FreeNAS 11 Install "Error: no symbol table."

[m0nkey_]

I'll just put this here: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID56

The parity RAID code has multiple serious data-loss bugs in it. It should not be used for anything other than testing purposes.

 

[chipped]

I'll just put this here: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID56

That's already been talked about earlier.

However RAID 5/6 is under active development, unlike Block Pointer Rewrite for ZFS.

 

[chipped]

Keep in mind this is simply for a box that holds media and backups (which are also stored on cloud).

I wouldn't use the RAID 5/6 in a productions environment until its ready.

 

[danb35]

You're conveniently forgetting the other items.

What storage requirements are you imagining that a home user would have? For anything under about 4-5 TB, one two-disk mirror would be fine (with the size of the disks being dictated by the amount of data needed). This dispenses with your objections of case, power supply, and motherboard. As to RAM, yes, ZFS requires RAM for good performance.

- Buy two drives, not one for every storage expansion

...which you have to do with btrfs as well, if you care about your data. Remember, the RAID5/6 code isn't stable or recommended for production use (as you admit up-thread, and the btrfs folks admit on their wiki). It's also written with some baffling design decisions, like the fact that there's a write hole, and that they don't store checksums of parity. If you don't care about your data, well, that's another question.

The average user here starts with at least four hard drives right?

Most motherboards have 6. When it's time to double their storage they run into trouble with their case or motherboard not being able to accomodate the extra drives.

...and how does btrfs help here, even assuming that its RAID5/6 code were stable? So you start with four disks in RAID5 (and you'd use RAID5, since you say the 50% loss to parity with mirrors is too high), and you want to double your capacity. That means three more disks--which is one too many for "most motherboards" (though I'll note that current-generation server boards from Supermicro have eight ports).

However RAID 5/6 is under active development

Wonderful. How does that help you today?

Edit. btrfs is ten years old, ffs. How long does RAID5/6 need to be "under active development" before it's safe? And why was it released before then?

 

[chipped]

Wonderful. How does that help you today?

Just because it's not production ready it doesn't mean people are not using it.

I am.

Why you ask?

It's going to make my life a lot easier when I change my drives and server soon.

I don't care if a couple if files are corrupt. Anything important has another backup in the cloud and my media can be re-downloaded.

 

[danb35]

Yeah, if you don't care about your data anyway, then ZFS is probably overkill for you. Why bother with redundancy at all, then?

 

[chipped]

Yeah, if you don't care about your data anyway, then ZFS is probably overkill for you. Why bother with redundancy at all, then?

I would prefer ZFS if it was flexible. Don't get me wrong, I do love ZFS. I used it for almost 10 years.

I'm just over FreeNAS as an OS and ZFS not being able to suit my needs.

 

[vlio]

For the record, I had the same problem as the creator of this thread when trying to boot from a live USB with FreeNAS 11 installer on it. I actually had my flash drive plugged into a USB 3 port, and I solved the problem by plugging the same drive into a USB 2 port on my server.

 

[danb35]

I guess, since this rather old thread has gotten a bit of a bump, and there was quite a bit of discussion of the inability of ZFS to expand a RAIDZ, it would be worth pointing out that this ability is coming...

 

[chipped]

I guess, since this rather old thread has gotten a bit of a bump, and there was quite a bit of discussion of the inability of ZFS to expand a RAIDZ, it would be worth pointing out that this ability is coming...

Which is in Pre Alpha stage (link). Who knows when it will be stable, 2019? And then put into a stable FreeNAS, 2020?

 

[Ericloewe]

Easily before btrfs becomes vaguely reliable, especially since FreeNAS is going to be the first OS to include the feature (as upstream FreeBSD has more infrequent releases).

 

[jgreco]

Easily before btrfs becomes vaguely reliable, especially since FreeNAS is going to be the first OS to include the feature (as upstream FreeBSD has more infrequent releases).

In response to a complaint about your post, I will add some supplementary information here.

@Ericloewe has implied that btrfs is mostly unreliable, which may be a bit of an exaggeration, but even btrfs's developers track critical features such as RAID56 as "Unstable", and overall experiences with it are not really stellar by many reports. You generally don't see this level of flakiness for comparable ZFS setups. ZFS isn't perfect - far from it! - but the Linux crowd has been promising a stable btrfs for a decade and yet here we are. RHEL actually ditched btrfs awhile ago. This is an unfortunate state of affairs, as it would be great to have another massive scale storage filesystem, and losing potential corporate-sponsored developers for btrfs sucks.