Can't see volumes in GUI / Replacement drives issues

[therealpure]

Hi,

I have a couple of issues with my Freenas 9.3 on a HP Proliant Microserver

Original setup was
Vol1 = 2 x 1tb drives mirrored
Vol2 = 2 x 2tb drives mirrored

Vol1 has failed "Critical: The volume Vol1 (ZFS) status is DEGRADED". I have a 3tb drive that I want to replace it with.

When I took out the 2 x 1tb drives and swapped in the new 3tb drive I wasn't able to see any drives in the Storage -> Volumes section on the freenas web interface. I can view the discs, but can't see the active volumes. So I added the new drive creating a new volume called Vol3 using the Volume manager.

What I want to do now is :

• Totally remove Vol2 from the freenas system.
• Be able to view the volumes on the web interface

I have check previous posts and found this one

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/active-volumes-not-showing-in-the-gui.14439/
I've tried different web browsers, and different computers to connect to the web interface but no luck.

I am currently backing up all my data in case something else goes wrong or if I need to do a fresh install of Freenas and re-configure all the drives again.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[joeschmuck]

Did you follow the instructions in the manual?

Based on how you wrote this, it appears that you removed both drives form the mirror at the same time and replaced them. If that is true, then I suggest that you put back both of those drives and restore your system to it's original configuration, figure out which drive by serial number was having the problem, replace it only with a new 3TB drive, and follow the user manual. You need to resilver the new drive in the proper way. If you already have a backup of your data, you could just rebuild the Vol1 from the two 3TB drives and restore your data but that is not the typical way we replace hard drives for a failure.

 

[therealpure]

Thanks for your quick reply.

Yes I removed both 1tb drives. I did this because both were showing warnings, hence I would like to start a fresh without these drives.

"You need to resilver the new drive in the proper way."

What do you mean by this?

 

[joeschmuck]

If you were fine removing both drives then that is fine, it's your call. If you don't know what resilvering is, you really need to read the user manual because you are going to cause yourself more harm than good unless you are lucky. Go to the user manual and look up replacing hard drives, there is a step by step process.

 

[therealpure]

I will check over this doc and read up on resilvering (also mentioned here if anyone else reading this didn't know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_mirroring)

http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html#replacing-a-failed-drive

Having replaced the 1tb drives back into the system I still can't see any drives in the web interface under the Volumes section. So I can't replace drives step by step or delete the volume in general to start again with the 3tb drive.

 

[joeschmuck]

Having replaced the 1tb drives back into the system I still can't see any drives in the web interface under the Volumes section. So I can't replace drives step by step or delete the volume in general to start again with the 3tb drive.

You may need to AUTO import the volume since you pulled them out.

 

[therealpure]

Unfortunately I still can't see any volumes in the storage page on the web gui. I have tried taking out the 2 x 1tb drives and putting them back in but still nothing appears. When the NAS box is on I can browse the files on it that are on the two good 2tb drives I just can't see any volumes in the interface.

When I click on import volume a little window pops up to select a volume but there isn't any volumes in the drop down list.

You may need to AUTO import the volume since you pulled them out.

 

[joeschmuck]

Post the output of "zpool status" and "zfs list" and "ls /dev/ad*". either put them in text files or wrap them with CODE brackets.

 

[therealpure]

Post the output of "zpool status" and "zfs list" and "ls /dev/ad*". either put them in text files or wrap them with CODE brackets.

I have attached files with those outputs here.

Vol1 is the volume that has caused me issues. Vol2 is good and I can still use fine.

 

[joeschmuck]

Vol1 is there and looks like things are good. All your jails are on it. "zpool status" tells you the volumes are fine, meaning no errors. "zfs list" tells you what is on your volumes. So you do have data there. What I don't see are any sub-directories established to place data on other than the root "Vol1" and that is the same for "Vol2".

I guess we need to define what you mean by you cannot access the data on Vol1. Maybe a screen shot would help me understand what you are looking at. Also, Vol3 was not there, guess you didn't do exactly what you started to do in the first posting. Did you create shares at all?

 

[therealpure]

Hey,

They were useful commands to get info on this, thanks.

Vol1 was constantly giving errors saying that the discs needed replacing in the GUI previously, hence why I started this process of replacing. I am not sure why it is showing healthy in that info though.

What I have done is do a factory reset of the settings. I saw in a other thread this helped out someone who couldn't see the volumes in the GUI interface either. This worked and I can now see both Vol1 and Vol2 in the web interface.

I then followed the instructions here http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html on the steps to take to replace a failed drive. I put one of the drives in Vol1 OFFLINE then went to replace it with a new 3 tb drive. Then I got the following error

Disk replacement failed: "invalid vdev specficiation, use '-f' to override the following errors:, /dev/gptid/8d13d0a5-11e5-8029038eaa7a601dd is part of potentially active pool 'Vol2',"

I guess when I started out the process of just making a new Vol3 the systems still recognises this drives as being part of that Vol3. Should I use -f in the command line to override this?

I basically now just want to replace Vol1 with my two new drives, one drive at a time.

Thanks again for your help on this.

Vol1 is there and looks like things are good. All your jails are on it. "zpool status" tells you the volumes are fine, meaning no errors. "zfs list" tells you what is on your volumes. So you do have data there. What I don't see are any sub-directories established to place data on other than the root "Vol1" and that is the same for "Vol2".

I guess we need to define what you mean by you cannot access the data on Vol1. Maybe a screen shot would help me understand what you are looking at. Also, Vol3 was not there, guess you didn't do exactly what you started to do in the first posting. Did you create shares at all?

 

[joeschmuck]

I unfortunately do not have the personal experience with the -f parameter to feel comfortable giving you this advise.

Did you try this process? http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html#replacing-drives-to-grow-a-zfs-pool

That is assuming you have at least one spare SATA connector to use. Let me know what the result is. By the way, your pool size will not go up until you have replaced all the drives in the pool (Vol1).

 

[gpsguy]

Like joeschmuck, I'm not comfortable suggesting the use of the -f parameter either.

From what I'm reading, at one one point, you created a 3rd volume and used the 3TB drive for it. If that's the case, you need to wipe the drive first, to make it look like a new drive. Search the forum on how to do it. If all else fails, DBAN with the quick mode will do it, but it'll take hours.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Disk replacement failed: "invalid vdev specficiation, use '-f' to override the following errors:, /dev/gptid/8d13d0a5-11e5-8029038eaa7a601dd is part of potentially active pool 'Vol2',"

Looks like you tried to replace a drive in Vol1 with a drive that's part of Vol2.

Should I use -f in the command line to override this?

Stop!

Make sure you know exactly which drives are which in your system. If necessary, use @Bidule0hm 's scripts to match gptids with serial #s. Use the GUI to detach any volume that is empty (has no data on it that you care about), checking the "mark drives as new" box. This will wipe those drives sufficiently that they can then be used as replacements for others. If there are other drives you're having trouble using as replacements, wipe them with a suitable utility as suggested.

 

[joeschmuck]

In reality you only have just under 40GB of data in your Plex folder, didn't see much else. I would highly recommend that you just end the nightmare and backup your data to another device (Computer, USB Hard Drive attached to another computer, etc...). Destroy all your volumes and start from scratch. Use the DBAN tool as @gpsguy mentioned to wipe out all your drives so the ones you want to use can be introduced as unused drives.

If it were me, I'd do things a little bit differently however it's difficult to help someone who isn't that knowledgeable and it will honestly take you a lot less time to just start over, and note all the setups for your jails so it's easier to establish them again. The first step is to backup your data and I'd do that regardless at this point in time.

Good Luck