Replacing Disk from GUI

[dumn0v1c3]

Sorry for the probably dumb question, but i'm trying to replace a "bad" drive in FreeNAS-8.0-RC5-i386. I've followed the very simplistic GUI documentation that just says to click "Replace" and specify the new disk. OK - now what? Nothing changes at all ... the "View Disks" page simply reloads with the same info (nor do i get any error messages). Reading indicates the drive needs to resilver, and the disk in question is a WD 2T which can take several hours. HOWEVER, i've no indication anything is happening at all. I don't recognize any new processes (i could be missing something since i frankly don't know what to look for), my system stats (cpu/mem/etc) are all flat, and i don't hear any sig activity from the box (although i don't know i'd notice since the drive's rather quiet while the fan's pretty loud).

This is a closet box ... if it had a keyboard and monitor, i'd simply check zpool status to verify whether it's resilvering. As it is, it's enough of a pain to hook up a board & monitor that i'd rather drop the entire volume and start over from scratch (just backed everything up on another network drive).

So my real questions are ...

- Is there any way to verify it's working from the GUI? -OR- Is there an easy way for remote CLI?

- Should i assume this isn't working, or do i just need to be more patient?

- If it's working how will i know it's done? Will the (three-disk) volume simply stop showing as "DEGRADED"? ... it's not so simple following the CLI documentation.

Many thanks!

 

[AVB]

I just replaced a WD drive in my pool and it really was pretty easy.
Even if you have a hot swap ability turn off the machine and remove the drive. Replace with the new drive. Fire up the system , go to the GUI (Storage, View Disks) and click the replace button. It took 16 hours for my 10TB Zpool to resliver the one 2TB drive. To follow the progress leave the GUI and go to the shell. Zpool status will show how the resliver is doing. Eventually it will finish and when it does reboot the system. Go back to the shell and do Zpool <pool> <Device> detach (the device should be ***x/old) and reboot again. Everything should be back to normal, or at least it was for me. I'm certainly not an expert but that is all it took for my system to get back up and running.

 

[dumn0v1c3]

AVB - thanks, sounds like i'm on the right track and should be patient. When you say "go to the shell" are you talking about directly interfacing with the machine, or is there a way to this remotely? (please explain how because i'm stupid) Thanks!

(i'm not using the absolute latest version so detaching drives does not appear to be an option in the web gui)

 

[AVB]

Yes, I mean directly working on the NAS box itself. There is a menu with 9 items and the shell is item #7. I couldn't find a way to detach from the GUI either so that is why I told you how to do it from the shell.

 

[gpsguy]

If you enable SSH, you can access the server remotely. I run my FreeNAS server headless and use PuTTY on my Windows pc to access the command line on the server.

When you say "go to the shell" are you talking about directly interfacing with the machine, or is there a way to this remotely?

 

[dumn0v1c3]

gpsguy - awesome tip, thanks! so zpool status -v results in "no pools available" ... i think the verdict is in that the "Replace Disk" web GUI option does F* all. At least i've got a fresh start now with CLI via PuTTY. Cheers!

 

[dumn0v1c3]

update: sorry to waste your time with my stupidity ... but neglected to recall earlier that i made this vol a regular RAID5, not a RAIDZ (worried about write speeds) ... so of course zpool isn't going to do anything for me. Does anyone have a link to any current documentation for replacing a disk on a UFS vol? Otherwise i'm giving up and killing the vol (and maybe make it ZFS this time around).