TrueNAS U8 import issues

[SkyWolf_9000]

Hello everyone,
//Backstory: I am new to the forum and very inexperienced with TrueNAS so please forgive me if i have missed out any detail and I'll be happy to provide it.
So about a year ago I set up an old office computer to run FreeNAS (I'm not sure what version anymore) because it was an old system and i needed a simple way to share files between computers and at work. The system worked great, except for the fact that I couldn't install plugins or create jails. Whenever i attempted, I'd just get a long error that basically mentioned some python error. So i noticed that TrueNAS had been released. I switched my update train and updated to the latest stable version, enabling automatic update and leaving it as is. I still couldn't/can't download or install plugins and jails corrupt themselves all the time on even fresh installations, different hard drives and computers. Eventually i just stopped trying since nothing seemed to work and just accepted my system boots fine and can be used just as a file server (yes i made sure to wait long enough - i left it creating a jail for 2 days straight and it was getting nowhere)
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//Cause: Anyways this was all fine for a while until a very mistimed power cut killed the server during boot-up and corrupted some of the boot files on the drive. I tried to replace them with different ones with the USB installer, however that failed too, so whenever it attempts to start up, it gets stuck on loading a plugin and says the daemon is not running. So i decided to just install TrueNAS on another hard drive, plug the old one as a secondary device and import the pool. (I know i was a moron to use the boot drive for storage but i had no other drives at the time and it was good enough, or so i thought).
//Issue: The problem is, when i imported the pool, all my files do show up when i am in the pools menu and i can drop down and see all my folders, but when i click on the 3 dots to edit the permissions, nothing comes up. I know all my files are there and I'd like to either copy them to another drive, or make this one accessible so i can enable it as an SMB share, however the only folder it allows me to share, is of no use to me. The weird thing is that it does allow to edit the permissions for that dataset, just not the main one that i need. I have tried to import on 3 computers now and none worked. When you open the task list, you see permission denied after the import yet it sees all files fine in the dataset drop-down. Could anyone please be kind enough to help me get this data set to be available and have read permissions or backup the data to another drive? Thank you so much for taking the time to read this abomination if a thread and I'm very thankful for any feedback. Please tell me if you need any other info.

The server is running on a Dell Optiplex 780 USSF with 4gb ram and a core 2 duo 3.2ghz
I also ran it on an Hp Z800 workstation with 2 Xeon X5690s and 64gb ram and i got the exact same results with the pools, plugins and jails so i don't think its a power issue.

 

[jgreco]

Dell Optiplex 780 USSF with 4gb ram

The required minimum memory for FreeNAS/TrueNAS Core had been 8GB for about the last decade up until late last year, when it was raised to 16GB. A 4GB system is simply not going to be stable and is expected to have lots of issues, including potential crashing and corruption. There is no way in hell it can support plugins or jails.

I would suggest using rsync or tar|netcat to move the files somewhere else, depending on where you intend to land the files.

 

[SkyWolf_9000]

The required minimum memory for FreeNAS/TrueNAS Core had been 8GB for about the last decade up until late last year, when it was raised to 16GB. A 4GB system is simply not going to be stable and is expected to have lots of issues, including potential crashing and corruption. There is no way in hell it can support plugins or jails.

I would suggest using rsync or tar|netcat to move the files somewhere else, depending on where you intend to land the files.

I know 4gb is not enough, but as i mentioned in my post, i did also install it on a 64gb ram machine and got the exact same results. Also i am not actually sure how to copy my data, though I'd really appreciate it if you could give me instructions i can follow. I just want to move the files to another hard drive or give myself permissions to view the ones already in there. Thank you for taking the time to read it and I'd really appreciate it if you could show me how to structure the commands in console.

 

[jgreco]

I know 4gb is not enough, but as i mentioned in my post, i did also install it on a 64gb ram machine and got the exact same results.

Once you've got things messed up, putting it on a properly sized machine isn't necessarily going to be a magic fix.

I just want to move the files to another hard drive or give myself permissions to view the ones already in there. Thank you for taking the time to read it and I'd really appreciate it if you could show me how to structure the commands in console.

It's very difficult to have any idea what is even functional on this system. Anything in the GUI is risky because you're out of memory for the middleware, so as I said, your best option is probably to find someplace to land the files, someplace other than your poor little 4GB host. If that's a UNIX or Linux box, or a Windows box running something like Cygwin, you can run "nc -dl 9000 | tar xvf -" on your destination device, and then on the FreeNAS host, find the files you want, and then -- very carefully noting the dash after "cvf" -- run something like "tar cvf - my/valuable files/and directories/here | nc <target.host.ip> 9000" substituting the target machine's IP in for <target.host.ip>.

nc is netcat, which allows you to form pipes over the network using TCP sockets. What you're effectively doing is creating a tarball of your files on the NAS, sending them over the network, and extracting them someplace else.

Finding your files will require some poking around, most likely.

 

[SkyWolf_9000]

Once you've got things messed up, putting it on a properly sized machine isn't necessarily going to be a magic fix.



It's very difficult to have any idea what is even functional on this system. Anything in the GUI is risky because you're out of memory for the middleware, so as I said, your best option is probably to find someplace to land the files, someplace other than your poor little 4GB host. If that's a UNIX or Linux box, or a Windows box running something like Cygwin, you can run "nc -dl 9000 | tar xvf -" on your destination device, and then on the FreeNAS host, find the files you want, and then -- very carefully noting the dash after "cvf" -- run something like "tar cvf - my/valuable files/and directories/here | nc <target.host.ip> 9000" substituting the target machine's IP in for <target.host.ip>.

nc is netcat, which allows you to form pipes over the network using TCP sockets. What you're effectively doing is creating a tarball of your files on the NAS, sending them over the network, and extracting them someplace else.

Finding your files will require some poking around, most likely.

I see... Isn't there an OS that can mount unencrypted zfs partitions that can copy yhe files to another drive? Also i didnt clarify when i said i tried it on my workstation - I got a blank hard drive and installed it to that just to test it out - a completely new instalation, and yet the rpoblem persisted. Furthermore, i dont have to keep the drive with the data attached to truenas and was already able to recovr some of the files with UFS professional, but they have a 750kb limit which isn't quite enough. Also the puny 4gb ram are accompanied by a 16gb swap and work relatively fast; boot-up times are about 1 minute and it had no problem reaching gigabit transfer speeds. So is there a way to plug the drive directly, load up an OS that can mount a ZFS drive, and copy the files over?