ZFS Volume lost on upgrade to FreeNAS 9.3.1. Eager common users be warned.

[popacio]

Hello,

I have recently tried to upgrade to the latest version and again, i've runned into catastrophic failures. First I want to say I have use FreeNAS for a couple of years now and while it stays stable once you make it work, any change is made at your own peril. Beeing no expert on this system at all, I still advice any user agains making any change or upgrade unless they really know what they do and have no choice about it. Everytime i made a change using the graphical interface i had serious troubles. This latest verion is just the same.

I want to say i cannot consider this version "STABLE" at all for the following reasons:
1. First i have tried to upgrade using the graphical interface. It did not worked and it made the system not boot anymore. This i expected. It happened always on previous versions/upgrades. At least to me.
2. Then i have made a backup of the configuration (version 9.2.1.3) and made a new install on the usb stick of the new version. I found out this way this time you absolutely need to install the system unlike the previous versions. I had to pick up another usb dongle. Then I could not make to boot 2 out 3 dongles for no aparent reason despite the fact i know they are bootable. Finnaly i found out one that worked. This was another hickup.
3. I tried to install the system then it promptly locked during the bootup with keyboard getting suddenly inactive. Another hickup. After several trials and hot pugs of keyboard / mouse i managed to boot in Freenas ver. 9.3. The third hickup.
4. After booting up the wizard started. I wanted to import a disk formatted UFS and found out it is not fully supported. Another bummer.
5. Then the wizard recongnized the preexisting ZFS volume (with correct name and UID) and asked me if i want to import it. Which i promptly accepted. I worked it's "magic" for a while and again i was prompted with and extensive error message window. From what i remember something about missing mount point and many other things.
6. After a reboot the ZFS Volume was promptly gone...! At this point i said i got what i deserved. I am not at my first such incident having lost all my data at my previous upgrade (see my previous post here https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ter-system-upgrade-pool-ok-but-no-zvol.14688/ which refers to the exact same volume and system).
7. Then I tried to use the backup configuration (from ver. 9.2.1.3) on the new system (this was obviously wrong but at that point i was desperate). Of course the system went unbootable. Not even restore to factory defaults cound made it bootable again. Another hickup here...
8. At present i rolled back to ver. 9.2.3.1 which booted fine, accepted the restore system backup, and managed to restore my ZFS Volume.

I HAVE CHANGED NO SETTINGS and UPDATED NO SETTINGS while in Freenas. All has be done by the Wizard. Is this normal to have my volume deleted by the import wizard? Can anyone give me an explanation on what happened. As it is i will stay clear from the last version for obvious reasons.

It is a pitty because the very first reason why any common user tries Freenas is the presumed ease of deployment and configuration offered by the graphical interface and wizard preconfiguration. Unfortunately the reality is very different. At least this was the experience in my case.

 

[Nick2253]

Honestly, what are you trying to get out of this? Obviously, you care, because you spent the time to write up this post, but I can't for the life of me figure out what you are trying to accomplish here.

Equally obvious is that your conclusion that FreeNAS is an unstable product is simply false. This forum is full of hundreds if not thousands of regulars who use FreeNAS without a problem, in addition to the silent masses who chug along without problem. You imply that FreeNAS has been a trainwreck for years; that's just not the case.

Also, this is your second post. I've seen many of the problems that you've experienced, and they are almost always due to bad hardware or unsupported user configuration changes. However, instead of trying to get help here to fix the problems that "always" happen, you've chosen to bash FreeNAS as an unstable product. Based on your last post, it's clear the animus against FreeNAS runs deep. However, recognize that you failed to respond to a poster who was trying to help you; they just needed more information.

We would be happy to help you get FreeNAS working. But you have to be willing to take part in that process: we can't fix your problems without your cooperation. If you're serious about trying to get help, and become one of the tens of thousands who run FreeNAS without problems, please create a new post, and, starting with your hardware specs, give us a description of the initial upgrade problem.

 

[Ericloewe]

The volume clearly wasn't "deleted" since you accessed it with 9.2.1.3...

