Stuck at import pool. How to tell it to skip import

[brfrankl]

I have read several posts as to the "why" it may be stuck. I am guessing I have corrupted the zpool metadata. I have 3 pools and I am guessing it is only stuck on one... Regardless, the question I have is how do I tell it NOT to import the zpools on bootup??

I am not very FreeNAS savy, (I got it working, been using it for 3+ years and until now no issues. Then BAM! :) Murphy shows his head (I was making a backup of the files on the NAS when it froze and I have to reboot :( ) but if you can tell me the commands/files to edit on the single user prompts, I can definitely do that :)

So I want to get it to boot, then see if I can recover any of the data from the 3 zpools. I am hoping only 1 is corrupt...


-B

 

[Stux]

I *think* you can boot in single user mode or something from the boot environment screen.

BUT, how long have you waited for it to import your pool?

 

[joeschmuck]

It's tuff to figure out if you are having an issue with your pool or FreeNAS booting. If the problem is FreeNAS booting and you have a corrupt boot device then you can just rebuild the boot device and skip the wizard then restore your config file. Hopefully you have a backup of your configuration file. If the problem is the pool then you can do the same thing, rebuild the boot device and then when prompted, don't do the wizard. Next you need to import each pool and hopefully they all mount. If you find one that fails to mount then you can start all over again and skip mounting that pool until all your data is backed up.

Good Luck.

 

[danb35]

...alternatively, do a clean install of FN11 to a different device, boot that, skip the wizard, and try importing each of the pools one at a time.

 

[brfrankl]

So after waiting an hour or so I decided to new install Freenas and reimport. As I suspected only one had an issue. But I let it just sit overnight and it finally imported.


But my question still stands. If I am booting an already installed system how do I get it to skip import during the boot???

 

[joeschmuck]

But my question still stands. If I am booting an already installed system how do I get it to skip import during the boot???

You don't. Your pool(s) will automatically import during the boot process because that is the way it's configured.

I guess you could request a feature be added that would use the Console and during the pool import opeations it would list the name of the pool and ask you if you want to import the pool or not, with the default being to import the pool after 3 seconds. If you are quick with the keyboard then you could abort a pool from being mounted.

EDIT: I've got one other solution, from the console you could "Reset to Factory Defaults" but that is like reinstalling.

 

[Stux]

You don't. Your pool(s) will automatically import during the boot process because that is the way it's configured.

I guess you could request a feature be added that would use the Console and during the pool import opeations it would list the name of the pool and ask you if you want to import the pool or not, with the default being to import the pool after 3 seconds. If you are quick with the keyboard then you could abort a pool from being mounted.

EDIT: I've got one other solution, from the console you could "Reset to Factory Defaults" but that is like reinstalling.

I just tested it... if you choose a boot environment at startup, then you can choose single-user mode, and if you do do that, then it doesn't auto-mount the pools (other than boot pool).

Thought so

 

[joeschmuck]

But is the GUI operational?

EDIT: No, the GUI is not operational (had to try it myself). I'm not sure how useful going into Single User Mode would be for this situation. There are a lot of programs not running at this point and FreeNAS is basically just dropped to a command prompt. I can see this being okay to correct a corrupt configuration but not sure how you can tell the system not to import the pools and then finish loading up FreeNAS. I'm sure it could be done though with some extra work.

EDIT2: WOW! Verbose Mode is well... Verbose! Hey, I gave it a try and was hopeing it might just give an option to accept each command or ignore it. No such luck. Maybe we need a "Troubleshooting Mode".

 

[Stux]

Good when the pool import causes an actual crash (it happens)

Will allow you to rollback the transactions and once it imports you can reboot

 

[joeschmuck]

But these are advanced operations, not something the average Joe would know how to do, or are there instructions somewhere in these forums? Heck, there could be. I don't read everything here.

 

[Stux]

But these are advanced operations, not something the average Joe would know how to do, or are there instructions somewhere in these forums? Heck, there could be. I don't read everything here.

Yes :)

And now the single user trick is too ;)