recovering data from broken freenas 8

[Artexanis]

Hi there,

I had a freenas 8 installed, but the mobo broke down. 4disks, 500GB RAID1 (2disks), 2TB RAID1 (2disks). Its the second time in a short period of time the mobo fails. last time it was pretty easy to recover the data by connecting it to my pc and run r-studio (http://www.r-studio.com/) (it was the same configuration but Freenas 7). This time I cannot access my data this way. I'm not sure wheter I used ZFS or UFS.
I love the FreeNAS software but the hardware seems to fail each time. I have to say the hardware needs to work 24/7, I never turn off the freenas system.

I was planning on removing the RAID (it was my way of making a backup from my data (i know, horrible)) and take a backup on tapes, everything is on my desk to do it, but i need to get to the data.
But this is way more important, I have a sollicitation comming up and I need two tiny files from that disk, 2 days left to fix it.

Is there anybody who can tell me how to gain access to the files, I know they are still on that disk.

Thanks!

 

[survive]

Hi Artexanis,

You should be able to just hook the drives up to pretty much any old motherboard, plug in your USB key and boot. If that doesn't work (usb key is bad) just install a fresh copy of FreeNAS and "Auto-import" your pools.

Odds are it will end up being that simple.

-Will

 

[Artexanis]

thanks, I replaced the original intel mobo (DG45FC (http://www.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Motherboards/DG45FC/DG45FC-overview.htm)) with a gigabyte p35-ds4 (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2745#ov). I can boot freeNAS but the network won't work, FreeNAS does not show an ip (i configured it to be static, so i conclude FreeNAS is unable to communicate with the new network controller out of the box).
The network controller from the intel board: "Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem using the Intel® 82567LF Gigabit Ethernet Controller", the network controller from the gigabyte board: "Realtek 8111B chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)".

I am still searching how to fix it, but I posted this reply because of the time pressure to get back to my files.

Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, Realtek has mix and match in terms of it working. Intel NICs "just work". If you don't have an Intel NIC you can use temporarily you could try plugging in another USB drive and copying your files from the pool to your other USB key. It won't be the most elegant, but if time is an issue and you have no other NIC to try, this would work.

 

[Artexanis]

ok, i will try, but how to perform the "auto-import" without the GUI?

 

[cyberjock]

Run the command "zpool import" I believe. I'm not at home or I'd check on my server.

 

[Artexanis]

Yep, I can see my files . I connected an usb stick to copy the needed files but its really frustrating, I can't find the dir where its mounted... not in /media nor /mnt

 

[Artexanis]

I needed to mount it myself using mount -t msdosfs etc., it worked, but after a couple of minutes the kernel panicked... the usb stick is not working anymore... when I try to mount i get 'Operation not Permitted', I am root, so this should not happen.
I tried plugging it in on a windows machine, works perfect, did a safe removal.
No other usb sticks around for the moment

 

[cyberjock]

You could try reinstalling FreeNAS on your USB. Could be that it just got corrupted and a reinstall will fix it.

 

[Artexanis]

I will try that, but the pressure is off. I was able to recover the files by connecting an internal NTFS disk and mount it with this howto: http://linux-bsd-sharing.blogspot.be/2012/01/howto-mounting-ntfs-partition-in-write.html
luckily the ntfs-3g module was installed and started on this installation. I connected the internal disk back into my windows computer and was able to read the files!

Many thanks for the help!

FreeNAS rocks

 

[cyberjock]

Glad you got your data.

 

[Artexanis]

the install seems to fail, i started a new tread since installation should not be discussed here: http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?8049-cannot-boot-from-usb-stick-bios-should-be-fine