iSCSI and Save Config

[ek47]

Another FreeNAS/BSD n00b here. Searched the forum for my answers and came up dry.

My FreeNAS install has gone bonkers and will not boot. Something about getty, I/O error, and throwing a bunch of "cannot locate file" errors. Maybe a power outage borked it. Tried to do an upgrade with the CD, went fine, and upon reboot it threw another error, reverted, and now I am back to square one. Safe mode, non-ACPI, etc don't work. FSCK'd a dozen times and it all came back clean. Let's just assume it cannot be salvaged and I need to reinstall a fresh copy of FreeNAS. I cannot access webGUI. And in true n00b fashion I did not backup my config.

Intel DH67BL mobo with i3, 4gb ram. FreeNAS is installed on a 4GB CF card in a CF-Sata adapter. I have an 8-drive RAID-6 on an ARECA 1222 with the entire array turned into an iSCSI target for my win7 workstation. The data on the array is important to me and I need to get to it. Please don't flame me for not using ZFS, I already know, and I wanted to use the hardware RAID. Now I am paying the price.

So:

1.) Is there an easy way to save/retrieve my config (particularly the iSCSI bits) without using the webGUI? I am able to get the boot menu and get into single-user mode CLI.

2.) If no to 1., if I wipe the entire boot drive and reinstall FreeNAS from scratch, is there a way to reinstate the old iSCSI target/extent and mount as normal through my win7 initiator?

3.) Is there an option that is easier? I just want at my data.

I really appreciate any help you guys can lend. Lesson learned on the save config. If anyone wants a crack at helping me diagnose why the existing install went bad, I will need to know how to dump the boot sequence messages to a log file...thanks guys.

 

[William Grzybowski]

1.) Is there an easy way to save/retrieve my config (particularly the iSCSI bits) without using the webGUI? I am able to get the boot menu and get into single-user mode CLI.

If you can do that you should be able to retrieve /data/freenas-v1.db, thats all you need. Then reinstall and upload config under Settings->General

2.) If no to 1., if I wipe the entire boot drive and reinstall FreeNAS from scratch, is there a way to reinstate the old iSCSI target/extent and mount as normal through my win7 initiator?

Just auto import your volume and set up the extents like they were before...

 

[ek47]

If you can do that you should be able to retrieve /data/freenas-v1.db, thats all you need. Then reinstall and upload config under Settings->General

Thanks for the reply William. Under single-user CLI /data/freenas-v1.db did not exist for me.

Just auto import your volume and set up the extents like they were before...

Auto import did not work for me either. Said there was an error changing volume label. Found a potential solution in the forum to add fuse to the kernel at boot, but it did not work.

Installed a fresh install on another CF card. Set up the volume/extents as before. Initiated on my win7 workstation and it asked me to format the drive.

So as a last resort I loaded up R-Studio and it found the NTFS partitions and files and is recovering them flawlessly.

Thanks again for the help.