FreeCORE 15.0 — a maintained path forward from TrueNAS CORE 13.3

[freecore]

Hi all,

I maintain FreeCORE, an independent continuation of TrueNAS CORE 13.3. I started it because there are still users who want the CORE appliance model—FreeBSD, OpenZFS, iocage jails, bhyve, and the familiar middleware/WebUI—but need a maintained path beyond the point where upstream CORE development ended.

Available now: FreeCORE 15.0

15.0-RELEASE is stable. (The product release is FreeCORE 15.0; its operating-system base is FreeBSD 15.1.) It updates the FreeBSD/OpenZFS base while deliberately preserving the familiar CORE operating model: storage and sharing workflows, iocage jails and plugins, bhyve VMs, and updates through System > Update.

You can install from a signed ISO or move an existing stock CORE 13.3 system directly onto the FreeCORE-15.0-STABLE train. The install page has the enrolment command, signed image, checksums, and migration documentation.

15.0 is intentionally conservative. Major platform changes stay out of this line; security and necessary reliability, compatibility, and migration fixes continue. Existing iocage jails are not converted or replaced.

Compatibility work uses a substantial inherited iXsystems-native test harness to compare CORE 13.3 and FreeCORE behaviour, and 15.1 will receive the same parity treatment. Real hardware and workload reports from this community would still be genuinely valuable.

There is also an explicitly experimental zVault 13.3 enrolment path now, added after a user reported compatibility gaps and confirmed our fixes in issue #4.

Later: FreeCORE 15.1

15.1 is a separate, undated development line. It is not available yet and has no release date. The current public direction is:

• Angular 22 for the WebUI
• FreeBSD-native OCI Applications through Podman and ocijail, with reviewed, digest-pinned Daemonless images and signed catalog metadata
• Bastille as an opt-in jail manager alongside iocage, with separate jail and storage ownership; existing iocage jails stay in place, and the native jail path moves toward FreeBSD's maintained iocage line

The design work is public in Bastille issue #2 and Applications issue #3; the roadmap stays explicit about what is current and what is not.

Links

• Project and downloads
• FreeCORE 15.0 release notes
• Documentation
• Source and issue tracker

I would be glad to answer technical questions, hear about hardware or compatibility needs, or receive reproducible bug reports from people who decide to try it.

 

[etorix]

Is it possible to install and upload a configuration file from CORE 13.0-U6?
Or is it really advised to go through 13.3 and switch trains?

 

[freecore]

Yes—please go through 13.3 first.

FreeCORE 15.0’s documented and validated migration path starts from a TrueNAS CORE 13.3 configuration. We have not qualified restoring a 13.0-U6 configuration directly into a fresh FreeCORE installation, so I would not recommend trying that on a system with real data.

I would save the current configuration and an independent data backup, follow the normal TrueNAS upgrade path to 13.3-U1.2, boot it fully and verify the pools, shares, jails/VMs, and services, then save a fresh 13.3 configuration. After that, run the FreeCORE configuration pre-flight and enrol the system on FreeCORE-15.0-STABLE.

The inherited source still contains older Alembic migrations, so I would not call a direct 13.0 import theoretically impossible—it is simply outside the path we have tested and document. One additional caveat: if the legacy S3 service is in use, resolve that before upgrading, because CORE 13.3 removes it.

 

[danb35]

My parents' MicroServer Gen8 has been running CORE since I commissioned it. I was thinking it was getting to time to move to SCALE, since CORE has been well and truly abandoned, but didn't see any real reason to move. This morning, I updated it to FreeCORE, and it was as seamless as promised. Some thoughts:

• I like the refresh to the dashboard. It isn't a drastic change, but it looks good. Text is a little small, but it's more informative than the 13.3 one.
• I'm surprised to see a few plugins--though given what you've said of the direction for 15.1 I doubt I'll use them (other than Tailscale, maybe?)
• The Disks and Snapshots pages are bugged for me--both show an empty list, and at the bottom it says "1 - 0 of 3" (for disks, or whatever the snapshot count is).
• Suggest submitting the icon to dashboardicons.com, to make it easier to add to various dashboard systems (Homepage, Homarr, etc.)

