Replaced a dead drive, FreeNAS "assumed" replacement needed to be a stripe

[coloradogeek]

I'm not sure why it did this, I didn't get around to completing the disk replacement yet, and somehow ended up with this:

The stripe directly under Blackbox needs to go away. There's no data on it at all.
The RAIDz2-0 array is where this drive needs to go, where the 46000894-etc entry is.
I was getting ready to do this process and noticed that the drive was placed under the stripe heading.

I can't figure out how to fix this either from the GUI or the CLI/SSH. I've been searching the FreeNAS documentation for a while, and posts on this forum.

Currently running FreeNAS 9.2.1.3-RELEASE-x64.

 

[diehard]

I'm about 99% sure you incorrectly went about replacing that drive and instead added another vdev.

You will have to re-create the pool.

 

[Yatti420]

I believe you would have to delete the entire pool to fix this.. Not sure you can just remove the stripe.. You could add another drive and mirror that stripe which would atleast provide some redundancy..

 

[coloradogeek]

This thing really isn't as reliable as everyone touts it to be. I put the drive in two days ago, had to take a trip and came back and found this - we had the network port connected to the wrong plug during that time, so was unable to touch it until I went to look at it today, and I'm the only one who has access to the admin gui.

FFS.

 

[Yatti420]

Well if you connected a cable to the wrong port somebody set it up (physically wrong) I can see that being a problem... As another poster stated the replacement wasn't done according to the documentation?

 

[danb35]

Are you saying that FreeNAS just decided, on its own, without anyone doing anything in the WebGUI relating to that disk, to add that disk to the existing pool? Because I don't think it would do that. ETA: If it did, that would be a major bug, and should be reported. But I've never seen a case where FreeNAS automatically did anything to a disk just because it was connected to the system.

In any event, once a vdev has been added to a pool, it cannot be removed. You can add a second disk to mirror the one you added, so you'll have redundancy for it, but there's no way to just remove that disk--you'll lose everything on the pool if you try.

 

[cyberjock]

I can guarantee you for 100% certainty that FreeNAS didn't assume *anything*. I can, however, guarantee you for 100% certainty that you did NOT follow the documentation at doc.freenas.org for disk replacement. If you had you'd never have appeared at any windows that would have involved adding a vdev.

No, the stripe cannot be removed. If you read my newbie presentation I actually discuss exactly what you did because people wrongly think they can add single disks to a pool and still have redundancy (you can't).

 

[Ericloewe]

Here's the bottom line, dear future person who stumbles upon this thread in the future:

FreeNAS 9.2.1 Manual, 6.3.12 "Replacing a Failed Drive"

Or whatever is appropriate for whatever future version you're running.

 

[Whattteva]

I find it funny that just last week, someone did exactly this (3-4 threads down) and yet another one followed that same exact foot steps this week.
You would think last week's thread would prevent this from happening.

 

[cyberjock]

You kidding? reading the manual is for children and women. Real men just stripe on more disks! Grow up Whattteva! :D

 

[gpsguy]

As cyberjock said, many users don't feel the need to read the manual.

You would think last week's thread would prevent this from happening.

I'm equally surprised by the number of folks who guess at which drive to replace. Rather than look at the SMART output and match up the gptid's to the serial numbers, let's just
guess which drive to yank out of the server.

 

[SirMaster]

I feel like if people keep incorrectly doing this type of thing then the FreeNAS GUI might want to add a warning/extra confirmation when attempting to add a single disk vdev to a pool. I don't see the harm in an extra check and it would have already saved 2 people from having to redo their pool this week alone which seems worth it.

 

[panz]

If I remember well, FreeNAS allows you to add a disk to an encrypted and locked pool. If you're foolish enough ;)

 

[danb35]

I'm kind of torn on the issue, but on balance I agree that a warning would be appropriate. On the one hand, people really need to RTFM, and the process is laid out very clearly there. OTOH, the FreeNAS GUI tries to pad the sharp edges of FreeBSD/ZFS, and an operation that will irreversibly destroy your pools redundancy should carry a warning.

ETA: There was some discussion in the last thread about submitting a bug on this issue, but I don't see that anyone did. I've submitted Bug 5868 for this.

 

[Z300M]

You kidding? reading the manual is for children and women. Real men just stripe on more disks! Grow up Whattteva! :D

Long ago I read the opinion that, if one needs to read the documentation, the program is deficient.

 

[danb35]

I have read such opinions before as well. They usually seem to come from people who don't believe anyone should need to put any effort into learning to use their tools. This position doesn't make any sense anywhere else; why should it be treated as a sensible opinion when it comes to computers?

 

[SirMaster]

I think it definitely depends on the goal of the software.

Some software should be completely intuitive and not require the user read any documentation to operate it. Because the time spent needing to read the doc could be better spent just using the program to get work done.

Whether FreeNAS should become or even wants to become this is up to them really.

Some things are likely just too complicated to be able to do away with a manual entirely. But it seems many user's use cases for FreeNAS could possibly be handled fine intuitively and without needing to read the manual if the software was given some extra protections and warnings in some areas.

 

[danb35]

Well, that's what I get for submitting a bug before testing... At least in 9.2.1.7, the warning is already implemented, and it looks like it does not even allow you to do this within the ZFS volume manager. See the attached screenshot. To create the problem seen in this thread, you have to go into the manual setup window.

 

[SirMaster]

Oh, well that's pretty great then that they have put a warning.

 

[Ericloewe]

Nice touch, that warning.