Boot volume suddenly 87% full and increasing

[Z300M]

I applied the latest update this morning, and this afternoon I got an alert that the boot volume was now 87% full. I've deleted a few of the boot environments, and now it shows as 94% full. I've saved the configuration. Do I need to reinstall from scratch and import the configuration?

 

[Nick2253]

The easiest things to fix this problem are, in order: delete boot environments; save config, wipe drive, reinstall; save config, get new USB drive, install.

Usually, if you can't just delete boot environments, it points to a bad USB drive.

 

[Z300M]

The easiest things to fix this problem are, in order: delete boot environments; save config, wipe drive, reinstall; save config, get new USB drive, install.

Usually, if you can't just delete boot environments, it points to a bad USB drive.

I am deleting boot environments, but the % full is increasing anyway.

 

[Nick2253]

I am deleting boot environments, but the % full is increasing anyway.

The boot volume usage isn't going to spontaneously increase for no reason. Since you are seeing this behavior, either you are running an update, which is creating a new boot environment, or something is going wrong with the boot drive.

Like I said before, I think you have a bad USB drive. A quick way to check this would be what you suggested: wipe, reinstall, load config. Other than that, you may need a new USB drive.

 

[Arwen]

Since my boot devices are 16GB SATA DOMs, I moved the system dataset to the boot pool.

Is your system dataset on your boot pool?

 

[Z300M]

Since my boot devices are 16GB SATA DOMs, I moved the system dataset to the boot pool.

Is your system dataset on your boot pool?

No, but I think I did have it there at one point while I was doing some reconfiguration of vdevs; could it still be occupying space there? I deleted all but two of the boot environments, but 11.0GiB is still reported to be in use out of the total 14.9GiB. I've ordered a 120GB SSD that will become my boot drive.

 

[Arwen]

You should not need any more space than a 8GB, with 16GB giving extra room for
more older boot environments and the system dataset. Using a 120GB SSD is a bit
of over kill for a boot drive on FreeNAS. Using a 120GB SSD may simply postpone
the problem if something is eating up the space.

One problem that occured to others on the forum, is that they had a bad share, (FTP
in that case), that pointed to directory on the boot drives. Not the NAS drives. Thus,
when data was loaded onto the NAS, it ended up eating space on the boot drives.

Login via SSH and take a look at your boot file systems using something like "du -sk".
Then see what is eating up the space.

Last, on rare occasions, I've had situations where a large file was deleted but still in
use by the daemon program. The space was not freed up, just removed from the
directory. Unless you can figure out which daemon needs re-starting or HUPping, a
reboot might take care of the problem.

 

[Z300M]

You should not need any more space than a 8GB, with 16GB giving extra room for
more older boot environments and the system dataset. Using a 120GB SSD is a bit
of over kill for a boot drive on FreeNAS. Using a 120GB SSD may simply postpone
the problem if something is eating up the space.

One problem that occured to others on the forum, is that they had a bad share, (FTP
in that case), that pointed to directory on the boot drives. Not the NAS drives. Thus,
when data was loaded onto the NAS, it ended up eating space on the boot drives.

Login via SSH and take a look at your boot file systems using something like "du -sk".
Then see what is eating up the space.

Last, on rare occasions, I've had situations where a large file was deleted but still in
use by the daemon program. The space was not freed up, just removed from the
directory. Unless you can figure out which daemon needs re-starting or HUPping, a
reboot might take care of the problem.

I know that 120GB is overkill for the boot drive itself, but the drive is available at a good price, and I've seen people suggesting partitioning the SSD and using part of it for the jails.

I've logged in via SSH, but I can't see anything that I recognize as the boot drive. There is a .freenas directory, but everything there is old. I cannot see a freenas-boot directory/volume (other than by executing zpool status).

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I've seen people suggesting partitioning the SSD and using part of it for the jails

Where are you seeing that suggested? I doubt you'll see it recommended in these forums.

I've logged in via SSH, but I can't see anything that I recognize as the boot drive

Use the zfs mount command to see where things live.

 

[Z300M]

Where are you seeing that suggested? I doubt you'll see it recommended in these forums.

I'm sure I did see it suggested somewhere in these forums, but I can't find it now. If it's not a good idea, that's OK -- so the SSD is oversized for a boot device, but it's not costing me much.

Use the zfs mount command to see where things live.

OK. Thanks.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

If it's not a good idea, that's OK

If you put your jails on a single SSD, they're lost if that SSD fails. Combine them with the boot pool too, and the extra wear on the SSD makes it more likely that you'll lose the boot pool. Just seems like asking for trouble to me.

 

[Z300M]

I got my 120GB SSD (I've seen 16GB SATADOMs for the same price or even more) and now have that as my boot drive. My first step was to add it to the existing boot drive, then remove the USB sticks,* but that left the used size at 11GB, and once I actually unplugged the USB sticks it wouldn't boot from the SSD. OK, I could just have changed the boot order in the BIOS and left it at that, but instead I then copied the latest RELEASE .iso to one of those USB sticks and did an upgrade install from there. I now have an SSD boot drive with only 604.0 MiB used. I have no idea what was using all that additional space on the USB sticks.

By "remove" I meant that I split the pool, removing each of the USB sticks in turn. I didn't mean that I simply unplugged them.