Failing to NFS mount from NAS4Free to FreeNAS

[adamthekiwi]

Hi folks,

I've had a nas4free server at home, pretty much untouched since installation (and that was just after the fork) - so, well behind the curve in terms of versions. It's worked OK without intervention, albeit a bit slow, but I finally decided to build a new machine. My intention at this stage is to keep the old one as a backup server (probably mostly off, with the occasional WoL to bring it back to life and perform a sync before going back to sleep) but I'm open to other suggestions.

I have a shiny new Supermicro-based system with a fresh install of FreeNAS 11.1. I was going to NFS mount the old storage onto the new machine to clone it - it will take time over a gigaeth network, but I'm not too fussed about that. I'm struggling, though - can anyone assist?

I've enabled NFS on the Nas4Free server and shared the main zfs pool.

Code:

gaeta% sudo mount adam@192.168.1.3:/mainstore01 ./tyrol				   
mount: adam@192.168.1.3:/mainstore01: No such file or directory
gaeta% sudo mount -t nfs adam@192.168.1.3:/mainstore01 ./tyrol
mount_nfs: adam@192.168.1.3: Non-recoverable failure in name resolution
gaeta% ssh adam@192.168.1.3 -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-dss ls -l /mainstore01
adam@192.168.1.3's password:
total 24
drwxrwxr-x   3 adam  twentyfive   4 Dec 14 19:07 EdiFerm
drwxrwxr-x   9 adam  wheel		9 Nov 16  2015 OSstorage
drwxrwxr-x   6 adam  thornville   6 Mar  4  2014 Share
drwxrwxr-x   2 adam  thornville  37 Mar  3  2014 dev
drwxrwxr-x  12 adam  thornville  25 Mar  1 10:43 media
drwxrwxr-x  11 adam  thornville  31 Apr  6 19:53 techview

Can anyone help or suggest an alternative method?

Cheers - Adam

 

[c32767a]

Syntax for the mount command would be mount -t nfs 192.168.1.3:/mainstore01 /full/path/to/mount/point/on/freenas

 

[KrisBee]

Suggestion 1:

Push the data from nas4free to FreeNAS. Treat the data transfer as an opportunity to layout the data on your FreeNAS pool as you want if now and for the short to mid-term future. Create the necessary user accounts and datasets with their permissions on FreeNAS before loading any data.

To load the data on FreeNAS, create the necessary NFS shares on FreeNAS and start the NFS server with the required settings. Mount each FreeNAS share on nas4free to a directory of your choice. I’d suggest doing this a share at a time. You can then simply cp or rync data held on nas4free to the mounted share. Check the data has transferred as expected, and then umount the share. Repeat as often as necessary to complete the data transfer.

Suggestion 2:

If your data resides on a zfs pool on nas4free, consider using zfs send/receive from nas4free to FreeNAS. You will have to ensure zfs on nas4free is compatible with zfs on FreeNAS and this might involve updating nas4free. A zfs send/receive is potentially the fastest transfer method if used in conjunction with nc and not vis ssh.


However you get the data from nas4free to FreeNAS, once the data transfer is complete consider installing FreeNAS on your old server assuming the hardware is suitable ( ECC RAM etc ..). From then on, you can use zfs send/receive based replication from the new FreeNAS server to the old server.

 

[adamthekiwi]

@c32767a - I'll try it with the full path.

@KrisBee - thanks for you suggestions.

Suggestion 1: I had considered this and it might be the way I go - however, the hardware it's coming off (and this is a large part of the reason for the upgrade) is not very performant and only has 4GB of (non-ECC) RAM.

Suggestion 2: The zfs pool on the old server is a very old version. Can I upgrade it safely in situ?

 

[KrisBee]

The nas4free forum would be the best place to ask about the possibility of bringing your nas4free server up to date.

On balance my suggestion 1 above would probably be safer. Slow, but sure.

Although you have not listed the hardware spec of your old server, it doesn't sound as if it is suitable for a freenas install without changes - more (ECC) RAM especially. CPU power is less importance for a pure file server.

Once you have transferred your data to your new server, Linux is a possible alternative for the old server if you're happy to use it for ext4 based data backup, in which case 4GB would be OK. OpenMediaVault is pretty straightforward to setup. Re-use of old sever assume all parts are still serviceable, epsecailly any old drives.

 

[pschatz100]

This might sound a bit crazy, but would it be possible to take the drives out of the old system and put them into the new machine? I am not expert at old file system versions but if they mount under the new version of FreeNAS then you could just copy or replicate the data to your new file system. The FreeNAS GUI will complain about the old file system version, but if it can read the data, then you would be in good shape.

I would be wary of trying to upgrade the old file system version without having a backup of the data.

 

[danb35]

consider using zfs send/receive from nas4free to FreeNAS

This. A send from an old pool will work just fine onto a newer pool. And both systems are based on FreeBSD, so you shouldn't be running into incompatibilities between OSs. There's no need to upgrade the pool on the old system.

would it be possible to take the drives out of the old system and put them into the new machine?

If there's room for the drives in the new machine, this would no doubt be faster than sending the data over the network.

 

[c32767a]

@c32767a - I'll try it with the full path.

@KrisBee - thanks for you suggestions.

Suggestion 1: I had considered this and it might be the way I go - however, the hardware it's coming off (and this is a large part of the reason for the upgrade) is not very performant and only has 4GB of (non-ECC) RAM.

Suggestion 2: The zfs pool on the old server is a very old version. Can I upgrade it safely in situ?

There are elements of risk to all these options.. Is any potential time saving over nfs mounting the old share on the new server, or doing a zfs send worth the risk of having an OS upgrade or pool upgrade go wrong? or a drive failure or corruption while trying to transfer the drives to a new chassis?

Patience is a virtue.. or something.. :)

 

[danb35]

doing a zfs send worth the risk of having an OS upgrade or pool upgrade go wrong

There is no need to do either an OS or a pool upgrade in order to do ZFS send, so there's therefore no associated risk.

 

[c32767a]

There is no need to do either an OS or a pool upgrade in order to do ZFS send, so there's therefore no associated risk.

My grammar failed me.. My comment was "do an nfs mount on the new machine or zfs send" as they are less risky than moving disks, upgrading pools, etc.. :)

 

[adamthekiwi]

Hey folks - thanks for all the suggestions. I ended up having the time over the weekend, and I got rsync working - it's complete. I thin the problem was the relative path, so thanks to @c32767a for that pointer.