Anybody here an expert with FreeNAS? Need some help

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NumPy

132 posts

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#268633 29-Mar-2020 15:00

Hi All

I thought I would check here for some local help before I go to the freenas forums and ask there.

I have had a freenas setup for a few months now which has been running superbly, yesterday the Sandisk USB boot thumb drive packed up (No longer readable, windows does not even recognize it when I plug it in).

I found some instructions online about getting things going again. I have a saved backup of the configuration (freenas.tar file). Instructions I found mentioned that I need to create a new USB boot disk from scratch (fresh install), and then just restore the configuration tar file. All has gone well and config has been restored and I am able to boot the setup again. I can see the freenas pools etc in Storage / Pools. Problem is that the pools are showing as status unknown:

Current alerts:
* The volume WD-2TB-Red state is UNKNOWN:
* The volume Spare state is UNKNOWN:

Unfortunately I never made an iso backup of the boot USB, I always thought the saved config would be enough If I lost the USB boot disk.

I'm no expert in this so I am very cautions with running shell commands against the physical disks etc as I down want to corrupt or destroy the disks.

Hoping for some help

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132 posts

Master Geek
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#2452217 1-Apr-2020 12:06

So no experts in the house?

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1024kb

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#2452234 1-Apr-2020 12:18

Is there such a thing in the wild?

I gave FreeNAS a good run, expecting that one day it would all gel & I'd be able to understand the way things work on that system & why they're like that. But nah, not even. I ended up wasting hours & hours researching why some function that worked yesterday isn't doing it today.

In the end I just accepted that the adage "If you get something for free, what's it worth?" does in fact refer to FreeNAS & moved on. Sorry I don't have specific assistance for your problem.

Megabyte - so geek it megahertz

NumPy

132 posts

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#2452331 1-Apr-2020 14:59

Looks like I may have come across the issue. Saw this in the FreeNAS documentation:

Note: When adding another boot device, it must be the same size (or larger) as the existing boot device. Different models of USB devices which advertise the same size may not necessarily be the same size. For this reason, it is recommended to use the same model of USB drive.

The drive that died was a SanDisk 32GB Ultra Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive, the drive I am replacing it with is a 16GB Drive. This is probably the problem. I need to try and find an identical drive to the one that died.

Anybody know of a company that is shipping USB thumb drives currently?

MickeyD

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#2452587 1-Apr-2020 19:58

PBTech will now deliver goods essential for working from home or studying. If your files are on your NAS then that would seem reasonable.

I've only been using FreeNAS for a couple of months. So far it does all that I've needed but I suspect I'm only using a fraction of what it's capable of, and I'm far from an expert. I vaguely remember something in the docs about recovering a pool if you have a boot drive failure.

I'm using a pair of Sandisk 32Gb USB drives as my boot drive, with boot drive mirroring as described here, (also in the documentation here). Given the USBs are only $20 I figured it was money well spent, although I do wonder if I've doubled the chance of having one fail...

Good luck!

Tracer

343 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2456191 6-Apr-2020 21:26

What does `zpool status` tell you? Not familiar with FreeNAS anymore but I do run ZFS on a Debian box.

jamesrt

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#2456266 7-Apr-2020 08:42

Given that tracer has said ZFS is involved, then if I had to make an educated guess*, I'd say that the ZPOOL hasn't imported automatically due to the pool being marked "in use" by a specific hostID, and when you rebuilt the FreeNAS box, it generated a new / different hostID.

"zpool status" should be your first command to see what's going on. If the zpool status command indicates there are no pools, you could use "zpool import" and/or "zpool import -f" (the '-f' will force the import by ignoring the in-use flag, so do that last).

Alternative guess would be that the zpool or zfs filesystem versions on the phyiscal disk are now HIGHER than the currently running FreeNAS version will support - i.e. you've not applied some patches and/or the latest update ?

*I am a Oracle Solaris Systems Engineer by vocation; Solaris being the original system where ZFS was developed.

Mantis

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#2456689 7-Apr-2020 19:07

jamesrt:

Given that tracer has said ZFS is involved, then if I had to make an educated guess*, I'd say that the ZPOOL hasn't imported automatically due to the pool being marked "in use" by a specific hostID, and when you rebuilt the FreeNAS box, it generated a new / different hostID.

"zpool status" should be your first command to see what's going on. If the zpool status command indicates there are no pools, you could use "zpool import" and/or "zpool import -f" (the '-f' will force the import by ignoring the in-use flag, so do that last).

Alternative guess would be that the zpool or zfs filesystem versions on the phyiscal disk are now HIGHER than the currently running FreeNAS version will support - i.e. you've not applied some patches and/or the latest update ?

