How to upload second ISO for virtual machine

[ThisTruenasUser]

I have an old PC, with truenas scale installed.
Specs are i7-3770k 16GB DDR3 - Z77 D3h-mvp.
Also some disks I have already so putting all to good use.

It is not an always on machine. It is for backups - or more backups. As well as holding backup data, backup to external drives.
So turn on, backup data to it maybe once a week or so, then do a scrub.


I have installed ubuntu linux as a VM, setup appropriate shares.
So when turned on rdp into it and backup stuff.

I use freefilesync & prefer the visual aspect to the command line rsync.

I now want to backup the virtual machine itself & restore if/when needed - possiby to another machine. It will have the external USB backup drives passed through to it.
I want to upload another ISO to it, specifically rescuezilla. I can only select the ubuntu install ISO.

How exactly to I upload another ISO to for the virtual machine to use?

Thanks

 

[chuck32]

I want to upload another ISO to it, specifically rescuezilla. I can only select the ubuntu install ISO.

Upload new image file

I now want to backup the virtual machine itself & restore if/when needed - possiby to another machine.

If the external HDD is of zfs format you should be able to replicate the zvols for the VMs to there.

 

[ThisTruenasUser]

View attachment 76578

Upload new image file


If the external HDD is of zfs format you should be able to replicate the zvols for the VMs to there.

Thank you for the reply.
You are showing the option at the creation of a virtual machine.

The virtual machine has already been installed.
I am NOT doing that again as there is a lot to setup, ran and tested to work as I wish.
I want to upload another ISO, as a means to backup the virtual machine. I may wish to install it elsewhere if there is an issue with the machine.

The is no option for that I am aware of.

The external drives are not zfs, but passed through to the virtual machine through USB.
There are also drives in the machine also with raidZ types.
The 'backups' are both on the machine on zfs.
When I start it up, will backup data to the zfs internal drives.
Then sync form the zfs internal drives & my main server to the external drives.

How do I upload and attach another ISO now?

I use proxmox mainly as a hypervisor on my main server and have not had a great opinion of using truenas scale as onet in the past.
I only need it now for 1 VM and want to back it up.
My preferred choice is rescuezilla, although there are others.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

On CORE you copy the ISO to anywhere you want on some pool, then in the VM settings go to "Devices", add another CDROM device and assign the uploaded ISO. Can't you add devices as you need in SCALE?

 

[chuck32]

I thought you meant the ISO for the installation medium, that is what confused me, there is no iso for your VM on TrueNAS.

Your virtual machine is, as I said, stored on a block device, a zvol.

You need to convert that to an image file, possibly via dd.

 

[ThisTruenasUser]

Well I am messing with the cli. that is a risk.

Anyway I have 'fixed' the problem with a workaround.

I created another virtual machine, with the rescuezilla iso uploaded to it. It will not be turned on.
The ISO is in the same location as the ubuntu install ISO.
I added another CDROM device in the ubuntu VM and chose the rescuezilla ISO.
I could boot from it.

I have another tiny PC with proxmox on there my router, download manager and relevant to this post, a netboot container.
Netboot has various local assets including rescuezilla. It has been well tested and working.
I tried a network boot the the TN Scale virtual machine but no joy.

Thank you for the replies, but have so say whenever I use the TN scale hypervisor, it leads to such frustration.
Is is great as a NAS though.

Thankfully I have only one Virtual machine on it I need to be concerned about.
I will be sticking with proxmox for everything else.

 

[ThisTruenasUser]

On CORE you copy the ISO to anywhere you want on some pool, the in the VM settings go to "Devices", add another CDROM device and assign the uploaded ISO. Can't you add devices as you need in SCALE?

Apparently only if it has been uploaded already through the GUI when creating a virtual machine.
Attempting to choose an ISO copied to a dataset using cifs/nfs causes errors.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Attempting to choose an ISO copied to a dataset using cifs/nfs causes errors.

Have you tried scp?

 

[chuck32]

Attempting to choose an ISO copied to a dataset using cifs/nfs causes errors.

I upload all my iso via a SMB share. Does libvirt has permissions to the share to which you upload?

 

[ThisTruenasUser]

As I said, it is 'fixed' due to a workaround.

The only reason I need a virtual machine on the truenas scale backup machine it is installed on, is to attach external drives to it through USB.

I have again learned my lesson that truenas scale still needs a lot of work with virtualisaton. I get it is a NAS first.

From now on if needed I will:
Install & test the virtrual machine on proxmox.
Backup the VM image with recuezilla, in proxmox to the NAS.
Use the image to install to the VM by attaching and booting the rescuezilla ISO.
I will also attach when setting it up, attach linux boot repair disk and the paravirtualisation drivers ISO.