Yesterday I did a big mistake: I’ve upgrade my NAS server with a non-tested release of FreeNAS. And this release had a big bug that prevent me to start it again 🙁
The process for recovery my system is quite simple:
1. Boot from a working FreeNAS CDROM
2. Mount the partition where is installed the bugged FreeNAS
3. Copy the config.xml from this partition to a tmp directory (in the RAM drive)
4. Unmount the partition
5. Re-install a working release of FreeNAS on this partition
6. Re-mount the partition where is now the working release
7. Copy the backuped config.xml from the RAM drive to this partition
8. reboot the computer
I choose to automated this process and add this tool as option on the install menu of FreeNAS (the install menu is now displayed only when booting from CDROM).
I found an interressant post on the forum that link to this cool blog:
http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/vmware.html
This article explains how to increase the performance of FreeBSD under a VM machine by replacing the network drivers and changing one kernel parameter.
Changing a network driver is not users transparent (because they must re-configure their LAN interfaces)… But I should not forget to add this mention in the 0.684b release notes:
If your FreeNAS is using a “lnc†interface, plug a keyboard/screen on your PC before to start the upgrade because you will have to reconfigure your LAN interface for using the new “le†driver!
I’ve installed FreeBSD on my laptop too (removed ubuntu)… This will permit to play with my aironet card and WPA one day.
I’ve still not added the code for protecting to format a disk used in a RAID volume 🙁
I think to hide them for the format option, but it’s more complex that I thought.