SOLVED ZFS Pool - Unknown Status

[SlackerDude]

Hey guys, I need help please. I recently updated to 11.2-u7, and then to 11.3 RELEASE. Everything was working smoothly.

Then I got stupid, and flipped "Autotune" to on...

After restarting, I discovered the network interfaces were no longer communicating. I was finally able to boot back to 11.2-u7, where I saw an alert waiting for me: "Pool media state is UNKNOWN".

I can see the "media" pool, and sure enough, it shows "Unknown". Additionally, none of my four iocage jails are showing up. I had no idea autotune had become a bad thing, until now. I'm guessing I need to fix the pool issue, but being an absolute greenhorn, I have no idea where to begin.

My system hardware info:
Case: LIAN LI PC-Q25B
Power Supply: CORSAIR CX430M 430W 80 PLUS BRONZE
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+
CPU: AMD A6-5400K
CPU Cooler: ZALMAN CNPS8900
RAM: 16GB DDR3
Boot Drive: 2 x SanDisk SDCZ36-016G-B35 16G
Storage Drive: 6 x WD Red WD40EFRX
Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000Mbps

In "Tunables", I see the following 20 variables listed, 18 of which have been generated by autotune:

Variable Value Type Comment Enabled
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

kern.ipc.maxsockbuf 5242880 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

kern.ipc.nmbclusters 2097152 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack 0 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.mssdflt 1448 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_inc 524288 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max 16777216 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.recvspace 131072 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_inc 16384 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max 16777216 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.tcp.sendspace 131072 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

net.inet.udp.recvspace 4194304 sysctl Manual entry yes

net.inet.udp.recvspace 4194304 sysctl Manual entry yes

vfs.zfs.arc_max 12502171776 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

vfs.zfs.l2arc_headroom 2 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

vfs.zfs.l2arc_noprefetch 0 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

vfs.zfs.l2arc_norw 0 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

vfs.zfs.l2arc_write_boost 40000000 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

vfs.zfs.l2arc_write_max 10000000 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

vfs.zfs.metaslab.lba_weighting_enabled 1 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

vfs.zfs.zfetch.max_distance 33554432 sysctl Generated by autotune yes

What I do not know, is whether it will be safe to either disable or delete those variables identified as being generated by autotune.

I would like very much to not lose my files, and am hoping someone here can walk me through some recovery steps. HELP!

 

[SlackerDude]

UPDATE: I have resolved my issue, and I will share here, for anyone who may be interested.

Once I was able to successfully boot into 11.2-U7, I accessed the GUI & went to the Tunables section, and deleted every entry that autotune had generated. I then saved the configuration, and restarted FreeNAS.

Upon restart, the NIC got the address it was supposed to get. From the console, I chose "Reset Configuration to Default", which triggered another restart.

After that restart, I was able to access the GUI again. The "media" pool had not shown up yet. I had to restart FreeNAS four more times, each time, selecting which boot environment I wanted (11.2-U7).

On the sixth restart, I saw there was at last a pool to import. Once I had regained access to the pool, I was able to verify the datasets were still intact, and that the jails and plugins were also still there. I did have to turn the jails on again & set them to autostart. All the shares had vanished, so I recreated those.

I saved the FreeNAS config once again, and restarted FreeNAS, this time selecting the 11.3 RELEASE boot environment, and once it was back up, I initiated one more restart.

This time FreeNAS started much more quickly than it had earlier, and all jails came online almost immediately.

RESULTS:
1. Migration from 11.2-U7 to 11.3 RELEASE was painless and successful.
2. Creation of jails in iocage was painless and successful.
3. Turning on Autotune caused both pain and anxiety.
4. stumbling through recovery was educational.

LESSON LEARNED:
Read release notes carefully, then read them again.