PSA: Do not upgrade your boot pools!

[Ericloewe]

This one is a throwback to the early 9.3 days.

zpool status has been telling people to upgrade their boot pools. zpool status is a liar! *

GRUB does not support the latest ZFS versions, a small fact that zpool status is unaware of.

This message had been suppressed in the early 9.3 days, because it's only asking for trouble, but now it seems to be back.

Further reading:

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/6312
https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/14317


* "Liar" is an exaggeration, but really, don't try to upgrade your boot pools.

 

[jdong]

Man, I accidentally did the upgrade to my boot pool when I hopped on 9.10 but so far I'm still able to boot off of it. Is this a ticking time bomb?

 

[Ericloewe]

Man, I accidentally did the upgrade to my boot pool when I hopped on 9.10 but so far I'm still able to boot off of it. Is this a ticking time bomb?

You are? Fascinating. Can you provide any more details?

 

[mattbbpl]

Josh Paetzel - "right now we aren't just leaving open manholes laying around we're putting up signs that suggest there's gold at the bottom of them."

Hehehe.... I like this guy.

 

[jdong]

You are? Fascinating. Can you provide any more details?

Sure, what info would you like? I definitely ran zpool upgrade after being told by zpool status that my boot pool was out of date, and then I ran the command to update the MBR as instructed.

Code:

jdong@freenas:~ % zpool get version

NAME          PROPERTY  VALUE    SOURCE

freenas-boot  version   -        default

jdong@freenas:~ % zpool status

  pool: freenas-boot

 state: ONLINE

  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h2m with 0 errors on Thu Mar 17 13:38:41 2016

config:


    NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM

    freenas-boot  ONLINE       0     0     0

      da0p2     ONLINE       0     0     0
FreeBSD freenas.local 10.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE #0 52dd777(freebsd10): Fri Mar 25 14:48:36 PDT 2016     root@build.ixsystems.com:/tank/home/nightlies/build-freenas9/_BE/objs/tank/home/nightlies/build-freenas9/_BE/trueos/sys/FreeNAS.amd64  amd64

 

[Ericloewe]

Sure, what info would you like? I definitely ran zpool upgrade after being told by zpool status that my boot pool was out of date, and then I ran the command to update the MBR as instructed.

Code:

jdong@freenas:~ % zpool get version

NAME          PROPERTY  VALUE    SOURCE

freenas-boot  version   -        default

jdong@freenas:~ % zpool status

  pool: freenas-boot

state: ONLINE

  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 0h2m with 0 errors on Thu Mar 17 13:38:41 2016

config:


    NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM

    freenas-boot  ONLINE       0     0     0

      da0p2     ONLINE       0     0     0
FreeBSD freenas.local 10.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE #0 52dd777(freebsd10): Fri Mar 25 14:48:36 PDT 2016     root@build.ixsystems.com:/tank/home/nightlies/build-freenas9/_BE/objs/tank/home/nightlies/build-freenas9/_BE/trueos/sys/FreeNAS.amd64  amd64

What exact versions were you running when you created the boot pool and when you upgraded it?

 

[jdong]

What exact versions were you running when you created the boot pool and when you upgraded it?

Is there any way to find out? It was one of the last 9.10-NIGHTLY releases before 9.10-STABLE was created... About 8 or 9 days ago.

 

[Ericloewe]

Is there any way to find out? It was one of the last 9.10-NIGHTLY releases before 9.10-STABLE was created... About 8 or 9 days ago.

That's probably good enough.

If it's working, I don't see why it would stop working. Nevertheless, don't be surprised if it breaks the next time you reboot.

Maybe GRUB was quietly updated and does support the latest versions of ZFS... In any case, the boot pool doesn't benefit from any newer feature flags, AFAIK.

 

[jdong]

That's probably good enough.

If it's working, I don't see why it would stop working. Nevertheless, don't be surprised if it breaks the next time you reboot.

Maybe GRUB was quietly updated and does support the latest versions of ZFS... In any case, the boot pool doesn't benefit from any newer feature flags, AFAIK.

Had I known I definitely would not have updated!

I've gone through a few reboots and updates since then and the system still seems to boot. I took another config backup just in case that will change in the future...

 

[HardChargin]

Ummmm........yea. I saw this pool update message on a fresh install of 9.10 stable. Went for it (via command line) since I hadn't spent too much time on configuration. zpool status afterwards showed the update was no longer "needed". Upon reboot.....FAIL.

 

[Ericloewe]

The stupid message has been apparently nuked for now and the fix should move to testing. Hopefully this won't last much longer.

 

[mav@]

Fix to hide/block unwanted updates was pushed into the next nightly build and should be in the next update.

For anybody who was hit by this: I think situation can be resolved by doing ISO upgrade, which will save the configuration, but otherwise completely recreate boot pool.

 

[Ericloewe]

Fix to hide/block unwanted updates was pushed into the next nightly build and should be in the next update.

For anybody who was hit by this: I think situation can be resolved by doing ISO upgrade, which will save the configuration, but otherwise completely recreate boot pool.

If that doesn't work, importing the broken boot pool on a FreeNAS 9.10/FreeBSD 10.3 system should allow retrieval of the config database, if anyone is caught without backups.