Issues manually creating and attaching geli encrypted drive.

[aspeagle]

Hey Folks,

So, I mistakenly detached a drive from a geli encrypted mirror vdev... which, of course, turned that vdev into a single drive. There doesn't seem to be any way via the TrueNAS UI to attach a drive to a single-disk vdev to turn it back into a mirror... so, I'm trying to do this all via the cli... which is no problem... I can create the disk layout... attach the drive... but, what doesn't happen is the geli encryption. So.. I end up with a mirror vdev with an encrypted drive... and an unencrypted drive.

I'm trying to reason out how to do that via the cli ... I detached the disk again and did this:

geli init -s 4096 -K /path/to/key /dev/gptid/<disk-uuid>

That gives what I expect is a normal response about metadata backup file... but what DOESN'T happen... is it doesn't create the /dev/gptid/<disk-uuid>.eli file that I was expecting.

What this is telling me is that my understanding of how this works is probably askew...

Could someone clue me in on how this is supposed to work? I'm on TrueNAS 12.2.x...

Thanks!

 

[aspeagle]

Okay... so, nevermind... looks like the TrueNAS UI just isn't very intuitive about the "extend" operation. That seemed to do everything I wanted... it converts a single-disk vdev to mirror when you extend.

iXsystems really needs to make that stuff more intuitive... please... when dealing with potentially disastrous data integrity issues... could ya... you know... be SUPER-EXTRA-MEGA clear about what operations do what... pretty please?

 

[artlessknave]

GELI, and TrueNAS 12, is legacy. you should be getting off of it entirely. it's not going to be well maintained and will probably break sometime.

 

[aspeagle]

GELI, and TrueNAS 12, is legacy. you should be getting off of it entirely. it's not going to be well maintained and will probably break sometime.

Yeah... I know... but, while that plan is enacted... still gotta support a live running system. Thanks for the helpful reply with lots of good info on my issue. ;)

 

[artlessknave]

well, you say you solved it, and that the UI is poor, however, we know the UI is not going to get updated.
there is no issue remaining to solve?

 

[aspeagle]

well, you say you solved it, and that the UI is poor, however, we know the UI is not going to get updated.
there is no issue remaining to solve?

No remaining issues... good to go.