 

[popacio]

The Volume clearly wasn't anywhere to be found in 9.3.1. Only backup restore and downgrading the system recovered it. How about the rest of the hickups...?

 

[Nick2253]

The Volume clearly wasn't anywhere to be found in 9.3.1. Only backup restore and downgrading the system recovered it. How about the rest of the hickups...?

You really haven't provided remotely enough information to begin troubleshooting any of your issues. Missing pools are uncommon, but not unheard of, but they are impossible to fix without lots of details. And, again, it is almost always related to a bad user configuration or bad hardware. However, that's not to rule out the possibility of a bug or other issue that impacts your particular setup; FreeNAS is not perfect (but that's not to say it's anywhere near unstable).

Like I said, if you're serious about trying to get help here, make a new post, focusing on one issue at a time, and we'll do the best we can to help. Make sure you include your hardware specs, and the exact versions of FreeNAS you're using. We really are here to help :)

 

[Ericloewe]

If you want proper help, you'll have to tell us your hardware as well as details about your system and storage configuration. Then we can make educated comments.
Some points do stick out:

• Upgrades to 9.3/9.3.1 should be either with a clean config or a working 9.2.1.9 config. The 9.2.1.x branch saw a series of rapid-fire releases and included some major changes, especially 9.2.1.6.
  
• Your first point is worrying and suggests a failing boot device of some sort, or some esoteric BIOS issue.
• Some keyboards do seem to cause trouble for some. I suspect there's a weird interaction going on, but it's hard to tell. Gaming keyboards should ideally be used with low backlight and no funky features (Corsair keyboards even have a special mode to improve compatibility with basic systems by disabling some features). Not enough data exists for a proper examination of the problem, yet.
  
• 9.3 introduced big changes to the boot process and drops UFS support. This is documented and well-known. UFS is still supported for one-time import of data to a ZFS pool.
• The exact error message given by the wizard would've been helpful.

 

[popacio]

Honestly, what are you trying to get out of this? Obviously, you care, because you spent the time to write up this post, but I can't for the life of me figure out what you are trying to accomplish here.

Equally obvious is that your conclusion that FreeNAS is an unstable product is simply false. This forum is full of hundreds if not thousands of regulars who use FreeNAS without a problem, in addition to the silent masses who chug along without problem. You imply that FreeNAS has been a trainwreck for years; that's just not the case.

Also, this is your second post. I've seen many of the problems that you've experienced, and they are almost always due to bad hardware or unsupported user configuration changes. However, instead of trying to get help here to fix the problems that "always" happen, you've chosen to bash FreeNAS as an unstable product. Based on your last post, it's clear the animus against FreeNAS runs deep. However, recognize that you failed to respond to a poster who was trying to help you; they just needed more information.

We would be happy to help you get FreeNAS working. But you have to be willing to take part in that process: we can't fix your problems without your cooperation. If you're serious about trying to get help, and become one of the tens of thousands who run FreeNAS without problems, please create a new post, and, starting with your hardware specs, give us a description of the initial upgrade problem.

I never said Freenas was unstable. You accuse with reading diagonally! I quote my original post: "I want to say I have used FreeNAS for a couple of years now and while it stays stable once you make it work ... [...] All has be done by the Wizard. It is a pitty because the very first reason why any common user tries Freenas is the presumed ease of deployment and configuration offered by the graphical interface and wizard preconfiguration." It has nothing to do with bad hardware. The problem is the software here. And the user for not knowing better...

You obviously have been offended by my post, not cofused by it. But that is on you, not on me. My post was a warning based on previous experience. A common user should be warned that changing something via graphical interface can go wrong! Even the upgrade / install guide warns about it... (hence the chapter "If something goes wrong")

As for trying to get help here i thought did.
Previously i didn't "failed to respond to a poster" because i got help elsewhere and solved my problem in 24 hours (no allusions here, just facts). By that time, his assistance wasn't needed anymore. That is why i did not accuse anyone here for anything. I'm glad for getting attention and help offeres. You remarks fall well beyond the content of my post and don't reflect anything about me.
As for my latest post i simply cannot provide info about the software configuration due to the fact that i had to format the drive and reinstall the older version over it. Hence there are no logs left... If anyone needs some information to be provided in order to provide help, please let me know what exactly that is before accusing me for not providing it. I am obviously over my head in this matters and thought this was obvious.

