Fired up my FreeNAS machine for the first time in a couple years

[cak]

I need to get some data from this machine and fired it up for the first time as the title says in a while. It came right up and everything was looking good. It even said there was a new vers so I told it to update and reboot. Now it wont boot. I am understanding now that you cannot upgrade 10 to 11 so I am not sure why it asked if I wanted to do so. Have I lost my data?

 

[Chris Moore]

Fired up my FreeNAS machine for the first time in a couple years

I am understanding now that you cannot upgrade 10 to 11 so I am not sure why it asked if I wanted to do so. Have I lost my data?

Exactly what version did you have?

No, you have not lost your data. Worst case, you need to do a fresh install of an older version of FreeNAS and import your storage pool.
We need more information from you for troubleshooting. Can you please review this guidance and get back to us:
https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/forum-guidelines.45124

 

[cak]

FreeNAS-Corral-RELEASE.iso was the name of the file dated 3/15/2017 when I originally downloaded it. I remember it saying freenas-10-master and then what I am sure is the exact build number. Unfortunately, I do not have that information (the build number). Freenas is running on an IBM x3650 M1. I am not using the serverraid (planar sas). I flashed an older IBM raid controller card so that the os would see jbod so I could do zfs2 instead of the ibm hardware raid. If I remember correctly is was IBM M1215 that I flashed with LSI SAS firmware to be able it put it into IT mode. I have 6 3TB WD Black drives in my pool 4 data and 2 parity. I am booting the system off of a 32GB USB Flash drive. The system has 48GB of memory. It throws out so many errors that it is hard to tell what exactly is is not liking (or perhaps doesn't like any of it). Things like not being able to find /etc/fstab and ending with getty errors sleeping for 30 seconds loop.

Thank you for your help!

 

[Chris Moore]

That all sounds like usable hardware but the latest version of FreeNAS is using the FreeBSD boot loader and we have seen several hardware platforms that had trouble with it. I would suggest that you go back to this version and do a fresh install.
https://download.freenas.org/11/latest/x64/
This is the last version of FreeNAS before they switched to the BSD boot loader. Then import your existing pool. You then just need to setup your network shares. That should get you to where you can access your data. I would expect it to work without significant difficulty.
I can give you a link to a setup guide if you need that.
Also, it is possible that if you get FreeNAS 11.1-U7 working, you could upgrade from there to the latest version with much less trouble. The upgrade that you attempted was simply never intended to upgrade the Corral version of FreeNAS because that was an abandoned development path. I can't explain why an upgrade was presented to you. The solution for exiting the Corral blind ally was to do a fresh install of 9.10, and from 9.10 we went to 11. They backed out of the Corral situation and there was no development or testing of an 'upgrade' out of it. The only solution ever, was to step back to 9.10, then upgrade from there.

Here are some useful links that might help you if you have time to review them:

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Uncle Fester's Basic FreeNAS Configuration Guide
https://www.familybrown.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=fester:intro

Just don't do any destructive testing on your data drives because that would erase your data...

 

[sretalla]

I can't explain why an upgrade was presented to you.

AFAIK, Corral would download the latest update and wait to execute, so it may have been downloaded and primed to go the last time you shut it down and you just didn't notice until booting it again just now...

It's all moot at this point, just get a good version installed. Your data will be fine.

 

[cak]

Did what Chris told me to do and everything is right as rain now. Thanks Chris!

I haven't tried upgrading from here....I want to get it all backed up before I try that again...lol.