Boot drives don't have SWAP, problem for different size USB drives

[BloodyIron]

Hi Folks,

So my understanding is when a disk in a not-boot pool is added that one of the partitions put on it is SWAP, and this is so you can have disks of similar size, but slightly different sizes still be in the pool. So the swap size is adjusted to "fit" the different sized disks.

Now, I've heard word in 9.10u3 that the boot drives (USB boot drives in this case), don't have the same SWAP partitioning. Buddy shadow35 on IRC just got some USB sticks that are literally the same model as the one his boot is on, and wanted to mirror them. Except they are slightly too small, so FreeNAS won't let him add them to form a mirror for boot.

Naturally of course he needs to reinstall and re-import the config to use these USB sticks.

So, this post is to point out that we really should have the SWAP method added to the boot drives to avoid these scenarios, just like for other ZFS pool situations.

Please?

 

[Ericloewe]

Swap on USB devices is a Very Bad Idea. A smallish buffer to handle slightly different drive sizes would probably be nice, though. It would need a feature request, though.

 

[BloodyIron]

Well, I suppose you're right. But some sort of partitioning trickery to address this issue I think is in order. Even if it's not swap ;P

Swap on USB devices is a Very Bad Idea. A smallish buffer to handle slightly different drive sizes would probably be nice, though. It would need a feature request, though.

 

[danb35]

I've passed the point of being surprised at how crappy (and in how many ways) USB drives are...

 

[Ericloewe]

I've passed the point of being surprised at how crappy (and in how many ways) USB drives are...

I shudder to imagine how many important documents are only present on crap USB flash drives.