Auto import from gui after exporting zpool via cli

[mhugelmann]

Hi all,

First post here, but I have been using FreeNAS (and FreeBSD) for some time. I'm no n00b, but no expert either.

I have my FreeNAS box with a quad core AMD processor with 8GB RAM. The motherboard has 4 SATA ports, and additionally I have 2 PCI SATA cards each with 4 ports. I'm currently running 8.0.2-RELEASE and have not yet upgraded to 8.0.4. Up until last night I had 2 separate RAIDZ1 pools consisting of 4 drives. Pool1 has 4x WDEARS15 and Pool2 has 4x WDEARS20. Everything was working fine.

Last night, I decided to throw 4 500GB drives in to the server to make a 3rd RAIDZ1 pool. They were previously used on a Windows computer and formatted for NTFS. Upon powering up the server, I logged in to the shell via SSH and went ahead with creating the new volume. dmesg | grep ada showed that the new drives were ada8-ada11 (previous drives are ada0-ada7). I produced the pool with the following command: zpool create pool3 raidz ada8 ada9 ada10 ada11. The pool was successfully created and I verified with zpool status -v.

I then exported the zpool with zpool export pool3 so I could use the Auto Import tool in the WebGUI to be able to control the zpool from there. It listed no volumes to import.

I tried the normal Import option and it only listed ada8 and ada9 as available drives.

So, for sake of argument, I re-imported the pool via the cli and destroyed it. ada8 and ada9 were still the only drives listed in the Import screen. Then I tried to create the zpool from the GUI instead. It listed all 4 available volumes and I was able to create the pool. However, this is not the way I want to do it as the GUI slices the volume for the SWAP space (I want to use the whole device).

From there, I proceeded to destroy the pool I created from the GUI, and went ahead with the cli way again to see if it would make a difference. Same problem, I export it, but the GUI doesn't see any importable pools. For sake of thoroughness, I ran zpool import via the cli and it did, in fact, list the volume I had previously exported.

This made me think that some how it had to do with the system (or specifically the GUI) not being able to handle ada channels greater than 9. Is this a possible bug, or is my logic way off?

For the record, I have used the same method on the 2 previous pools I created on the server and didn't have any issue with the Auto Import tool.

Any help with the matter would be greatly appreciated as I don't know how else to force the GUI to recognize the new pool. Are there any other settings or options I should be looking at that could be the culprit behind the problem?

Thanks :)

 

[ProtoSD]

Welcome Mhugelmann,

Just a few comments. I think you need to upgrade to 8.04. If I recall, there were issues on 8.02 and the GUI when there were over 10 disks, the numbering/naming was somehow messed up, that sounds like part of the problem. The import is for importing drives with non-native formats like NTFS, FAT32, Ext2 etc., so you want to use Auto Import with your new pool. Everything else you're doing sounds on target.

Cheers!

 

[mhugelmann]

Hey protosd,

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm glad to hear that my methodology is sound. I thought it might be related to using an outdated version of FreeNAS. I'll try upgrading to 8.0.4-RELEASE this weekend and see if the problems persist.

I'll post my findings once I have completed the upgrade.

Take care

 

[mhugelmann]

Alright so just an update on my situation/problem...

I went into the cli and used zpool export to export the two working pools from my NAS box, then I went ahead and upgraded to 8.0.4-RELEASE via ISO image and did a fresh install onto my USB drive. Once complete, the first thing I did was log into the WebGUI and tried to use the Auto Import tool to import all three pools I had previously created. The tool listed all three pools for available import.

I imported pool1 with success. I then went back into Auto Import and only pool2 was displayed. I went ahead and imported it anyway (thinking maybe the system was still thinking and the tool had timed out getting all available pools since all three were previously listed). After importing pool2, I went back into the Auto Import window and pool3 was not listed. This was the same issue that I previously had with 8.0.2-RELEASE before upgrading to 8.0.4-RELEASE. However, again, through the cli, pool3 was still listed as available for import, just the Auto Import tool did not list it (and subsequently cannot be controlled through the WebGUI).

Upon this failing, I decided to start over and try a different approach, so I exported the volumes once again through the cli and restored the system to factory defaults. Once the restore was complete, I went back into the WebGUI to try again.

Again, all three pools were listed. This time, though, I imported pool3 first. Success. Went back to the tool and it still listed the other two pools, so I imported pool1 next. Success again. Went through the tool one last time and (thankfully) it still had the last pool listed so I went and imported pool2.

Finally all three pools were imported and available to the system and through the WebGUI.

So the problem is somewhat fixed, but I still don't understand why pool3 had to be imported first in order for it to work, whereas if I imported it last, the tool didn't detect it. Moreover, although I would have upgraded anyway, I wonder if the upgrade to 8.0.4-RELEASE was necessary to enable it to work.

And, I also considered that this may be caused due to my hardware or hardware configuration, but ruled that out as seeing how everything through the cli works perfectly.

Though this is fixed now, any more insight would be appreciated because I'm now considering what the outcome might be for future upgrades to my system...

Thanks :)