However I am still intrested in upgrading the sistem to the later version if that can be made securely. Prefferably using the graphical interface, but not ncessarily so. However, this has never worked for me. If anyone can provide me (or just point me in the right direction) with a step by step guide (backup + upgrade) that i can safely follow, i would be eternally grateful. Else i can do without further frustrations...


Here are hardware specs:

Asus Sabertooth Intel Z77 LGA1155 (10 SATA ports)
Intel Z77 chipset : 2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), 4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s) Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
ASMedia ASM1061 controller : 2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), 2 x eSATA 6Gb/s port(s)
Intel Core i5-2320 3 Ghz 6MB LGA1155
RAM 10GB ADATA Premier 8GB DDR3 1600MHz CL11 + 2GB ADATA DDR3 1600MHz CL11
HDD 4 x Seagate NAS HDD 4TB 5900RPM 64MB SATA-III + 4 x WD Green 2TB SATA-III IntelliPower 64MB WD20EZRX
USB dongle is Kinston Data Traveller 8GB

That's about all. And is all perfectly compatible with FreeNAS 9.2.3.1. If that helps...

Shell
[root@freenas ~]# zpool status
pool: fagure
state: ONLINE
scan: resilvered 712K in 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Sep 23 23:42:27 2015
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
fagure ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/0b4ed719-c8ae-11e3-9347-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/0b9d05ce-c8ae-11e3-9347-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/0bfe32ef-c8ae-11e3-9347-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/0c563816-c8ae-11e3-9347-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/0ca40e95-c8ae-11e3-9347-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1-1 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/5318b53d-e5d0-11e4-bc27-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/9645c469-ca46-11e3-b4b6-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/96c6c40f-ca46-11e3-b4b6-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/97733b0d-ca46-11e3-b4b6-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/97eb13a6-ca46-11e3-b4b6-60a44c53d86b ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

[root@freenas ~]# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOU
NTPOINT
fagure 21.4T 9.45G 773K /mn
t/fagure
fagure/.system 92.9M 9.45G 268K leg
acy
fagure/.system/cores 25.4M 9.45G 25.4M leg
acy
fagure/.system/samba4 3.40M 9.45G 3.40M leg
acy
fagure/.system/syslog 230K 9.45G 230K leg
acy
fagure/.system/syslog-fcb08f55bee64bfe9cbef5b655e8fd35 63.6M 9.45G 63.6M leg
acy
fagure/fagure 21.4T 9.45G 21.4T /mn
t/fagure/fagure
[root@freenas ~]#

 

[Nick2253]

I'm confused because it sounds like you want help, but you never asked for help, or provided any troubleshooting information. Your post reads like an angry rant, but you also include enough detail for me to tell you're trying to get this to work. I responded because I wasn't sure what your angle was, and I've been in those frustrated shoes before. I'd rather reach out to a frustrated user who doesn't want help, then pass over one who does.

I'm not offended by your post. FreeNAS is not my product. I do not have any say in it's success, other than as a fan of the product. I spend my own time here to help other people with their problems, largely because I have been helped here. My goal here is to help you. That's the whole reason I'm spending time responding to you. I could have said nothing, moved on, and left this to someone else. But I chose not to.

You say you're in over your head: you're not alone. I was once in way over my head with FreeNAS, but, thanks in a large part to the community here, it's slightly less over my head.

However, you've also failed to provide any kind of diagnostic or troubleshooting information to help you. The only direct request for help has been a "step-by-step" guide that works. Well, as far as we are aware, the default upgrade path is pretty step-by-step, and it works for most of us.