--

*I am a Oracle Solaris Systems Engineer by vocation; Solaris being the original system where ZFS was developed.

This sounds right, I've had to do it before. If you didn't export the pool from your previous system you'll need to use the force -f option when importing it into FreeNAS again. Have done it a few times when an upgrade failed and when USB drives failed and didn't have any issues.

Also would suggest not using a USB flash drive if possible. Now that FreeNAS uses ZFS for the boot pool, they only seem to last a few months. I just ended up getting the cheapest SSD and it's been running no problems for the last few years.

NumPy

132 posts

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#2456704 7-Apr-2020 19:53

So this is where I got to.

Re: Needing the exact same size/type of USB device, well that was not really true. Its only if you are mirroring the USB boot devices. I ordered 2 from PBTech, and they arrived. I am now running with mirrored USB's for boot. Hopefully this will solve the problem if one goes again in future.

Tracer:

What does `zpool status` tell you? Not familiar with FreeNAS anymore but I do run ZFS on a Debian box.

zpool status is not showing me the pool. Its only showing me the USB boot mirrors, and another 'Test' pool I have created.

root@freenas[~]# zpool status -v
pool: Test
state: ONLINE
scan: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
Test ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/68f3a482-779e-11ea-b2c6-78acc0a5b529 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

pool: freenas-boot
state: ONLINE
scan: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
freenas-boot ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
da0p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
da1p2 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

Note that I have not re-imported the saved configuration from before the USB boot failed. I had tried that, the pools were there but just showing in GUI as 'UNKNOWN', zpool status produced a similar status to above, they were not there, only boot pool was displayed.

NumPy

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#2456706 7-Apr-2020 19:56

jamesrt:

Alternative guess would be that the zpool or zfs filesystem versions on the phyiscal disk are now HIGHER than the currently running FreeNAS version will support - i.e. you've not applied some patches and/or the latest update ?

--

*I am a Oracle Solaris Systems Engineer by vocation; Solaris being the original system where ZFS was developed.

I came across similar recommendations when I asked this question in the ixsystems forums, I have made sure that I am running the exact same version of freenas that I was when the boot pool broke. Thanks for all the help.

NumPy

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#2456708 7-Apr-2020 19:58

Mantis:

This sounds right, I've had to do it before. If you didn't export the pool from your previous system you'll need to use the force -f option when importing it into FreeNAS again. Have done it a few times when an upgrade failed and when USB drives failed and didn't have any issues.

I have tried doing this via the GUI, but that failed. Maybe the GUI option does not give the force option. I will look into the CLI commands to do this as I need to provide the key as well. The drive is encrypted.

NumPy

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#2458768 10-Apr-2020 09:43

I have tried importing a pool with the following commands:

root@freenas[~]# zpool import -d /dev/ada0 WD-2TB-Red
cannot open '/dev/ada0/': Not a directory
cannot import 'WD-2TB-Red': no such pool available

root@freenas[~]# ls -l /dev/ada0
crw-r----- 1 root operator 0x6e Apr 7 18:30 /dev/ada0

ada0 is the disk device name, and WD-2TB-Red is the pool name.

jamesrt

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#2458838 10-Apr-2020 11:57

What does "zpool import" (with no other parameters) display?

NumPy

132 posts

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#2458876 10-Apr-2020 12:43

It just lists the boot pool, and another pool which I just created

jamesrt

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#2458895 10-Apr-2020 13:12

Really? That's not at all what I was expecting. It should only list pools that are available for import... Please provide the entire output?

NumPy

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#2460404 13-Apr-2020 11:45

root@freenas[~]# zpool import
pool: Test
id: 3343687219819625780
state: ONLINE
status: The pool was last accessed by another system.
action: The pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier and
the '-f' flag.
see: http://illumos.org/msg/ZFS-8000-EY
config:

Test ONLINE
gptid/68f3a482-779e-11ea-b2c6-78acc0a5b529 ONLINE

pool: Spare
id: 6265385774886713737
state: UNAVAIL
status: The pool was last accessed by another system.
action: The pool cannot be imported due to damaged devices or data.
see: http://illumos.org/msg/ZFS-8000-EY
config:

Spare UNAVAIL insufficient replicas
2391574283744552606 UNAVAIL cannot open
gptid/fa74fd32-8a78-11e9-85bb-78acc0a5b529 ONLINE

pool: freenas-boot
id: 7066402595766737261
state: ONLINE
status: Some supported features are not enabled on the pool.
action: The pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier, though
some features will not be available without an explicit 'zpool upgrade'.
config:

freenas-boot ONLINE
ada0p2 ONLINE

------

The pool is not there :-(

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