good idea to make a backup of the jail containing the plugin in case something goes wrong.

Go to the Jails menu option in the FreeNAS console and look for the name of the plugin you are to upgrade, the name will be listed in the jail column.

In my case, the jail is called plex.

Go to the Shell menu in the FreeNAS console and run the command:

iocage snapshot -n snapname jailname

Change snapname to whatever you want to call the backup of the jail and change jailname to the name of your plugin listed in the jail.

So I will be running the command: iocage snapshot -n plex_backup plex

If everything works correctly, you should get the message: Snapshot: /Storage/iocage/jails/plex@plex_backup created

The message will be slightly different depending on how you name your backup.

Now you are ready to update your plugin to the latest version

Go to the Plugins -> Installed menu in FreeNAS and get the name of name of the plugin, once again the name can be found in the Jails column.

Again, the name of my Plex jail is plex.

Go back to the Shell menu in FreeNAS and run the command:

iocage update jailname where jail_name is the name of the jail

So I will be running the command
iocage update plex

If everything works correctly, your shell should show the following:

The last step in the process is to start the jail again.

Go to the Jails menu in FreeNAS, click on the three vertical dots and select the start option in the menu

Your Plex plugin is now updated to the latest version available from ixsystems

If the upgrade fails for some reason and you need to back to the old version, run the commands in order:

  1. iocage stop jailname where jailname is the name of your jail
  2. iocage snaplist jailname where jailname is the name of your jail
  3. iocage rollback -n snapname jailname where snapname is the name of the jail backup we originally creation and and jailname is the name of your jail

One thought on “How to update the Plex plugin (and others) on FreeNAS 11.2”

  1. the only correction I would make is that this is the process to update a plugin. Not upgrade. Update and “upgrade” are two different things when used within the trueNAS environment.

    i.e. if someone is looking to upgrade their plugin, not update, these procedures would not work.

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