So TrueNAS Scale is rather a closed system.

And for people like me that have just began to leave MicroSoft behind and wanting to embrace Linux it is a little baffling that TrueNAS scale somehow manages to delete my root changes to the file system.

Here is the situation;

I installed TrueNAS Scale 22.04 on a VM to test if my "custom" changes to the system would persist after a reboot.

I understand that TrueNAS is meant as an appliance and not be messed with but I'd like to invoke the right to repair act here.

But when I create a wireguard configuration wg0.conf and wg-quick up wg0 then all is fine. it goes up just like I expect it.

But after a reboot the wg0.conf file is gone. Only the public and private key files are still there.

How can I make it so that I decide how my appliances behave in my own home?

It may be using a compressed image, (that may get loaded to ram & run from there), if it is, you would have to extract it, decompress it, add your bits, re compress it, then reload it to the appliance, not an easy job.


P.S.

I will investigate some more. I am way out of my comfort zone here when going the path you described.

It mightbe that there is a process digging in the /etc/wireguard/ folder on startup. so I will try to create a ~/wireguard/wg0.conf and see where that leads me.

Are you guys interested in the results?

It might be what fatmac says, since the BSD version definitely runs from RAM, but it also persists settings, so perhaps you need to manually "commit" the config changes in some fashion. If so, there's a fair chance that process is described in the TrueNas documentation.

Alternatively, it could be the way you're running it in the VM - how specifically are you doing that?

A quick search turned up discussions like this on the community forum.

Broken by design - the Scale heritage as mentioned in the OP. Looks like the (only) solution is to manage it by pre/post init scripts referencing scripts in your private pools.

So I have some great news.
Changes that I make to the root home folder ~ do persist after a reboot.
So I created a ~/wireguard/wg0.conf
and can happily start and stop it using wg-quick up ~/wireguard/wg0.conf.

The only issue now is that I can't auto start the wireguard connection using

systemctl enable wg-quick@wg0

because the /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf does not exist.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to auto start the wireguard interface after a reboot?

Other than that it's nice to be able to break an appliance and make it behave. I like linux, albeit a bit intimidating from time to time this CLI.

@boughtonp, regarding the VM. I am running a proxmox (debian) OS which makes it relatively painless for new comers like my self to create VMs.
It's a rather mundane VM setup so I am not sure if we have a need to go into more details even though I am more than willing to do so in case we need it later down the line.

It does not surprise me in the least that the designers of an appliance would build in some protection against changes to their software image. I would do the same.

Yes of course. But in my case I wanted to have RASDaemon running and create a swatch to email me when ECC activity is being detected.
That has never been a feature of FreeNAS / TrueNAS as far I was able to figure out.