I have the TrueNAS working fine now after installing TrueNAS OS again (and very happy to see that it could import the main pool).
So this post is basically just reporting the odd behaviour that I saw after using the Export/Disconnect pool option.
I originally created the pool with 3 8TB disks, with another 8TB disk in the post on its way to me. I thought that RAIDZ could just expand the pool as one needed it whilst still keeping the RAID5 protection.
The original setup was fine, about 10 SMB shares setup, user home shares setup and working (I say users, in fact there's just me).
The 4th disk arrived and I found out that I could not simply expand the pool, and creating a single disk ZVol to add to the pool was pointless.
So I copied all the data back off the NAS and then selected 'Export/Disconnect' (not finding any sort of Delete/Destroy option). This appeared to work, so I added the 4th drive and created the pool, made the shares and copied data back to the NAS.
Odd thing number #1: When creating the SMB shares; where you choose the dataset I could see my previous pool AND the new pool I'd created (I called them slightly different things) - as I could choose the new pool I just ignored this for now.
All went well until I got to my home directory which kept giving me errors saying the device wasn't available. The dataset I'd created for these user home shares is 'HomeShares'. Even after removing the home SMB share and the dataset 'HomeShares' the home directory still appeared in the list of SMB shares on my Windows box. Not accessible but visible. Note that the dataset 'HomeShares' was visible oddly.
I went into the the TrueNAS console (been using Linux for decades) I could see both pools in '/mnt'. Deleting the old one ('rm -rf') worked a little, it removed the dataset 'HomeShares' listing, but the users home share still gave errors.
Nothing I did would make the home shares work - added full control for all users, still an error.
At the same time as this, the system started taking ages to boot. avahi took a good minute to start and said an old PID file was left over, deleting it manually made avahi start at normal speed once, but it then left it's PID file again.
Also dbus and ntpd took ages to start, ntpd failing every time.
I'm guessing that the system dataset was in the original pool I'd Export/Disconnected and so everything had lost its configuration.
So I gave up and reinstalled TrueNAS again, telling it to use the SSD boot drive (same as last time) to install too.
I was extremely happy to see that it could import the data pool, saved me another 6 hours of copying stuff!
Created the shares and they all work great, including the users home share.
If the cause of all the problems was the system dataset was removed, I think the system should at least check if this is going to happen and give the user a LARGE TEXT warning telling them they're about to cripple the system!
So this post is basically just reporting the odd behaviour that I saw after using the Export/Disconnect pool option.
I originally created the pool with 3 8TB disks, with another 8TB disk in the post on its way to me. I thought that RAIDZ could just expand the pool as one needed it whilst still keeping the RAID5 protection.
The original setup was fine, about 10 SMB shares setup, user home shares setup and working (I say users, in fact there's just me).
The 4th disk arrived and I found out that I could not simply expand the pool, and creating a single disk ZVol to add to the pool was pointless.
So I copied all the data back off the NAS and then selected 'Export/Disconnect' (not finding any sort of Delete/Destroy option). This appeared to work, so I added the 4th drive and created the pool, made the shares and copied data back to the NAS.
Odd thing number #1: When creating the SMB shares; where you choose the dataset I could see my previous pool AND the new pool I'd created (I called them slightly different things) - as I could choose the new pool I just ignored this for now.
All went well until I got to my home directory which kept giving me errors saying the device wasn't available. The dataset I'd created for these user home shares is 'HomeShares'. Even after removing the home SMB share and the dataset 'HomeShares' the home directory still appeared in the list of SMB shares on my Windows box. Not accessible but visible. Note that the dataset 'HomeShares' was visible oddly.
I went into the the TrueNAS console (been using Linux for decades) I could see both pools in '/mnt'. Deleting the old one ('rm -rf') worked a little, it removed the dataset 'HomeShares' listing, but the users home share still gave errors.
Nothing I did would make the home shares work - added full control for all users, still an error.
At the same time as this, the system started taking ages to boot. avahi took a good minute to start and said an old PID file was left over, deleting it manually made avahi start at normal speed once, but it then left it's PID file again.
Also dbus and ntpd took ages to start, ntpd failing every time.
I'm guessing that the system dataset was in the original pool I'd Export/Disconnected and so everything had lost its configuration.
So I gave up and reinstalled TrueNAS again, telling it to use the SSD boot drive (same as last time) to install too.
I was extremely happy to see that it could import the data pool, saved me another 6 hours of copying stuff!
Created the shares and they all work great, including the users home share.
If the cause of all the problems was the system dataset was removed, I think the system should at least check if this is going to happen and give the user a LARGE TEXT warning telling them they're about to cripple the system!