If you can't upgrade, what are your errors? What problems are you seeing? That's also why I strongly recommend a new thread: focusing on one issue at a time is much more productive. Your comments here so far have indicated you have problems with many if not most GUI functions, GUI upgrades, 9.3 install upgrades, boot problems, missing volumes, keyboard errors, etc. Pick one issue (I'm thinking the 9.3 upgrade), and give us any errors you see, your hardware configuration, and some debug data (the Forum Rules lay out a pretty comprehensive set of commands that provide invaluable troubleshooting data). Once we fix that one, we'll move on to the next one :)

 

[cyberjock]

I never said Freenas was unstable. You accuse with reading diagonally! I

Oh?

I want to say i cannot consider this version "STABLE" at all for the following reasons:

So if it's not stable, what is it? Un-stable seems to be the first word that comes to mind...

And look at your hardware. None of it, NONE of it is anything we recommend. Have we not provided enough warnings that if you use hardware that may not be fully compatible that you may have problems.

I'll be honest, I read the first few sentences of your first post (never read any of the bullets) and the first two things that came to mind was "he tinkered with the OS or he used hardware we don't recommend". (keypoint in the previous sentence).

So I scrolled down and read Nick2253's posts, Eric's posts, and you said that you are claiming you never said it was unstable. Then I started writing this reponse.

Then I looked for system specs (back to that whole "is the hardware something we should expect to work") and found it isn't. None of it is anything we recommend. I'm sorry, but I don't feel you can make the claim that it is "all perfectly compatible with 9.2.1.3" with your level of expertise with FreeBSD/FreeNAS. I bet if I grabbed your logs and started reading I'd find errors and warnings galore pointing to all sorts of issues with driver attachment, etc. So while you may not be aware of problems, I bet there's lots of them.

This screams of a classic reason why we don't recommend using other hardware. It may work on one version, then not another. It may work today, and then not tomorrow. So we can either have people buy %randomhardware% and then spend lots of time trying to tell us the OS is totally unstable and unreliable, or we can recommend people buy very specific hardware that has a virtual 100% compatibility list with FreeBSD and FreeNAS and stuff will "just work".

To me, this sounds like a lot of self-sabotaging because you bought all that hardware. It would make a good desktop machine for Windows. For FreeNAS/FreeBSD, and as a file server, extremely poor choices were made. You are in over your head just like Nick said. The problem is that it's not easy (if even possible) for your first experience with a new, unfamiliar OS to be on hardware that isn't expected to necessarily work properly anyway. So when there's a problem you lack the experience, expertise, and knowledge to actually tell us if its a hardware problem or not.

So how many hours, or days are you going to spend trying to get enough help from the forums to debug all of the problems and figure out solutions, assuming any exist at all? And if you spend those dozens of hours (if you're lucky you'll only spend 100 or so hours trying to figure them all out) and *ARE* able to come up with solutions, was all that time worth it when you could have just bought out server-grade hardware recommendations to start with and never had to deal with all the problems you should never have had to deal with to begin with?

 

[popacio]

The system is working just fine for about 4 months 24/7 with the "not recommended" hardware. It has done so for years. This is what i have and this is what i use. I am not a professional and don't have the budget for anything else. It might well be a hardware issue for why the system hasn't installed properly the first time. But the fact i managed to reinstall successfully once i got around the USB3.0 bug and that is working stable for so much time is a good indication to me that this is not the case.
I thought the idea behind FreeNAS was that this is a simple NAS solution for the average user that gives him the possibility to use consumer grade hardware in a safer manner. And i also thought that "FreeNAS is an operating system that can be installed on virtually any hardware platform" as clearly advertised by the development team on their homepage. But i obviously don't understand such complicated professional issues and i am talking through my arse. So i deserve to be scolded. Again...

 

[Ericloewe]

I am not a professional and don't have the budget for anything else.

Well, that's an absurd statement.

Your motherboard and CPU are more expensive than recommended hardware would've been. RAM is probably a wash.


I'm sorry if you feel offended in any way. That is not our goal. Our goal is to make it clear for future readers that it is surprisingly easy to employ proper hardware and that they should not believe the "it's expensive" FUD train.