Upgrade to larger USB drive for 9.3

[amwg16]

9.3 recommends 8gb or larger usb drive. How do I move my existing 4gb boot drive to a larger USB drive?


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[Ericloewe]

Install on a new device and import the config file.

 

[amwg16]

Is installing to a new device the only way?

Ran across this, but I don't think this grows the partitions.
http://base6.com/2011/05/31/transferring-freenas-8-to-a-different-usb-drive/


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[Ericloewe]

It's easier and faster to do a fresh install. Also, note that nothing for FreeNAS 9.2 or older applies in this regard.

 

[sysfu]

You might also try deleting some boot environments to get it to work on a 4GB drive. Below is the current freenas-boot file system utilization with 9.3 release installed and after deleting old/unused boot environments.

[nas] /mnt/files/seth# df -h | head
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
freenas-boot/ROOT/FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201412091831 2.7G 933M 1.8G 34% /

 

[drinny]

I upgraded from a 4 GB drive on 9.2.1.9 to a 8GB mirrored pair of drives in 9.3. The process went something like:

- Upgrade FreeNAS to 9.3
- Attach a 8 GB drive to the boot volume to create a mirror and let the mirror resilver
- Replace the 4 GB drive with another 8 GB drive and let the mirror resilver
- Reboot

That should give you a mirrored 8 GB boot volume. Instead of replacing the 4 GB drive with another 8 GB drive, I suppose you could also just detach the 4 GB drive from the mirror leaving you a single 8 GB stripe. That would also work, but leave you with no redundancy in case that drive failed.

 

[amwg16]

I upgraded from a 4 GB drive on 9.2.1.9 to a 8GB mirrored pair of drives in 9.3. The process went something like:

- Upgrade FreeNAS to 9.3
- Attach a 8 GB drive to the boot volume to create a mirror and let the mirror resilver
- Replace the 4 GB drive with another 8 GB drive and let the mirror resilver
- Reboot

That should give you a mirrored 8 GB boot volume. Instead of replacing the 4 GB drive with another 8 GB drive, I suppose you could also just detach the 4 GB drive from the mirror leaving you a single 8 GB stripe. That would also work, but leave you with no redundancy in case that drive failed.

wouldn't a mirror of the 4gb give you the same partition size, defeating the purpose of using an 8gb in the first place?

It seems like the best option is to upgrade to 9.3 and then follow the steps under the "if something goes wrong" section. Can anyone confirm? I'm really surprised more guidance wasn't given in the documentation or release notes.

1. Perform a fresh installation on a new boot device.
2. Import your volumes in Storage ‣ Auto Import Volume.
3. Restore the configuration in System ‣ General ‣ Upload Config.

http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_install.html#if-something-goes-wrong

 

[drinny]

Nope. Once all the drives in the pool are replaced by larger drives (and the system is rebooted), the volume will show the larger pool size. Like I said, I already did this on my own server where I upgraded from 9.2.1.9 to 9.3.

The backup config, fresh install, and upload config certainly seems like another totally viable option, though.

 

[cyberjock]

Nope. Once all the drives in the pool are replaced by larger drives (and the system is rebooted), the volume will show the larger pool size. Like I said, I already did this on my own server where I upgraded from 9.2.1.9 to 9.3.

The backup config, fresh install, and upload config certainly seems like another totally viable option, though.

Pretty sure that won't work with the boot media. Why do I say this?

Code:

[root@mini] ~# zpool get all freenas-boot | grep autoexpand
freenas-boot  autoexpand  off  default

ZFS won't autoexpand. I'm betting it's off on purpose for some reason (maybe it breaks the ability to boot from ZFS?). But no, I don't see how the zpool would automatically expand doing what you say for the boot device.

 

[drinny]

I don't know what to say. It worked when I upgraded. :) Although I did go from 9.2.1.9 to a late BETA. Maybe they changed the variable from that beta to release?

You could always attach the 8 GB stick, mirror the root drive, and then do a "gpart show [device]" on the two devices to see if the freebsd-zfs partition was resized the use the whole disk. In my case, it had.

 

[bestboy]

aww... autoexpand off for the boot device?! That's a bit sad, because then we have to deal with this exception and tell people to NOT do what the manual says for mirroring boot devices.

 

[cyberjock]

There may be some secret script that FreeNAS does to handle the expanding in a manual (but still automated) way but I'm not aware of any personally.

 

[cyberjock]

aww... autoexpand off for the boot device?! That's a bit sad, because then we have to deal with this exception and tell people to NOT do what the manual says for mirroring boot devices.

Actually, handling of boot devices should be done from the WebGUI. I'm not sure how far along that is or anything as I have been so busy with life stuff that I haven't gotten to test the newer 9.3 mirrored setup to my satisfaction yet. :P

 

[drinny]

Maybe the autoexpand feature is primarily used to adjust the size of pools online without having to reboot? And a reboot somehow forces a resize of the pool? It seems odd that would be the case, but most of the examples that I've seen referencing zfs and autoexpand refer to people growing the pool of an online pool? And I did definitely have to reboot my server for it to pick up on the fact that my boot drives were now 8 GB instead of 4 GB in size? *shrug*