Newbie questions about FreeNAS

[eltoro]

Hi,

I decided after som research to go with FreeNAS 8 for my new NAS at home. After a couple of weeks and a harddrive failure later I have made som observations I need help with:

* Is it really not possible to replace disks using GUI? This should be the one thing that should work perfectly instead of for example LDAP-service
* Why is it almost never possible to mount an USB-drive using GUI? I tend to always need to use CLI. Is this not a thing you want to do pretty often? I also read that it is not recommended to write to USB-drives. How am I going to do external backups?
* The NIC-configuration seems kind of buggy, when I changed settings they appeared correctly in GUI with not even after restart the settings were effective
* Why is there no "File manager" available in GUI? This should also be a thing people use sometimes (for example when copying files to external drive)?

THanks for your help

 

[CatMan]

Hi,
Also eager to see the answer to these.

 

[Trianian]

Good questions all.,

I recall that reading that GUI disc replacement is actually going to work in the upcoming 8.2 release. You're right that such a core feature should definitely be in the GUI. No, it doesn't work in 8.04. I've tried it a number of times in virtualization. Command line interaction is required.

The USB issue is vexing, an enclosure with eSATA seems the best solution for now. A number of enclosures offer both USB and eSATA.

A file manager and scheduled backup service would be fantastic. The new plugin architecture of 8.2 should allow both.

 

[eltoro]

Actually I seems kind of weird how it is possible to fail creating a front-end for replacing disks. It´s like 3-4 zpool commands...It should be rather easy to have a script which is triggered by the GUI.

I think I thought FreeNAS 8 was much more mature that it actually is. But keep up the good work and eventually it will become a good product in the future. It definately has the potential.

 

[Trianian]

8.2 should be out shortly, I've read the end of April.

You can try the 8.2 beta in a virtual instance and see if drive replacement actually works though the GUI.

 

[eltoro]

Oh, i forgot two questions:
* Why is the old FreeNAS 0.7 on a newer FreeBSD/ZFS version that the never version of FreeNAS? I can´t see any logical reason...
* Why can´t FreeNAS detect a drive failure until reboot?

 

[survive]

Hi eltoro,

Read this: http://www.freenas.org/images/resources/freenas8.0.3/freenas8.0.3_guide.html

Section 1 for a brief history of the FreeNAS project.

Basically FreeBSD 0.7 was kind of in "maintenance mode" about a year and a half ago when ix systems took over the project. Since then the "original" Freenas project has started to pick up steam again as there have been some folks who just didn't like something or another about the 8.X \ ix systems version. It could be the corporate backing, the feeling that ix was "holding out" features (there is a paid version called "TrueNAS" that has ZFS v28), the feeling that ix "stole" the project, the increased system requirements or simply just fear of change.

The drive replacement & failure detection are much bigger issues and are both reasons why my filer is still nothing more than an expensive plaything. There is a project called "zfsd" (ZFS fault monitoring and management daemon) which will make failed drive detection & replacement better that may or may not be in 8.2 (it says it will be here: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Volumes but it's not in beta-2 that I see). Personally I think this is much more important than plug-ins, but the add-on are what people want.....

-Will

 

[eltoro]

Hi eltoro,

Read this: http://www.freenas.org/images/resources/freenas8.0.3/freenas8.0.3_guide.html

Section 1 for a brief history of the FreeNAS project.

Basically FreeBSD 0.7 was kind of in "maintenance mode" about a year and a half ago when ix systems took over the project. Since then the "original" Freenas project has started to pick up steam again as there have been some folks who just didn't like something or another about the 8.X \ ix systems version. It could be the corporate backing, the feeling that ix was "holding out" features (there is a paid version called "TrueNAS" that has ZFS v28), the feeling that ix "stole" the project, the increased system requirements or simply just fear of change.

The drive replacement & failure detection are much bigger issues and are both reasons why my filer is still nothing more than an expensive plaything. There is a project called "zfsd" (ZFS fault monitoring and management daemon) which will make failed drive detection & replacement better that may or may not be in 8.2 (it says it will be here: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Volumes but it's not in beta-2 that I see). Personally I think this is much more important than plug-ins, but the add-on are what people want.....

-Will

Hello Will and thank you for your reply. With FreeBSD I guess you mean FreeNAS 0.7. It sounds like the situation is exactly as you describe if TrueNAS has updated ZFS. Since the 8.2 BETA2 does not have the features you mention, it seems like the release version will not either. Now I really feel I made the wrong decision to go with FreeNAS 8 just because it´s higher version number. Is it possible to downgrade to FreeNAS .7 or another NAS system as long as the ZFS versions is at least the same?

Martin

 

[ProtoSD]

There is a project called "zfsd" (ZFS fault monitoring and management daemon) which will make failed drive detection & replacement better that may or may not be in 8.2 (it says it will be here: http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Volumes but it's not in beta-2 that I see). Personally I think this is much more important than plug-ins, but the add-on are what people want.....

