Loosing disk descriptions?

[Morten Green Hermansen]

Hello!

I have just installed FreeNAS 9.3 with some disks on an IBM m1015 (equiv. to LSI 9210-8i) HBA. I also have some disks on the internal disk controller on the motherboard (HP Proliant M150 G6).
I have physically labeled the disks (1,2,3...) and have added a description in FreeNAS so I know that if disk 4 fails I can actually physically find it. I know I could use the disk serial numbers but it seems like these cannot be seen for disks on the LSI HBA only for the internal disk controller.

After I created a new pool all the disks on the LSI HBA lost the descriptions! Is this a bug?

Best regards,
- Morten Green Hermansen, Fanitas

 

[cyberjock]

I don't think it's a bug, but more of a limitation of how you match disks to the "description". What is ada0 can be ada2 tomorrow when you reboot. The device identification is based on the order that the system detects the drives when booting up. So the only real way you should ever track the disks is by serial. I don't use descriptions because there is no guarantee that on a reboot they'd match the disks correctly.

 

[Morten Green Hermansen]

Hello Cyberjock!

Thank you for your reply! Ok! I see, as you told me some of my descriptions got indeed mixed up after reboot.
If description cannot be used to identify a disk and it is not a bug - what is the meaning of the description field then?
The ID is that the '81GD7XGC' printet on the disk or the 'gptid/a8710f7c-c5c8-11e4-8bb6-1cc1de281f64' shown by 'zpool status -v'?

Best regards,
- Morten Green Hermansen, Fanitas

 

[Bidule0hm]

You need to pair the serial and the GPTID (the first let you identify the drive IRL and the second let you identify it in the pool), it's the only two things that don't risk to be changed by a reboot ;)

I made a script for that, if you're interested it's the "Useful scripts" link in my signature :)

 

[Morten Green Hermansen]

Hello Bidule0hm!

Lots of nice scripts here! Thank you for that!
Ill take note of both ids then.

And, cyberjock, thank you for your comments too!

Best regards,
- Morten Green Hermansen, Fanitas