Failed boot USB, Cannot access config

[rjvis]

Hey guys, brand new here, this is my first post. I am very much a newb with this FreeNAS and honestly not much of an IT guy to begin with. I know about enough to get myself in trouble, which I've done! Here's the situation:

About a year ago I built a FreeNAS out of an old Windows server box at work, had everything up and running and things going smooth. Last week the boot USB failed and would no longer boot. I made no copies of the config file

I've read numerous threads now, including this one, trying to get back up and running. I've reinstalled a fresh FreeNAS-11.2-RC1 on now two mirrored USB drives but am trying to access the config file from the old USB to save obviously a ton of work!

I have tried the zpool import several times from both the GUI and from the shell on the console. This is what I am getting:

(da2:umass-sim2:2:0:0): WRITE(10). CDB: 2a 00 00 31 79 e2 00 00 00
(da2:umass-sim2:2:0:0): CAM status: CCB request completed with an error
(da2:umass-sim2:2:0:0): Retrying command

It repeats this until it rears Error 5, Retries exhausted

So my question is, am I hooped as far as accessing the config file from the old boot? Am I setting this up as a new machine? Also, how do I import the old drives without loosing my data?!

 

[sretalla]

Depending on how much work you invested in making the config (users, jails, shares, networking...) you may not want to lose too much time chasing it.

There's a small chance you could get it back, but it doesn't look good.

In your fresh install just import the volumes from the storage menu (storage/Pools/+ in the new UI, storage/volumes/import volume in the legacy UI).

All your stuff will be there, you just need to set up your config again with whatever is still important to you after the data is back.

 

[rjvis]

Depending on how much work you invested in making the config (users, jails, shares, networking...) you may not want to lose too much time chasing it.

There's a small chance you could get it back, but it doesn't look good.

In your fresh install just import the volumes from the storage menu (storage/Pools/+ in the new UI, storage/volumes/import volume in the legacy UI).

All your stuff will be there, you just need to set up your config again with whatever is still important to you after the data is back.

I'm not super familiar with all this stuff, so not totally sure what entails a complicated setup, but mine certainly wasn't a single user operation. 15 or so users (the list is in a doc file on my dataset), 1 main dataset for storage with each user having individual datasets within the main that only they (or root) can access, a windows backup dataset, and a Time Machine setup.

So if i start from scratch with the config, will all those datasets show up once I import the drives? How do I setup access to them again, do the user names and passwords need to match the old ones? I'm concerned things need to be setup exactly how they were in order to access everything, and to be honest, I can't remember how it was all set up, and for that matter how to even do it anymore!

I'm sorry if I'm not asking things in the right terminology or even in a way that makes sense, I'm really not an IT guy! Just a guy who can follow youtube videos and tutorials, lol!

 

[danb35]

There's a small chance you could get it back, but it doesn't look good.

There's actually a very good chance you can get it back, as daily backup copies are stored in the .system dataset, which (by default) is on the data pool. It's been that way at least since 9.10 released. Unfortunately, getting to it can be kind of tricky. If only iX would incorporate a way to find and pull in the latest backup...

 

[rjvis]

Well I gave up trying to recover the config file and started fresh. Everything is up and running and looking good. I'm having a bit of trouble with some permissions though and not sure what I'm missing. We have our main dataset which all users have access to. Currently they can all see all files and folders, all files can be read or executed, even new files can be written to this dataset and any subfolders, however nobody can create new folders. When trying, a window pops up and it asks for a user and password, which nothing works.

As well, each user has their own dataset within a Staff dataset that only they have access to. No issue setting up permissions and locking from other users, but again, trouble when trying to create a new folder. A pop-up occurs which says:

The operation can’t be completed.
An unexpected error occurred (error code -43).

However, the new folder does show up.

The permissions under the main dataset have been set up as owner (root) and group to Read, Write, and Execute, with permissions set recursively. All users are part of the group. The individual datasets are individually owned with only the owner having Read, Write, Execute.

Please help, I'm not sure what I'm missing!