SOLVED FreeNAS 11.x copy the boot drive from slow USB to faster USB device?

[Greg_E]

I am building a new FreeNAS machine and currently on 11.1rc1 (updating to RC3 as I type). When I first put this together all I had were slow USB2 flashdrives to use for the OS. I've since bought a faster and larger USB3 flash drive. Is there and easy way to copy/clone the old boot drive to a new boot drive or should I just go through a fresh clean install? It is still a test machine so I won't really lose much of anything right now, but that's going to change this week as I try to get this set up the way I need it to be for production (and anticipating 11.1 release). Production deadline is middle of January, not too much time left for testing.

I know some will suggest going back to 11.0u4, but trying to stay with the newer Bhyve because I may need some VM's running and there has been some work on this in 11.1 that I want to keep.

Going to be going from a 32GB to a 64GB flash drive. I'm somewhat familiar with Centos Linux so I can probably stumble through finding the drive and DD'ing the contents if someone can point me in the correct direction. I also have Windows machines if making an image and copying that image to the new drive would be easier. But I'm guessing this is something that I can do directly from a command prompt on the FreeNAS server.

 

[danb35]

Install to the new device, upload the config file. Done.

 

[Greg_E]

OK, thought that might be one way of doing it.

 

[wblock]

familiar with Centos Linux so I can probably stumble through finding the drive and DD'ing the contents

Please do not do that. It breaks modern drive partitioning like the GPT we use.

 

[Greg_E]

Marking this as solved because I've had too many issues that I can't really help to solve regarding the 11.1rc releases. Going back to 11.0 and wiping everything out to start from scratch and get going on building a production machine.

I did try a clean install of RC3 and was going to upload the config, but had some problems right from the start and decided to go back to stable.

 

[fixit9660]

I have to ask, is there another way please? I'm at a remote location with SSH access to the NAS. The new USB is on site and in the NAS ready. To "Install to the new device" would mean a journey to the site with the install CD, a keyboard and mouse and screen, gain (restricted) access to the server, insert the CD, connect the keyboard and mouse and screen, and worst of all reboot the device. This would take the service down, albeit for not very long.

As you can see a remote operation using SSH and the CLI has its attractions.

 

[ReadyNAS2018]

I have to ask, is there another way please? I'm at a remote location with SSH access to the NAS. The new USB is on site and in the NAS ready. To "Install to the new device" would mean a journey to the site with the install CD, a keyboard and mouse and screen, gain (restricted) access to the server, insert the CD, connect the keyboard and mouse and screen, and worst of all reboot the device. This would take the service down, albeit for not very long.

As you can see a remote operation using SSH and the CLI has its attractions.

Is it possible that someone on site could do it? I only ask because you say that the new USB is installed, so there must have been someone on site who installed it.

I have cloned FreeNAS installs before, but not remotely. It can be done by simple cloning software.

 

[fixit9660]

A third party was going there and I talked them through the simple task of inserting the USB stick. I wouldn't trust them to do anything else.

Frankly I'm surprised there isn't a GUI option to create a Bootable USB, it's that good with everything else, I'm impressed, and I've seen a few GUI's in my time!!!

 

[fixit9660]

Ah...... http://doc.freenas.org/11/system.html#mirroring-the-boot-device ...then Oh......

[MiddlewareError: Command '('gpart', 'add', '-t', 'freebsd-zfs', '-i', '2', '-a', '4k', '-s', '32716967936B', 'da1')' returned non-zero exit status 1.]


erm, a little help please?

 

[wblock]

The new device must be at least as large as the old one. Sometimes the actual available differs a bit from the nominal size, so a new 16G drive might not have quite as many blocks as an older 16G drive, and I think that is what is happening here.

Followup: actually, the new drive must be slightly larger than the old, EFI partitions (for UEFI booting) appear to have grown a bit.

In practice, use the next size up for now. So if the original device was 8G, add a 16G.