Did import pool destroy my data?

[JeanHT]

I successfully installed TrueNAS 12.0-U7 on my repurposed ThinkServer TS140 and everything was working fine. The original boot drive failed, so I popped in a WD 500GB that I had lying around. Sadly, I didn't have a copy of the working configuration, so I had to reinstall from scratch. It was simple because all I do with TrueNAS is share the pool with SMB for serving files to myself on two Windows 10 computers. I imported the existing pool from the two existing hard drives, but there doesn't seem to be any data anymore. The share appears empty, and that's quite frightening.

I know zero about FreeBSD or any flavor of Unix. I can type "ls" but that's it--literally. And that's obviously not enough to assure myself that I didn't inadvertently destroy all of my data through a misstep. While I am a veteran Windows and PC user, I'm quite out of my league here. If a kind soul were to take pity on me and share a few commands to help me discover whether I shot myself in the foot, I would be very grateful.

Thank you.

ThinkServer TS140
32GB ECC RAM
Two Seagate IronWolf 12GB data drives in RAID-1
Boot drive is WD 500GB

 

[Heracles]

I imported the existing pool

Please. tell us how you did that....

 

[sretalla]

he share appears empty, and that's quite frightening.

I would start by looking from the server, not the share... chances are you just haven't done the permissions right when you set up the users in the new system.

 

[JeanHT]

Please. tell us how you did that....

Storage -> Pools -> Add will give you the choice to create a new pool (default) or "Import an existing pool."

 

[JeanHT]

I would start by looking from the server, not the share... chances are you just haven't done the permissions right when you set up the users in the new system.

I agree, but in my utter lack of knowledge, I don't know how to do that. Truly embarrassing to be asking for this level of noob advice.

 

[sretalla]

Either in the Shell tab or via SSH if you've already worked that out (with Putty on Windows or ssh from terminal in a Mac/Linux... you will need to eunable the SSH service in Services and set it to allow root to use a password)

type cd /mnt/<poolname>/<path to your files> (replacing those bits with the actual path and pool name)

Then

ls -l

To list the files there (and show the permissions on them)

 

[JeanHT]

Thank you, @sretalla. Very gracious of you to teach me a bit. Now I shall deal with my stupidity, as the data is gone. I do have another copy, thankfully, of important things.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Trio of questions before we assume all the data is gone:

1. Are you absolutely certain you only selected the 500GB drive when reinstalling?

2. When you imported the pool previously, did it have the same name as before?

3. Are you able to see your pool (by name) by typing zpool list from the command line? And if so, what does the output of zpool status show?

 

[JeanHT]

1. Yes.
2. Yes
3. See attached. It looks to me like pool1 is empty, and the data is gone.

 

[HoneyBadger]

What about the output of just mount? I find it a bit troubling that a reinstall without wiping the disks and then choosing to import the pool would result in empty directories.

 

[JeanHT]

I've attached the mount output. Thank you for helping!

 

[HoneyBadger]

Oof. Yep, if it's mounted that pool on /mnt/pool1 and ls /mnt/pool1 gives you an empty window ... then somehow things got cleared out. This was originally a TN 12.0-U7 install on a USB and then you reinstalled 12.0-U7 again? Would be worth seeing if this can be reproduced because that's a Bad Thing if it'll nuke pools on reinstall/reimport.

 

[JeanHT]

TN 12.0-U7 was originally installed on a drive that went bad, not a USB. I reinstalled a fresh copy on a replacement drive since I hadn't saved the config. I can't prove conclusively that I did anything wrong during the reinstall since I had a lot of trouble getting my Windows SMB share to work. Agree that it would be a Bad Thing!

 

[sretalla]

What about a name conflict?

It seems that you have /mnt/pool1/smbshareddataset

 

[winnielinnie]

I feel like we're missing something since you were asked to list the contents of the path (where your files are saved.)

What is the output of:
ls -lh /mnt/pool1/smbshareddataset

Another (and more reliable) approach is the output from:
zfs list -r -o space -t filesystem pool1

I can't accept that at any point would an import process randomly nuke your data, while leaving your ZFS metadata intact (datasets, tree, pool, etc).