To manage Ubiquiti UniFi devices, a UniFi controller is required. Over a year ago, I initially installed the controller software inside a Ubuntu VirtualBox VM. Now that version 6 of the UniFi controller software is released, it’s time to upgrade. I decided to reinstall the controller inside a TrueNAS jail instead of a VirtualBox VM. When searching the interwebs, I only found lots of outdated instructions. It turns out that it’s very straightforward, so here are my quick notes on how to do it.

I tested the following on TrueNAS version 12.0-U6.

Install UniFi

Connect to a shell via Web GUI or SSH and fetch the latest FreeBSD release available. At the time of this writing, it was 12.2-RELEASE.

  
    iocage fetch

Connect to TrueNAS via shell and create the jail.

  
    iocage create --name unifi --release 12.2-RELEASE dhcp=1 boot=1

I use DHCP reservations to manage my server IPs. Setting dhcp=1 also sets vnet=1 and bpf=1. Network configuration is out of scope for this guide. Please consult the iocage manual (man iocage) or the TrueNAS jails documentation for more info. Setting boot=1 enables auto-start at boot time.

Connect to the jail.

  
    iocage console unifi

Once connected, run the following commands.

  
    pkg update && pkg upgrade -y  # install updates
    pkg install unifi6            # install unifi
    sysrc unifi_enable=YES        # auto-start at boot
    service unifi start           # start unifi

Connect to the UniFi controller at https://<jail IP>:8443.

Updating

Updating requires very few steps. Please backup the jail before updating to be able to roll back if something goes wrong.

  
    iocage stop unifi
    iocage snapshot unifi
    # OR
    # iocage export unifi
    iocage start unifi

Connect to the jail.

  
    iocage console unifi

Once connected, run the following commands.

  
    service unifi stop            # stop unifi
    pkg update && pkg upgrade -y  # install updates
    service unifi start           # start unifi

And that’s it!