My boot volume is almost full... How did that happen? How to prevent?

[hungarianhc]

Hi there,

I run the most recent version of FreeNAS on a 16GB USB flash drive. I have a separate SSD for my jails, and I have 5 drive raid array for data.

After the most recent system update I performed, I got the following message:

CRITICAL: The capacity for the volume 'freenas-boot' is currently at 91%, while the recommended value is below 80%.

Could it be update files that are sticking around on the flash drive? Are they not automatically cleared out? Something else? Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

 

[gpsguy]

You need to prune some of the old boot environments off your flash drive. See System/Boot

 

[hungarianhc]

You need to prune some of the old boot environments off your flash drive. See System/Boot

1) How do I do this?
2) Why does FreeNAS keep an indefinite amount of previous boot environments?
3) Is it possible to prevent this from happening?

Thanks! I really appreciate the help!

Edit: Okay... playing around a bit, it looks like I can delete all of these older ones, EXCEPT the current one. Correct?

I wish there were an option to only keep N boot environments....

 

[gpsguy]

Just delete some of the old ones periodically.

FreeNAS 9.3 retains them, so one can easily roll back to an older version, if need be. A few of the releases have been buggy, so having the ability to roll back to a known good environment was a good thing.

 

[hungarianhc]

In any case, I understand the value of the old environments being there. I created a feature request to have an automatic purge policy so that unknowing users don't just fill up their boot drives. Easier to maintain this way.

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/9481

 

[esamett]

I had an update fail with my usb at either 40 or 60% (I don't recall). Following advice I made more space and peace was restored.

 

[Greg Thomas]

Ok, how about for the newborn that wasn't paying attention and now the flash drive is too full to boot, anyway to free up some of the old versions without booting up?

 

[hungarianhc]

This would protect you.

 

[Greg Thomas]

Yes, it would, but I'm looking for a reasonably simple solution to post being a dumbest to purge without having to remake my flash. Obviously going forward, I'll know better, but what can I do right now so that I can get my NASCAR box back up. :/

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

anyway to free up some of the old versions without booting up?

The only thing I can think of is booting a ZFS-aware OS and deleting some of the snapshots. By the time you do that, you might as well do a clean install and upload your saved config.

 

[Greg Thomas]

Ok, then next question since again I'm a newb at this, I created a new boot flash and can boot my machine from it. However for the same reason as I didn't keep old versions from building up, I don't have a backup of my config. This is a 9.3 system and the old flash drive is also 9.3. How can I recover my config onto my new install so that I don't have to rebuild the entire config over again. I've tried various mount commands to try to mount the old flash drive, but I don't seem to have the syntax correct as I keep getting errors. Very frustrating, but it is what it is. When I put the old flash drive in, I get messages on screen that it is da1, so any thoughts on how to mount and move the config from the old flash to the new one? Sorry if this is pretty basic to some but we all have to start somewhere...

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Does this thread help?
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/recover-configure-from-failing-boot-device.28032/
I found it by googling "recover freenas config from pool" and there were other results too.

 

[Greg Thomas]

Yes and no. It points me in the right direction, but I can't get the old usb drive to mount to copy the database off of it. When I try to use the zpool import command from that thread, it says cannot import 'freenas-boot': pool already exists.

 

[Bidule0hm]

What command did you use? you should use this one: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...e-from-failing-boot-device.28032/#post-181750

 

[Frenchy]

Hi all,

I have the exact same issue. My problem is that I don't know where to find the previous versions of Freenas (I read System/Boot but I don't seem to find it or the one I found does not have seem to have the files I should delete) and how to access it to delete it. I'm clearly a beginner as you can read from my comment. I have tried to use putty to get into the file system and log as root but not too sure where to go from there...

Help hugely appreciated!

 

[SweetAndLow]

Hi all,

I have the exact same issue. My problem is that I don't know where to find the previous versions of Freenas (I read System/Boot but I don't seem to find it or the one I found does not have seem to have the files I should delete) and how to access it to delete it. I'm clearly a beginner as you can read from my comment. I have tried to use putty to get into the file system and log as root but not too sure where to go from there...

Help hugely appreciated!

In the gui you can't go to the boot sub tab? Can you take a screen shot and show us?

 

[Frenchy]

Found them! I thought it required more digging with SSL. Thank you so much!

 

[SweetAndLow]

Found them! I thought it required more digging with SSL. Thank you so much!

What are you talking about?

 

[Frenchy]

Going into the files arborescence, finding the right files to delete, juggling with linux commands :) Following your instructions, I just got into the GUI and found the various previous version of Freenas gently stacked and ready to be deleted

 

[rogerh]

"Arborescence" is beautiful! And quite clear. But as a matter of interest we (English) generally say "tree" or "hierarchy".