Not enough space for upgrade

[slis]

Hi

I've followed the hardware recommendations for TrueNAS SCALE where it reads 8Gb for the boot-pool is enough, but more is better. Assigned somewhat 12Gb to the pool and now I find myself with a pending update

Upgrade TrueNAS-22.12.0 -> TrueNAS-22.12.1

This update won't complete as it requires more space than I have in the boot-pool.
What is the recommended way to proceed in this situation? Shall I look for ways to extend the partition? Is there a way to use a different storage device for some of the files required by the upgrade? Any other workaround?

Error: [ENOSPC] Insufficient disk space available on boot-pool (4.44 GiB). Need 5.08 GiB

 

[HoneyBadger]

What's your physical boot device? You could attach a larger device to the boot-pool, and then detach the smaller device and extend into the free space - but I'd like to know what your current configuration is first before I make any specific recommendations.

It is also possible through the UI (System Settings -> Boot) to remove older boot environments; however, I wouldn't necessarily suggest that as a first option, unless you're 100% positive that you'll never want to revert to an older version of SCALE.

 

[NugentS]

I am guessing this is virtualised - although you don't say.

Make a backup of the config file, reinstall TN on a 16+GB boot-pool and import the config file

 

[slis]

I am guessing this is virtualised - although you don't say.

Make a backup of the config file, reinstall TN on a 16+GB boot-pool and import the config file

This is not virtualized, but the server is set up to dual boot from a single nvme drive. Reinstallation is something I hope to avoid as TN installation scenario expects me to give up the whole drive capacity for the boot-pool, which I don’t want. Installing into a partition was not that easy.

Thanks for the recommendation though, I will consider it as a possible route.

I can boot into the other OS, make its boot partition a bit smaller, adding free unpartitioned space between TrueNAS boot-pool and other partition. Is there a was to expand the boot-pool into that unpartitioned space?

 

[slis]

What's your physical boot device? You could attach a larger device to the boot-pool, and then detach the smaller device and extend into the free space - but I'd like to know what your current configuration is first before I make any specific recommendations.

It is also possible through the UI (System Settings -> Boot) to remove older boot environments; however, I wouldn't necessarily suggest that as a first option, unless you're 100% positive that you'll never want to revert to an older version of SCALE.

It’s a 256Gb nvme drive. It has another OS on it that I need unvirtualized.
There is just one older boot environment - my initial install of the current version. Removing it will not add much space, unfortunately.

I need to expand the partition somehow.

I’d also suggest a rfc for the hardware recommendation page/document, as 8 gigabytes boot-pool clearly limits the system owner in critical operations. Updates are not optional, they are a necessity.

 

[NugentS]

Then by having a partitioned boot disk you have moved outside what is the TrueNAS appliance supported method and into the "Here Be Dragons" deployment mechanism.

I still suggest reinstalling on a different USB Boot device. Note that with Scale is meant to be very easy to make an edit to something that limits the size of the boot partition (I just cannot remember what) and you can do whatever you want afterwards.

 

[slis]

Okay, I've got the idea. Re-installing should be the easiest way; anything outside of standard installation is unpredictable. Fair enough.

As there are no tried and tested ways to overcome this and reinstallation of TN would require me to reinstall the other OS as well, I've tried this:
1. Booted from Debian Live CD
2. Moved the other os partitions to the end of the drive
3. Extended the partition holding boot-pool
4. Booted back to TrueNAS Scale
5. Opened the shell
6. Set boot-pool to autoexpand

Code:

zpool set autoexpand=on boot-pool

7. Expand the device to use all available space

Code:

zpool online -e boot-pool nvme0n1p3

where nvme0n1p3 is the partition that holds my boot pool boot-pool
8. Tested that the changes have the effect by verifying size of pool and datasets

Code:

 zpool list

Code:

 zfs list

9. Reboot

I've got the result I've hoped for. I can not recommend this to anyone, obviously, as this is not a supported route, but it did work at least once, at least for me.

Thanks for the help, guys

 

[NugentS]

I am glad it worked for you