Error: Disk replacement failed: "invalid vdev specification, use '-f' to override

[asterysk]

I am experimenting with my newly installed Freenas system before I go live with it.

I went through the procedure (using GUI) to replace a Drive (simulating that it was faulty), however, the replacement drive was one I had previously used in a different zpool and I therefore got this error message on the console:

: Disk replacement failed: "invalid vdev specification, use '-f' to override the following errors:, /dev/gptid/8baa9bc1-0ae3-11e6-97d4-003048f3359a is part of potentially active pool 'extender', "

This leads me to a few newbie questions (I tried researching this but couldn't get clarification):

1. Am I correct in assuming that there is some database in Freenas that keeps a record of serial numbers and whether they were used at any point previously, if YES, is there a way to edit them out

2. Is there anything I can do to the physical drive using gpart to allow it to be accepted

3. For me to do this using command line and adding the -f , where should I look to find out the commands

I apologise if this has already been covered somewhere here, I did search using Google but the references I found didn't apply to this situation .

Thank you

 

[depasseg]

1. Am I correct in assuming that there is some database in Freenas that keeps a record of serial numbers and whether they were used at any point previously, if YES, is there a way to edit them out

Not a database, but the first part of the drive has a ZFS identifier. This is how and why ZFS drives can be connected in any order to a system and be detected correctly. which leads to your second question...

2. Is there anything I can do to the physical drive using gpart to allow it to be accepted

Yes, deleting the partitions or a quick format should take care of it. It the cases of drives that were used in other types of systems (HW RAID, other SAN's), sometimes it takes more effort (like using dd to overwrite the beginning of the drive).

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Another option is the zpool labelclear command.