Exposing Snapshots

[brich0]

I'm currently using FreeNAS 8.0.1 and I'm looking for a way to automically expose snapshots for read-only access. Does FreeNAS have a way to do this? I have periodic snapshots set up on various datasets which are exposed via various services (CIFS, AFS). Ideally, I'd like those snapshots also available through some share for read-only browsing. I saw that I can use the FreeNAS GUI to Clone a snapshot and mount it RW. This is similar to what I'm looking for, but not quite right since it appears to me that I have to manually clone each snapshot. It is not ideal to be RW either, but that is ok.

 

[Durkatlon]

They are automatically available through the ".zfs" directory in the root of the data set that you're snapshotting. CIFS will automatically make these available to Microsoft Windows clients as "Previous Versions" (Vista or 7, or XP with Previous Versions plug-in).

If you want to make the ".zfs" directory directly accessible through the Samba share, there is a ZFS pool option to make the normally hidden directory, viewable.

 

[brich0]

Thanks for the quick reply. Upon logging into the shell via SSH, I do not see the .zfs directory available. I see many snapshots available via zfs list -t snapshot, here are some of what is returned:

NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
primary_storage/ace_backup@auto-20111019.2200-2m 189M - 191G -
primary_storage/ace_backup@auto-20111020.2200-2m 179M - 191G -
primary_storage/bigred_backup@auto-20111019.2230-2m 112M - 53.3G -
primary_storage/bigred_backup@auto-20111020.2230-2m 61.0M - 53.5G -
primary_storage/bigzit_backup@auto-20111019.2215-2m 84.2M - 597G -
primary_storage/bigzit_backup@auto-20111020.2215-2m 83.6M - 597G -
primary_storage/macmini_backup@auto-20111019.2245-2m 0 - 112K -
primary_storage/macmini_backup@auto-20111020.2245-2m 0 - 112K -
primary_storage/share@auto-20111019.1756-2w 0 - 140K -
primary_storage/share@auto-20111019.1811-2w 0 - 140K -

I cannot see a '.zfs' directory, or any hidden directory for that matter in /mnt/primary_storage or the datasets mounted there (/mnt/primary_storage/share, /mnt/primary_storage/macmini_backup, etc.)

 

[Durkatlon]

Have you tried "cd .zfs" from within the data set root? The .zfs is hidden by default but it's there if you CD into it.

 

[brich0]

That worked! I'm used to hidden files and directories that have a '.' prefix, but while I'm clearly new to ZFS this '.zfs' directory seems invisible to me. I'll have to read up more on this.