 

[freecore]

My parents' MicroServer Gen8 has been running CORE since I commissioned it. I was thinking it was getting to time to move to SCALE, since CORE has been well and truly abandoned, but didn't see any real reason to move. This morning, I updated it to FreeCORE, and it was as seamless as promised. Some thoughts:

• I like the refresh to the dashboard. It isn't a drastic change, but it looks good. Text is a little small, but it's more informative than the 13.3 one.
• I'm surprised to see a few plugins--though given what you've said of the direction for 15.1 I doubt I'll use them (other than Tailscale, maybe?)
• The Disks and Snapshots pages are bugged for me--both show an empty list, and at the bottom it says "1 - 0 of 3" (for disks, or whatever the snapshot count is).
• Suggest submitting the icon to dashboardicons.com, to make it easier to add to various dashboard systems (Homepage, Homarr, etc.)

Thanks for showing interest in FreeCORE and installing it

Dashboard: glad it lands. The density is a deliberate choice; browser zoom
is the knob if it's too small for a given screen.

Plugins: on 15.0 the inherited iocage plugin store is still there, with a
small set we host ourselves (Tailscale is one of them). 15.1 stops *new*
iocage plugin installs in favour of the Applications lane (Podman/OCI,
FreeBSD-native images); existing plugin jails keep running and stay
manageable as ordinary jails.

Disks / Snapshots showing an empty list with "1 - 0 of 3": that's a good
catch and new to me — I can't reproduce it here on the same release, so
I'd be grateful if you filed it on the tracker:

freecore

The "of 3" tells me the disks were enumerated fine; the list widget's page
size seems to have ended up at zero, which the footer is faithfully
reporting. What would help most in the report:

- browser and version, and whether you're at a non-100% zoom level;
- whether resizing the browser window by a few pixels (or zooming in/out
once) makes the rows appear — I suspect it will, and that would narrow
it down a lot;
- whether it comes back after a reload / in a fresh tab, and whether
other lists (Pools, Datasets, Users) are fine;
- a screenshot if it's handy.

dashboardicons.com: good idea, noted.

 

[etorix]

I have now migrated three systems from TrueNAS 13.0-U6.8 to FreeCORE 15.0-U1.7 through 13.3-U1.2. All just kept working (there were no jails), and I'm pleased that AFS shares are still there.

Congratulations for the excellent work!

One nitpick: The roadmap already lists a 15.2 release with no date and no content. I do not see a point in that, especially since 15.1 is not yet out.
And as for the numbering I would strongly prefer that the main numbers just tracks the underlying FreeBSD, as TrueNAS briefly did with 13.3—so FreeCORE 15.2 should be the update to FreeBSD 15.2, anything else should really be a sub-version of 15.1.

 

[freecore]

I have now migrated three systems from TrueNAS 13.0-U6.8 to FreeCORE 15.0-U1.7 through 13.3-U1.2. All just kept working (there were no jails), and I'm pleased that AFS shares are still there.

Congratulations for the excellent work!

One nitpick: The roadmap already lists a 15.2 release with no date and no content. I do not see a point in that, especially since 15.1 is not yet out.
And as for the numbering I would strongly prefer that the main numbers just tracks the underlying FreeBSD, as TrueNAS briefly did with 13.3—so FreeCORE 15.2 should be the update to FreeBSD 15.2, anything else should really be a sub-version of 15.1.

Hi etorix, thank you for kind words, and happy the migration of all three boxes went smooth.

As for the versioning, yes - my idea is that 15.0 will be the 13.3 plain and boring maintained version. I was not planning to lock 15.0 to FreeBSD 15.0.

However, 15.1 is indeed ment to be the one for FreeBSD 15.1, and 15.2 for FreeBSD 15.2 etc. I agree it can be removed, it's just bloating the page for now.

Many thanks for feedback

 

[etorix]

Thanks! So you can actually advertise some "content" for 15.2: Update to FreeBSD 15.2 as base; no interface change or additional functionality planned for now.