looking back at these topics:
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...ent-sized-disks-freenas-9-1.15989/#post-85222
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/about-to-expand-my-zpool.16067/page-2[and maybe more]
is it now "safe" (v9.2.1, while the pool was originally created from the CLI) to use the GUI without having to manually partition (swap+gptid) the disk?
is it still "safe" for disk with different sizes?
this needs to be added to the docs as well.
Hehe. If you read that first link, you'll see me comment and make the same warnings I just explained.
1. Doing things from the CLI is dangerous and should not be done as a regular course of business. And the reason why your pool had to be created from the CLI is because the "new" volume manager wouldn't let you do what you wanted to do. The "old" volume manager would let you do whatever you wanted, even if it was completely idiotic. And if you check out bug ticket
3274 you'll see that I advocated for the old volume manager and iXsystems finally added it back. That was for people like you MtK that did non-standard things. Some of those things are dangerous, some aren't. They took it away because there was way too many people doing dangerous things and they thought it was better to just forbid all but the most ideal situations.
2. I told you that you should be doing GPTIDs and not partitions. And here I am again telling people that. Consistency for the win!
If you read the second link, you'll see me comment there about...
1. Oh my. doing things from the CLI is dangerous? That's #1 above too!
2. Oh my.. GPTIDs not used. Hey.. this must be a trick question.. that's #2 above too.
And what did both of those situations have in common? Creating pools from the CLI. Nowhere in the manual does it tell you to create pools from the CLI. It tells you to use the GUI. That's it. If you want to go off doing your own thing, you accept any and all risks and responsibilities with those decisions. For better or for worse. It's like marrying a slut. You married her. If you don't like that, you shouldn't have done that.
As for "safe", you don't have to manually partition the disks anymore. The legacy volume manager has been restored(thank god?). So now I can tell people to use the legacy volume manager to do what you want without having to "hack" it from the CLI.
It is still "safe" for different size disks. Just as it has always been. The only reason the "new" volume manager wouldn't let you was because the software was coded to prevent you from doing just about anything except the most ideal situation. And mixing disk sizes is not ideal. You end up limiting all of the disks in that vdev to the same size. The real problem was that people were buying 3TB Seagate disks and 3Tb Western Digital disks, and one would be 50MB smaller than the other. The "new" volume manager would say that the disks weren't the same size and it would stop you from using them in a vdev! How silly! And this happens regularly!
So now, when someone tells me they just created a pool from the CLI I'm going to publicly flog them.. ok, not really. But they will have absolutely no reason to argue for why they "needed" to do it from the CLI and couldn't use the GUI(and therefore follow the manual). I'll probably just ignore them and let them have their stuff be wrong. I don't really want to keep telling people to RTFM for the rest of my life. I do have better things to do. Lost data has a way with really highlighting your past mistakes.
I mean, what do you expect if you don't follow the manual? What is amazing to me is that so many people can willingly ignore the manual, then get upset when the turds hit the fan and they end up with poop all over their face. Surprise!
