2 days & 6 hrs in, USB Boot Drive Failure

[ibanman555]

Hello Helpers,

I installed FreeNAS 11.3 RELEASE on 8gb USB stick and a few days ago, and I have been working on backing up some files. Just a few hours ago, I am no longer able to access the Web UI, which concerns me, not to mention read errors on da12 which is my boot drive....

I have a large backup file transfer ongoing from a networked PC and it is still passing to FreeNAS, so I don't dare try and restart or reinstall until that appears to finish.

And, unfortunately, procrastination resulted in a lack of backup configuration database .db file. I am hoping to revert back to my system configuration and access my saved data, I just need help with clarification. I have a single pool of all 12 drives in Z3 array, and my understanding is that the config database automatically saves to that created pool, and upon a fresh install, I can recover my config using System>System Dataset, and mount my existing pool? Am I understanding this correctly?

Alternatively, without a backup config dB file, what would be the best way to at least re-establish my pool with a fresh install? Thanks for any guidance.

Dell R510 12 bay Z3
12 2TB Drives
32gb Mem
San Disk Crusier Blade 8gb Boot USB (never again)

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Here's your get out of jail free card https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/update-went-wrong.74084/page-2#post-514298. Once you're back online, I suggest you mirror your boot drive.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

I installed FreeNAS 11.3 RELEASE

You should upgrade immediately to 11.3-U2.1 if you haven't already. There exists a nasty bug on all versions of 11.3 prior to U2.1 where you can lose your entire pool. See the release notes if you're curious.

Alternatively, without a backup config dB file, what would be the best way to at least re-establish my pool with a fresh install? Thanks for any guidance.

If you can't get the db back; you can follow the User Guide to import your pools and set up your shares etc again. Depending on what you had set up it could be a bit onerous.

Also, if possible, I recommend you consider booting off SSDs. Two SSDs can be had for cheap and are much much more reliable than USB stick.

 

[Yorick]

If you can't get the db back

See link above to get out of jail free. /var/db/system/config-xxxxx has it. Unless OP moved system dataset to boot drive ...

Seconded on SSD. USB sticks, particularly 3.0 ones, are prone to die.

 

[ibanman555]

Thank you all for the guidance and help. Fortunately, after reboot, everything came back, and I promptly backed up the dataset. I have a lightly used M.2 drive I'll put in a 2.5 caddy, and use that as a boot drive asap. But until then I will mirror a duplicate USB stick.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

I have a lightly used M.2 drive I'll put in a 2.5 caddy, and use that as a boot drive asap. But until then I will mirror a duplicate USB stick.

M.2 works great until you want that M.2 port for something that benefits from all that speed; such as a SLOG or L2ARC device. If you ever need those you can always move your boot device over to 2.5" SATA SSDs or something.

 

[Yorick]

I have a lightly used M.2 drive I'll put in a 2.5 caddy

@PhiloEpisteme , sounds like a SATA M.2 in a 2.5" SATA caddy. Not NVMe M.2 in an M.2 connector.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

@PhiloEpisteme , sounds like a SATA M.2 in a 2.5" SATA caddy. Not NVMe M.2 in an M.2 connector.

Ah, I missed that; thanks.

 

[ibanman555]

I am getting the same type of problem yet again, the terminal is showing "the web interface could not be accessed".

Files are still transferring the the FreeNAS server and I can ping the 2 ip addresses of the server from my PC.

I am sure once my files complete their transfer, if I restart FreeNAS again, I'll be in good shape.... Just wondering why this could be occurring. I will be replacing these USB flash drives with SSD drives asap for boot.