zfs pool created under FreeNAS are not usable by other distributions that support ZFS

[matthewowen01]

if you create a simple pool with a single disk (or any other configuration), it is not importable under Solaris 11 with zpool import.

I'm not sure what's going but any collection of disks that were part of a pool should be importable.

reference thread:
http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?663-Get-data-from-freenas8-drive-without-freenas

 

[pauldonovan]

The first 7 posts here describe the issue. It is because of the way FreeNAS partitions the drive.

Bummer, eh?

Paul

 

[matthewowen01]

The first 7 posts here describe the issue. It is because of the way FreeNAS partitions the drive.

Bummer, eh?

Paul

yeah, i wish i had know my pools are no longer portable to other systems. i think I'm going to have to bail on FreeNAS...

 

[freeflow]

FreeNAS 8 zfs systems can be imported into Ubuntu runnung fuse zfs. At least it worked with my 8 disk raidz2.

 

[joeschmuck]

It would be nice to have that capability but as long as I could import them into another FreeNAS environment to access the data I think I'd be happy just to recover the data. It's not ideal and if this will be a long lasting compatibility issue, it should be published as such.

 

[matthewowen01]

right now I'm trying to find enough space i can migrate my data off my 8 GB pool and reformat it on my solaris box.

 

[matthewowen01]

well i kinda feel like a jerk. sorry guys.

so basically as i understand it, the disks are formated as GPT and Solaris does not support it. i was able to use gdisk to convert from GPT to MBR and solaris picked up the pool right away. it also looks like i can have GPT and MBR disks in 1 pool at the same time, i can safely move to MBR without (much) risk.

I'd like to change this to a feature request, to allow MBR instead of GPT for compatibility purposes.


http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/mbr2gpt.html

 

[fcoj]

This feature request will also solve compatibily issue with "OLD" bios.

I have a dual Opteron and I can't install FREENAS because the computer hangs at reboot due to Legacy BIOS Issues with GPT (http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/bios.html).

 

[ProtoSD]

Somehow I missed this thread before, but +1 for this feature from me also.

 

[ProtoSD]

Here's why MBR partitioning with large capacity drives/ZFS is a potential problem:

MBR partitions are addressed using 32-bit values, the maximum of which is 2^32 or 4294967296. Each LBA on a hard drive corresponds to a 512-byte sector value (even on 4K advance format drives, they still appear as 512-byte sector drives to the OS), so the largest partition you can have in a MBR partitioned drive is 4294967296 * 512-bytes or 2,199,023,255,552 bytes.

Hard drive manufacturers define 1TB as 1 trillion bytes. If we use that definition then the largest 32-bit MBR partition would be 2.199TB (2,199,023,255,552 bytes / 1,000,000,000,000). If we define 1TB as 1024^4 bytes (TiB) then the largest 32-bit MBR partition would be 2TiB (2,199,023,255,552 bytes / 1,099,511,627,776). Either way, with a 3TB drive there’s no way we’re getting a single 3TB partition using MBR.

GPT (GUID Partition Table) offers 64-bit LBA support.

With 64-bit LBAs the largest 512-byte sector drive we can address is 9.4ZB (Zettabytes - 10^21 or 2^70 bytes depending on if you’re counting in base 10 or 2).

Here's the source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3981/western-digital-caviar-green-3tb-and-my-book-essential-3tb-drives-reviewed/2

 

[rnicolas]

well i kinda feel like a jerk. sorry guys.

so basically as i understand it, the disks are formated as GPT and Solaris does not support it. i was able to use gdisk to convert from GPT to MBR and solaris picked up the pool right away. it also looks like i can have GPT and MBR disks in 1 pool at the same time, i can safely move to MBR without (much) risk.

I'd like to change this to a feature request, to allow MBR instead of GPT for compatibility purposes.


http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/mbr2gpt.html

Agreed. ++1