separating GRUB from SYSTEM

[samliddicott]

I'm trying out TrueNAS on a QNAP, which has some kind of solid-state DOM (500MB) to boot from.

Solid state and the small size rule it out as a boot/system device.

So I installed on an external USB disk, but every bootup the initramfs fails with:

Code:

Failure: 1

Command: /sbin/zpool import -N   'boot-pool'
Message: cannot import 'boot-pool': no such pool available
Error: 1

Failed to import pool 'boot-pool'.
Manually import the pool and exit.

great gratitudes to whoever caused that verbose message, because it works, and I type:

Code:

/sbin/zpool import -N boot-pool
exit

and it boots fine.

Is the error because the disk was USB based and USB starts up later?

But next, can't we have the system stored on one of the main disks and only need to have the EFI folder on a separate device (to fit on my DOM).

Why does the zfs_member on the boot device need to be stored there and not on one of the other disks?

AFAICT I could shift about the partitions on my first disk and move it there and it would still work, and then move the EFI partition to my DOM

 

[samliddicott]

I was successfully able to create a partition of a blank disk to match my USB-based boot-pool, and add that partition as a mirror to boot-pool.

I was then able to remove the USB-based boot-pool mirror.

I then created another partition on the internal disk which I was able to import using the UI (after a reboot). This was good, cos otherwise the UI wouldn't notice the partially used disk.

I now just need to transfer the grub boot configuration to the internal DOM.

 

[samliddicott]

I then created another partition on the internal disk which I was able to import using the UI (after a reboot). This was good, cos otherwise the UI wouldn't notice the partially used disk.

Of course I had to also create a pool in that partition, then reboot, then import. The UI hung on importing, but seems fine after refresh.