Truenas Scale & Truecharts

With Truenas SCALE now being in beta and on track for RC in a couple months, I'd like to request a Truecharts package of ChannelsDVR...

I don't know much about Helm or Kubernetes, but from what I can tell Truecharts seems to be the best way to manage Docker apps on Truenas SCALE. It is an "unofficial" repository, but has been mentioned in the official beta release notes.

Link:
https://github.com/truecharts/apps

Trunas SCALE Beta Announcement:

@tmm1

Interesting idea. I can see a migration path ahead from my TrueNAS Core server to TrueNAS Scale if this and other server apps become supported docker packages on the platform.

I think the migration will be fairly easy, Docker is widely used (much more than the current Truenas Core iocage jails). Truecharts will make it that much easier to deploy those apps once SCALE reaches Release status. I plan to migrate by the end of the year, if not sooner.

Just look through all the current app (chart) releases in the github link, most of the ones you use are probably already available.

Bumping this now that Truenas Scale has reached RC status. Here is the link for TrueCharts...https://truecharts.org/

RC2 is out with a planned final release in Feb. Any word on if we can expect an official release for Scale? From what I've read, Scale is designed to use Kubernetes rather than deploying single docker containers individually. I personally need to do more research, but from what I have read their implementation is causing some confusion for people that aren't used to Kubernetes and Helm for deployment.

I don't have plans to work on this. Kubernetes is very complicated and I don't understand it.

If someone who actually uses TrueNAS wants to figure it out and publish instructions, feel free.

From the documentation, it looks pretty straight-forward if you're deploying a simple container like Channels:
https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/apps/docker/

I'll be researching and do what I can, do you have a list of dependencies to work from?

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Yes, but from my reading the community repo will have better support... TrueCharts

Sorry I don't understand what you're asking

But that looks more suited for orchestration and pods; plain simple containers should still work just fine.

Again the following is based on my limited research thus far, but even iX is pushing TrueCharts as the "App Store" for SCALE.

https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/meet-truecharts-the-first-app-catalog-for-truenas-scale/

Well I have it running from a docker container just fine. Took a lot of trial and error to figure out ways around it. I also have pluto working and my security cameras on it. I don't want to post anything on it as I am no pro with Truenas. My first experience with Truenas is the Scales release. The key is to make sure you use the tve release of the docker container, pick a host interface, and setting a static ip for it.

Hopefully with the next few releases of Truenas they well use a lot newer kernel. Get a little more performance out of my overkill i5-12400 processor. :wink:

P.S. they need to figure out how to get either Trucharts running faster. Or not to check every time you restart the machine. So annoying when you are testing things. I ended up removing it as I don't use most apps with it anyway. Plex is available from the official side anyways.

Scale performance should get better with each release, remember this is the first official release and most of the work up until now has been on stability and bug fixes.

I was able to get Channels DVR installed using the Docker-compose info. I added an Environmental Variable named: network_mode with value: host, gave it a static IP, and created the volumes. However, I am really new to all the TrueNAS and Docker stuff so I probably added the paths wrong but it worked. Just wanted to see what you added for the paths, this is what I did:

  • Host Path: /mnt/Storage/channels-dvr (I just noticed that I entered this different than the Docker Compose which is - /mnt/disk/dvr/config:/channels-dvr)
  • Mount Path: /channels-dvr
  • Host Path: /mnt/Storage/dvr/recordings
  • Mount Path: /shares/DVR

I assumed /mnt/disk/dvr/config:/channels-dvr everything in front of the colon was the Host Path and everything after was the Mount Path. I could be completely off though XD.

It is up and running however. I am running everything in a VM just to dip my toes into TrueNAS before committing to it. But just wanted to clean up the install if I screwed up the volumes portion.

I honestly don't think the host path really matters as this is different for each TrueNAS install. I think the only thing that the docker image references is the Mount Path. So as long as those are pointed out exactly, and you have a host path location for each created, should be good to go. I didn't do that part correctly at first and everything seemed fine until I stopped the app and started it back up. I kept losing my settings and it would look like I never set it up. I didn't have to add any variable names. Basically the same setup you have otherwise. Also I haven't committed either at this point as I am still running off a Synology box. I plan to add a second pool to my truenas box that is just SSDs. Going to put Channels on that and looking at Blue Iris for security camera software. I have Windows 10 running in a VM with Blue Iris on it currently. Seems to work pretty good.

I have made 4-5 attempts to get Channels to run on Docker, failed and gave up. I have zero experience wit hit. I have been able to get Channels to run on TrueNas Core and TrueNas Scale and have left instructions in the Playground section on how to do so.

The TrueNas Scale version is pretty much a Linux installation of Channels DVR with a few more steps due to TrueNas. Otherwise, you have to use a Docker container to make it work, if you know how.

I also had performance issues with Channels on Scale when using a mirrored disk setup. It ran great with only one disk.

I would expect it to run worse in a mirror. You gain no extra speed because anything that is copied from one needs to be copied to the other and also requiring more processing power for that and compression. Using 2 drives in a mirror is only for data integrity not speed.

I would assume maybe you meant to setup a stripe, where it should read across both at the same time.