Mirroring Boot Device adventures

[eegee]

I decided a while back that it was time to beef up my FreeNAS box by adding redundancy to the boot volume. I bought two identical USB flash drives (16GB) and followed the instructions on http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/system.html#mirroring-the-boot-device. I had an 8GB stick as the sole boot drive for the OS, so I first added one 16GB to the system and then Attach Disk'd it.

The system started resilvering the newly added 16GB fine, until it hit some errors. The error count under the WRITE column on zpool status started increasing and then the resilvering stopped showing a DEGRADED state. I then tried with the other 16GB only to have the same result. After that I ran the bad blocks checker of Rufus, but it didn't find any issues with either 16GB flash drives. I proceeded to try zpool clear, zpool scrub, and zpool replace as well as trying different USB ports -- all with the same final result -- a DEGRADED state.

Then, this weekend I took a different approach. I plugged the 8GB drive into a different PC, booted into FreeNAS, and ran zpool replace with one of the 16GB drives. The process completed successfully. This has led me to believe that the server box has some kind of issue with USB drives and drops the USB drive after extended periods of continuous writing. But now I have another issue. When I plugged both the 8GB and 16GB drive back into the server box, I was greeted with the error message below.

Code:

> GEOM: da2: corrupt or invalid GPT detected.
> GEOM: da2: GPT rejected -- may not be recoverable.

I'm guessing that since I ran zpool replace instead of Attach through the WUI, I caused the GPT issue.

I should have time again this coming weekend to try something different.
Any suggestions on what approach I should take? My end goal is to replace the 8GB with the two new 16GB drives.

 

[Stux]

The way to mirror the boot drive post install is via the ui. Which is documented in the manual

 

[Dice]

Any suggestions on what approach I should take?

1. Avoid hacking around in CLI with drive replacements - FreeNAS middleware can get "confused"
2. Login, download the config file
3. Install fresh on new drives
4. Upload config file
5. done.

 

[Stux]

The way to mirror the boot drive post install is via the ui. Which is documented in the manual

Further to this, there is more to mirroring a FreeNAS boot drive than just adding another slice to the ZFS boot partition.

 

[eegee]

1. Avoid hacking around in CLI with drive replacements - FreeNAS middleware can get "confused"
2. Login, download the config file
3. Install fresh on new drives
4. Upload config file
5. done.

Great, thank you for the succinct steps. I'll do that this weekend.

 

[eegee]

Thanks, It worked!

Getting some odd errors, but after checking Google it seems I can safely ignore them.

Code:

May  7 22:27:52 nas kernel: ng_ether_ifnet_arrival_event: can't re-name node epair5b
May  7 22:27:52 nas kernel: ng_ether_ifnet_arrival_event: can't re-name node epair5b
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14110]: open /dev/ttyv2: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14109]: open /dev/ttyv1: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14112]: open /dev/ttyv4: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14115]: open /dev/ttyv7: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14114]: open /dev/ttyv6: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14108]: open /dev/ttyv0: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14111]: open /dev/ttyv3: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:10 nas getty[14113]: open /dev/ttyv5: No such file or directory
May  7 22:28:52 nas syslog-ng[1379]: Error opening file for writing; filename='/dev/console', error='Device not configured (6)'
May  7 22:29:52 nas syslog-ng[1379]: Error opening file for writing; filename='/dev/console', error='Device not configured (6)'
May  7 22:30:52 nas syslog-ng[1379]: Error opening file for writing; filename='/dev/console', error='Device not configured (6)'
May  7 22:31:52 nas syslog-ng[1379]: Error opening file for writing; filename='/dev/console', error='Device not configured (6)'

 

[Jailer]

If you really want a safe install switch to a SSD. USB drives are notoriously craptastic in quality.

 

[Stux]

If you really want a safe install switch to a SSD. USB drives are notoriously craptastic in quality.

Depends on the drive.

 

[Jailer]

Very true but with as many reported failures that show up here on the forums I just can't bring myself to recommend one.

 

[tres_kun]

Just had a 2nd flash drive fail after 1.5 years
Unplugged the good one by mistake
Server frozen
I regret spending the money on the flash drives
But as I have them I will use them