SOLVED Broke my Server (Scale)

[NugentS]

OK - so this afternoon I broke my server by poking around in a "Here be Dragons" area and got bit.
I have rebuilt the server, recovered three small pools, but that main pool was toast - doesn't matter - its all backed up and apart from a 3 day restore (ish) which is a nusiance - there is no issue - I did a full backup just before kicking the dragon in the unmentionables anyway.

However I have run into an issue (back to the "Here Be Dragons" area)

In FreeBSD I ran the following commands to create 3 SLOG partitions on a pair of Optanes which I then added as mirrored SLOG's to three different pools.
gpart create -s GPT nvd4 gpart create -s GPT nvd5 gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -a 1m -l slog -s 20G nvd4 gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -a 1m -l slog -s 20G nvd4 gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -a 1m -l slog -s 20G nvd4 gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -a 1m -l slog -s 20G nvd5 gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -a 1m -l slog -s 20G nvd5 gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -a 1m -l slog -s 20G nvd5

Once I have the partitions I can find the ID and add them to the relevent pools. However this is Debian and so far my google-fu has failed to find a way of doing the equivalent.
I suppose I could Install & boot TN Core and use that to build the partitions - but that seems a very long way around the problem.

I can use parted to create a GPT label - but thats as far as it seems to take me

Anyone care to point in the right direction please?

 

[sretalla]

fdisk ?

 

[NugentS]

Assuming anyone is interested this is how I did it (after more hours bashing my head against a wall then I care to think about)
2 problems:

1. Create partitions
2. Assign partitions to log vdev

Create partitions:
After a lot of flailing around - I was pointed at an OpenZFS on Ubuntu document which pointed me at cgdisk an interactive (text based) program to partition disks - so I was finally able to create the 3 partitions on each disk. (type a504 if it makes a difference)
[I really hope there is an easier way]
I also used cgdisk to make a note of the unique part-uuid for all 6 partitions - unfortunately it displays in uppercase and the UUID is actually lowercase and case sensitive!

Assign Partitions to log vdev
ls /dev/disk/by-partuuid displayed a big block of part-uuid's on the system which I then compared visually to the list made from cgdisk
then it was a simple matter of
zpool add NVMePool log mirror /dev/disk/by-partuuid/"insert partuuid here" /dev/disk/by-partuuid/"insert partuuid here"

And I now have my SLOG's back, with no degraded pools and zpool iostat -v 1 shows data being written to the SLOG's at appropriate times.

cgdisk is part of a set of apps - so I suspect that a bit more research would find a way to do the equivalent of the FreeBSD gpart add rather than going through an interactive program, maybe

Now I just have to wait for the restores to complete

I did seriously think about installing TN Core 13 on a USB, booting that and partitioning that way

fdisk ?

I don't know. This is where my lack of knowledge hits me.
In FreeBSD I told the partition it was a FreeBSD-ZFS. I didn't seem to be able to do that in fdisk - or maybe I missed it - or maybe it doesn't actually matter - I don't know enough to know

I suspect I am in the area of "know enough to be dangerous"

 

[sretalla]

under that disk with fdisk, you can change the partition type with t ... from what I can see, swap is type 19 Linux Swap (0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F) and it seems that SCALE chooses 67 Solaris /usr & Apple ZFS (6A898CC3-1DD2-11B2-99A6-080020736631) for pool data patritions.

 

[NugentS]

When I have finished restoring I shall put another disk in and experiment with fdisk. What you are saying there makes it look as though the type possibly doesn't actually matter - its just a convenience thing - so I could have done it with fdisk.

Still I learnt something, even if I did finish at 4:00 AM or so

 

[Arwen]

I second fdisk. It works just great for interactive command line use, with built in help. And yes, you can create GPT partitions as well as change the partition type.

While I like the concept of parted, it generally ends up being something I have either look up the syntax. Or use a GUI front end. Neither of which are as fast as fdisk.