SOLVED Detach volume before reinstalling

[Scentle5S]

Hello everyone,

Summary of why I'm doing this : I've been experiencing similar issues as those described in this thread for as long as I can remember, since FreeNAS 9 (long story short : when assigning permissions, I see users that I have deleted months ago; I see a group A that I just added; I don't see a group B that I also just added, and so on and so on => complete mess that doesn't seem to make any sense). I've tried to solve this using many clients; updated to the latest FreeNAS-11.2-BETA2; followed every instructions I could find, with no luck. In the end, my FreeNAS setup seems to be the culprit. Which leads me to my latest attempts at solving this :

I would like to try solving my issue with these two methods :

1. Reinstall and import my config.
2. (If method #1 doesn't work) Reinstall and set things up from scratch (i.e. : not importing my config).

In order to do this, I would like to know when / if I am supposed to detach my pool. I read the "Storage" section of the docs (the "Detach Volume" part), and some threads but I'm still not quite sure. I tend to think that since those are both fresh installs (even if the pool stays the same), I should detach my pool beforehand, regardless of wether I import a config later or not. But I would like to be sure.

Also, what about my config : should I back it up while the pool is attached or after detaching it ?

Thanks

Scentle5S

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

I would back it up before you detach the pool. That is your desired end state, so why not save the config in that state?

 

[Scentle5S]

That makes sense, I'm not sure why I hesitated on this one.

What about detaching the pool before a new install ? Can you confirm that I should detach beforehand no matter what ?

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

What about detaching the pool before a new install ? Can you confirm that I should detach beforehand no matter what ?

You have to reboot to do the install which detaches the pool. I wouldn't bother detaching as it will happen anyway.

 

[Scentle5S]

So that's what I've been missing : sure I knew that the pool was getting imported at every boot (with the "Beginning ZFS volume imports" and "Importing <poolname>" messages), but I didn't realize that this was exactly the same as mounting a pool through the GUI, neither that shutting down does the same "detaching actions" as the GUI (I thought there was more going on behind the scenes).

Thanks for the help ! Problem solved.