Cant auto import a zfs drive. HELP!!!!

[sanju83]

Ok let me give you all the cliff notes.

I setup an old computer, artigo a1100, with a 10gb harddrive inside. Sometime last night the com died on me. It wont start up anymore. I cant even see the bios screen. anyways i had two 1tb hard drives externally attached to it, in a 4 bay raid.

For some reason the computer auto restarts when a external is plugged in at boot so i unplug it and replug it when freenas is booting and freenas 8 only recognized 2 of the four slots as well. its a generic raid that works perfectly on winblows 7 and ubuntu.

Back on to the drives. i now have these two 1tb hd that i cant access. since linux and win cant see these natively, zfs, i choose to load a thumb drive with freenas 8 so i can use it on my netbook to access the drives to copy them off there and on to an ext3 formated drive. The ext3 drive purpose is so that ubuntu and openfiler can access it if another com dies on me in the future. also so that im not doing this, posting on a forum about something i know less than nothing about, zfs filling system.

so my question is, what is the easiest way to import the drive to my new thumbdrive/netbook freenas8 from my recently crashed artigo freenas8 com.

both freenas are the same version. installed/loaded from the same disc.

when i tried the auto import, i assumed with every new version it will make the software easier for common folk to use, i recieved this error.

zfs notice: prefetch is disabled by default on i386 -- to enable, add "vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=0" to /boot/loader.comf.
zfs warning: recommended minimum kmem_size is 512mb; expect unstable behavior. consider tuning vm.kmem_size and vm.kmem_size_max in /boot/loader.conf.
zfs filsystem version 4
zfs storage pool version 15

as well there is no volume listed under "view all volumes" after the auto import list disappears. i restarted the com and drives and nothing. when i do the auto import it comes up on the list "disk lan_fill [zfs - stripe]"

Can anyone please tell me what the Hell to do? i dont want a long winded speech i just want the short and sweet step by step detailed, the fewer the better, to get my drive operational without having to format it. i have worked to hard to build my movie collection on one of the TB drives.

i searched google and all the people having the same problem was with freenas 7 ---> to freenas 8. since thats not my situation i would assume that that info is null and void to me. and if it isn't that im defiantly not going to think twice about leaving freenas behind.

if you want anymore info let me know and i will give all i can.

Thanks in advance

p.s. if there is already a tutorial for this please point me in that direction. i searched google for this problem and came up dry. i cant be the only one to run into it.

 

[globus999]

Err, I have to tell you that you post is quite confusing. I don't know if anybody over here (including me) may be able to help you, but I can tell you that if you want a proper diagnostic, you must start with an accurate description of the problem.

Just skimming over your post, allow me to clarify a few items:

- How is your external bay handling the array? Is it mirrored? Is it being handled as separate hdds? It makes a total difference as to how the hdd's are presented to the FN8 box.

- If your box is rebooting, that's not a good signal. Something on the hardware is screwy. If you plug in the box after boot, BSD (i.e. the underlying OS for FN8) may or may not see them (I am assuming your external array is USB?).

- How were your ZFS hdd's set up in first place? An array? raidz1? Single disks?

- Linux (e.g Ubuntu) *can* access ZFS drives but they need to be exported and then imported for them to become visible. Windowze can't. Load your favorite Linux distro, go to shell and do a "zpool import" to see what's available.

- The error "zfs notice: prefetch is disabled by default on i386" you are getting has absolutely nothing to do with your hdds. This error refers to the fact that FN7 and FN8 have not ZFS tuning algorithms in them and ZFS is simply telling you that the RAM memory allocated to it by default is too small and it will be unstable.

- If the Autoimport feature fails, you will see no Volumes in FN8. Wrt its error message, it may be referring to what's seeing in your hdd's but does not know how to proceed. The Autoimport feature is very basic in FN8 and it only works with ZFS drives that are in perfect shape. Your's may not be.

- Wrt step by step procedure, probably not. You will have to provide a much better description and put it together yourself from different posts.

Good luck!

 

[sanju83]

ok if anyone else is confused let me clarify in one sentence what i would like help with.

How do i take my working zfs formatted hd from my broken FN8 computer and import it into a working FN8 computer in as little steps as possible?

auto import doesn't work. if i need to run from command, then what are the commands needed? if i need to change some gui settings, then what are the settings? i just need it to work temporarily so i can take the data off and store it on a differently formatted hd.

if all the other info confused everyone, sorry. i wanted to be detailed so you can know what the hardware and situation i was dealing with. i don't care/need advice to fix the artigo. i don't care to get the 4 bay external hd kit working correctly with fn8. since fn8 is not for me, its not plug and play software, i done with it.

i want the data off the zfs HD so i can reformat the drives to ntfs or ext3/4 or something linux and windows can both see with minimal effort needed, plug and play style.


so let me clarify one more time. this is what i would like.

How do i take my working zfs formatted hd from my broken FN8 computer and import it into a working FN8 computer in as little steps as possible?

oh forgot to clarify that im not using the 4 bay hd kit. i have the 2 zfs hd's connected with a usb hd adapter, drivewire. there is only one hd plugged in at a time. dont want to confuse FN8 anymore than it already is. you know seeing as though it cant do a simple import.

 

[globus999]

It's not that simple. First we need to know how did you set up your disks in the first place. Otherwise it won't work.

Pls answer these questions:

1 - When you first set up your FN8 box, were the hdds in the 4 bay kit? Yes/No

2 - If 1 is yes, then how did the 4 bay kit operate? Did it expose the hdd's independently to the computer? This is, if the bay had 2 disks, did you see 2 disks in the computer? Or, did the bay operate a hardware raid system? This is, if there were two disks the computer only saw 1. If so, what type? Stripe? Mirror?

3 - When you first set-up zfs on those disks, how many disks were there exposed to the computer - this is, how many disks did the computer see? 1? 2? 3?

4 - How did you set up zfs on those disks? Each disk independently? As a simple volume (i.e. there was only one volume visible from FN8)? As an raid array (zraid1? zraid2?)

Please answer those questions.

As a suggestions, I would not make any changes to the hardware implementation (i.e. no switching hdd adaptors). It may corrupt the information zfs annotated in the hdds.

 

[sanju83]

thx for the help however its not necessary anymore. i formatted the drives and lost all the data. oh well live and learn. and what i learned was stay away hardware/software that's not plug and play friendly. or at the very least be able to be easily configured under ubuntu.

as far as your questions go one thing i dont know is raid array is? since i dont know what ur talking abou that further backs up my reason to stay away from unix and FreeBSD. i dont have to know what you ask when it comes to ubuntu and win7, it just works. its not that i cant figure out stuff and fix it via command line, i just hate it and have no patients. im a gui man. so if i cant integrate the hardware in a couple of clicks, im done.

thx again for your suggestions and help.