-Will

Will,

I couldn't agree more! I really don't give a rats a$$ about plugins because to me they don't really belong with NAS, but I can see their usefullness. I'm just trying to help transition/support them so the devs can try and focus on the important stuff. I think there's a good chance zfsd will make it into 8.2, the devs know it's more important than plugins, I think they're just trying to get that off their plate so they can work on the really important stuff..

Oh, i forgot two questions:
* Why is the old FreeNAS 0.7 on a newer FreeBSD/ZFS version that the never version of FreeNAS? I can´t see any logical reason...

Different developers trying to appeal to the old crowd is my guess, I think I've read they will retire .7 after 8.2 is stable. It would give those users a way to upgrade to 8.2 after the base is upgraded to FreeBSD 8.3 and has ZFS v28.

* Why can´t FreeNAS detect a drive failure until reboot?

That was answered somewhere here in the forums. I don't remember the answer, but I think the problem still exists in FreeBSD 9.

 

[NASbox]

8.2 should be out shortly, I've read the end of April.

You can try the 8.2 beta in a virtual instance and see if drive replacement actually works though the GUI.

I got it to work successfully under FreeNAS-8.0.4-RELEASE-p1-x64. Built a RaidZ pool with 2 disks.
Shut the machine down and pulled one of the disks and put it a new one. Went to the GUI....
View Volumes / View Disks / Clicked the replace button on the new disk and after a short period of
time everything was back to normal (only had about 60GB of data in the pool cause I'm still playing/learning).
I built a 3 disk pool, and I expect to get a 4th disk so I can run RaidZ2.

One thing that would really help is a progress report from the GUI. Not a big deal... just SSH and type

zpool status

I just built my box a week or so ago, and from the testing I've done so far it seems to be pretty good...
yes plugins would be nice, but from what I can see freenas works pretty well. Get a copy of WinSCP or some
graphical tool to use for a file manager for setting permissions on individual directories within a dataset
and life should be good.

Here's the step by step of simulating a failed disk:

MY TEST SYSTEM
FreeNAS Build FreeNAS-8.0.4-RELEASE-p2-x64 (11367)
Platform Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G620 @ 2.60GHz
Memory 16281MB
System Time Fri May 11 16:47:46 2012
OS Version FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p7

freenas# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ufs/FreeNASs2a 927M 379M 474M 44% /
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
/dev/md0 4.6M 1.9M 2.3M 44% /etc
/dev/md1 824K 2.0K 756K 0% /mnt
/dev/md2 149M 16M 121M 12% /var
/dev/ufs/FreeNASs4 20M 1.1M 17M 6% /data
TANK 5.3T 240K 5.3T 0% /mnt/TANK
TANK/b 5.3T 64G 5.3T 1% /mnt/TANK/b
TANK/library 5.3T 149K 5.3T 0% /mnt/TANK/library
TANK/ 5.3T 213K 5.3T 0% /mnt/TANK/m
TANK/music 5.3T 3.0G 5.3T 0% /mnt/TANK/music
TANK/video 5.3T 8.6G 5.3T 0% /mnt/TANK/video

1. Drive /dev/ada2 removed and replaced with a blank drive to simulate failure.

Status after /dev/ada2 replaced with a blank drive

freenas# zpool status
pool: TANK
state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices could not be opened. Sufficient replicas exist for
the pool to continue functioning in a degraded state.
action: Attach the missing device and online it using 'zpool online'.
see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-2Q
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
TANK DEGRADED 0 0 0
raidz1 DEGRADED 0 0 0
ada0p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada1p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
4177951429355492921 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 was /dev/ada2p2

errors: No known data errors

2. Go to GUI and click Show Volumes and then Display Disks disks icon.
Click replace on the failed disk

SSH to check status.... (OPTIONAL just to see what is going on)

freenas# zpool status
pool: TANK
state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices is currently being resilvered. The pool will
continue to function, possibly in a degraded state.
action: Wait for the resilver to complete.
scrub: resilver in progress for 0h3m, 47.71% done, 0h3m to go
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
TANK DEGRADED 0 0 0
raidz1 DEGRADED 0 0 0
ada0p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada1p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
replacing DEGRADED 0 0 0
4177951429355492921 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 was /dev/ada2p2/old
ada2p2 ONLINE 0 0 0 18.0G resilvered

errors: No known data errors


Status Check After Resilvering

freenas# zpool status
pool: TANK
state: DEGRADED
scrub: resilver completed after 0h6m with 0 errors on Fri May 11 07:49:42 2012
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
TANK DEGRADED 0 0 0
raidz1 DEGRADED 0 0 0
ada0p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada1p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
replacing DEGRADED 0 0 0
4177951429355492921 UNAVAIL 0 0 0 was /dev/ada2p2/old
ada2p2 ONLINE 0 0 0 37.6G resilvered

errors: No known data errors

3. Detach the unused disk from the GUI and then reboot.
(May be possible to avoid the reboot - not sure, but it didn't do any harm other than a few seconds of extra downtime)

freenas# zpool status
pool: TANK
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
TANK ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada0p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada1p2 ONLINE 0 0 0
ada2p2 ONLINE 0 0 0

Hope this is helpful to the community.