"Import Volumes"

[lyle]

Total Newbie here on my knees begging for help! :)

I have had this baby going for more than a year, fantastic! Lately it's been crashing and it finally stopped working altogether. I checked on the admin site and both drives (2TB & 1TB) were showing as "degraded" (whatever the heck that means!).

So I tore everything apart, pulled the 1TB (less critical drive), and plugged the 2TB (CRITICAL drive) into a different SATA port. I can see the drive come up on the splash screen, it shows up in the BIOS, but on the FREENAS 8 admin screen it is not showing as installed. I can see the drive, but it's like FREENAS is seeing it for the first time.

I tried Auto Import, but that didn't work. Import Volume looks doable and I can definitely see the drive.

Finally my question: if I "import volumes" this drive, will I lose all my CRITICAL data?

All help is greatly appreciated.

PS-did I mention I am a Newbie? Please talk to me like I'm a seven year old! :)

 

[cyberjock]

Post the output of "zpool import", "gpart status", and "zpool status".

Please put it in code so that the formatting is maintained. The formatting of the text matters. :P

 

[lyle]

How do I do this? Just type those commands on the command line? I will put this together tonite and post tonight.

 

[lyle]

Hi Cyberjock. Couldn't figure out how to output the results, so I have this "screenprint". I hope it helps!

-Lyle

 

[pirateghost]

Why wouldnt you just enable ssh and do it from a workstation?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[lyle]

Hi Pirate. Sorry you lost me there. Even if I could figure out how to enable ssh, wouldn't I still need to activate the hard disk (volume) in Freenas before I could transfer anything? Trying to figure out to bring the disk back online without losing data.

 

[cyberjock]

Why was your prompt listed as % and not the standard FreeNAS prompt (#)?

And I'm very confused because a zpool import has never given me an output like yours. Are you even using FreeNAS? What version? Please tell me its 8.something and not the old OS....

A typical zpool import should list any pools that it can find and what condition those devices are in. If nothing is found, it will simply return you to the command line. I've never seen it warn of zfs tunables.. ever. I'm almost convinced something is very very wrong here and we aren't getting the whole story.

and posting your hardware specs would be helpful too...

 

[lyle]

I selected "9)" from the menu "Shell". That produced the % command line.

Yes, using FreeNAS 8.x. I am not using any RAID setups. Could that be why the zpool import looks strange? I have two independent disks that are not connected in an array of any kind.

In a "typical" situation where I have one indpendent previously known good disk that I want to put back online, would "Import Volumes" normally erase the data or try to keep it?

 

[cyberjock]

When I do 9 from the menu I get:

[root@freenas] ~#

What version of FreeNAS are you using? The exact version number please :) It can be found from the GUI.
No, the zpool import shouldn't look strange no matter how misconfigured your OS is. I'm convinced you're either not using FreeNAS 8.x or you're using a version that is prior to 8.0.4(since that's when i started playing with FreeNAS). In any case, the fact that your zpool import command is funky makes me more than weary to give you more commands because I can't even confirm the OS you are using. I don't want to give you a command that wipes your data that would be safe on FreeNAS 8, but isn't on whatever OS you are using.

Also what is the output of "uname -a".

 

[lyle]

Thank you for sticking with me. I will get the exact version number tonight. I'll also try rebooting FreeNAS and try the 9 selection again to see if it's any different on a Wed night vs a Tues night. :)

 

[pirateghost]

Hi Pirate. Sorry you lost me there. Even if I could figure out how to enable ssh, wouldn't I still need to activate the hard disk (volume) in Freenas before I could transfer anything? Trying to figure out to bring the disk back online without losing data.

Run the commands and copy the output here. FROM a workstation

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[paleoN]

And I'm very confused because a zpool import has never given me an output like yours.

Check dmesg after a restart. That's the standard output when ZFS is first loaded. Appears to be a pre 8.2 version.

 

[cyberjock]

Dang.. sure enough.. 8.0.4 has a different prompt and the zpool import is exactly as the OP describes. Can't believe I've forgotten that stuff.

 

[lyle]

Yes! 8.0.4!

Here is the uname -a screenshot:

are we making progress?

 

[lyle]

...and here is the dmesg output:

 

[cyberjock]

Well, my first guess is that the SATA controller you've moved your disks to isn't compatible with FreeNAS.

In any case, a "zpool import" should have listed something even if the zpool was unmountable, and it didn't.

So you need to figure out if the disks themselves are bad or the SATA controller they are plugged into now isn't compatible with FreeNAS.

How about a "camcontrol devlist"? If that doesn't show your hard drives there's nothing that can be done until they are picked up in FreeNAS. Your error about vm.kmem_size does worry me. I'm not sure if you tuned it or not, but 512MB is quite low... and as the warning says "expect unstable behavior".

Perhaps try a fresh install of FreeNAS 8.3.1-p2 to a new USB stick?

 

[lyle]

Hi, there.

This machine has been up and running for more than a year on these two sata ports, so I can't see that being the issue. The disk is brand new since January and what are the chances that both disks will fail at exactly the same time?

Here is the camcontrol devlist:

Should I try to Import Volumes and see what happens? Will it give a pop up if it wants to clear all the data?

Otherwise, will try upgrading to 8.3.1

 

[lyle]

what's your best suggestion at this point Cyberjock?

 

[gpsguy]

Sit tight. Most of us are volunteers and have a day job.


Sent from my phone

 

[lyle]

Update-

Upgraded to FreeNAS-8.3.1-RELEASE-p2-x86.
Ran all the same commands as recommended above:
zpool import: no errors this time, no output, just moved to the next command line
gpart status: same output as above
zpool status: same output: no pools available
dmesg: very similar output including the ZFS NOTICE and WARNING
camcontrol devlist: same ouput as above