Can I upgrade from 11.1.U7 to 11.2?

[splaisan]

I am running 11.1.U7 which is the latest version my update page knows of in the train 11-STABLE.
Can I change train to 11.2-STABLE or is this dangerous for my data.
I read that 11.2 will fix my issue with smartD not working with my Dell PercRaid since some update within 11 (used to work before)
I cannot move my data to another NAS and need to be sure I will not loose it before dong something stupid.
Thanks for your advice

 

[sretalla]

You can do it and be confident your data is safe.

No upgrade will ever damage your data because the system disk is not part of your data pools.

 

[splaisan]

just did and it worked, thanks @sretalla for the msg. The only sad news is that SMART is not back with this, possibly because my disk IDs are way too long. Too bad, I'll leave without it.

 

[sretalla]

An important caveat on this is when an upgrade makes new ZFS features available and you elect to upgrade your data pools (after the system is upgraded).

Upgrading the pools can impact data (recoverability), though the data itself should still remain safe and you can argue that this is at least linked to upgrading FreeNAS, so please consider that point when taking my earlier comments into account.

The only sad news is that SMART is not back with this, possibly because my disk IDs are way too long. Too bad, I'll leave without it.

SMART problems are something you don't really want to live with too long as that's how FreeNAS can warn you about impending disk failures in order to help to prevent data loss or damage.

Can you get some kind of output from smartctl -a /dev/dax (where dax is one of your drive identifiers)?

 

[splaisan]

Here we go

The RAID was built by setting up virtual disks for each separate physical harddisk at the Perc side then muxing them in freenas to create the current NAS. We discovered later that this was not the way to go but I have no way to rebuild the NAS as I cannot copy the 10+ TB elsewhere.

Thanks for your help

[root@freenas ~]# smartctl -a /dev/da0 -T permissive
smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [FreeBSD 11.2-STABLE amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: DELL
Product: PERC H710
Revision: 3.13
User Capacity: 299,439,751,168 bytes [299 GB]
Logical block size: 512 bytes
>> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
Current Drive Temperature: 0 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 0 C

Read defect list: asked for grown list but didn't get it
Error Counter logging not supported

Device does not support Self Test logging

 

[sretalla]

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think you would necessarily need to rebuild anything if you just connect the disks to a non-RAID HBA controller...

I can now see why you get nothing from SMART. It may be worth your time investigating the possibility of changing out the card.

I guess if you have no backup it would be too risky to just try it.

 

[Yorick]

How do stores handle returns where you live? If there's a "no questions asked" policy, you could be sneaky, grab a WD 10TB external drive (plus a smaller one in addition if need be), copy the data over, then return the external drive(s). Maybe not the most forthright method, but it'd get you out of a bind.

You are probably safe just connecting the disks to an HBA, but you want a backup just in case.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Here we go

The RAID was built by setting up virtual disks for each separate physical harddisk at the Perc side then muxing them in freenas to create the current NAS. We discovered later that this was not the way to go but I have no way to rebuild the NAS as I cannot copy the 10+ TB elsewhere.

Thanks for your help

Your problem will never be fixed by an upgrade. It's not smartd or freenas that's broken it's your raid card. Setting up this system like you did will result in complete data loss one day. At that time you can rebuild your pool with proper hardware since you can't do it now apparently.

 

[splaisan]

Thanks @Yorick and @sretalla for the suggestion, adding a card in the enclosure is unfortunately not an option as I do not own that piece.
Same for ''buying'' extra disks
Thanks anyway.

 

[splaisan]

Thanks for the info, fortunately, the Dell Raid controller and iDRAC warn me when my disks are failing (already happened 5 times with this old NAS) and Freenas warns me when writing errors occur. This is not ideal but I learned to live with it.
About your statement that this is not fixable, I find it strange since SMART DID work perfectly with early versions of FN
I therefore more believe that some software in the later version stopped supporting my RAID card!
Best