Import volumes does not work and provides no hints on the problem, new vol fails

[toddji]

I have a ZFS raid volume which was created in FN7.

It is not auto-mounted in FN8.

When I navigate to "Auto-Import", it sees the volume, but fails to import it. I can find no logs telling me why it is not imported.

When I try to create a new volume, I select the disks, choose UFS to avoid the ZFS problems, and choose mirror. It tells me a volume was successfully created, but it doesn't show up in the list.

If I try an auto-import again, it still shows me the presence of the old ZFS volume.


FreeNAS 8 seems to be quite poor at managing disk volumes. The options the user is given to view/manage disks is very rudimentary. That is fine if everything just works, but when things fail the user is stuck. Managing volumes seems like a very important thing for a NAS OS to do well...

 

[mrwillz]

I ran into this same problem when I migrated from 7 to 8. Here are some of the steps I used.
1. Make sure your zpool is upgraded "zpool upgrade -v".
2. Make sure freenas sees your zpool "zpool status"
3. If it does not see it run "zpool import"
4. After you have verified the info above reboot freenas.
5. Finally log into the GUI and and run the auto import and it should find your zpool.

At no point should your try and create a new volume because you run a huge risk of loosing your data.

 

[toddji]

Just wanted to follow up and say thanks to "mrwillz", your steps for recovering my filesystem worked great and I was able to access my old fs from my new freenas installation.

But, I would also like to reiterate that for an OS which is intended for NAS/SAN operation, the disk/share management operations in the UI are pretty thin. This seems like an extremely important area to be able to manage and recover.