If you want to clear a zfs property, you will often be told to use inherit to instead just inherit the value from the parent dataset. But what if you want to clear a zpool property instead? The answer is simple but you got to know it.
Here I put the '' to emphasize the fact that it’s a pure empty space. that is, if you want to clear the property, there is nothing after ‘=’.
zpool set <property>='' <pool>
You don’t really install FreeNAS as you do with some other OS. Instead you have a device (often an USB key) that boots FreeNAS which itself manages your data storage. Indeed why wasting some precious SATA port for a boot device when all you need is a little USB key? Especially when thits boot device is less than 2GB in size.
The problem with USB keys is that they wear out over time. So it inevitably comes a time when it must be replaced. This is what happened to me a few days ago.
The freenas-boot pool switched to a DEGRADED state because checksum error happened too frequently. Fortunately a zpool scrub freenas-boot detected no error, and it seems that zfs was still able to correct those. So instead of reflashing a new USB key and restoring my config backup, I could from FreeNAS itself create a new bootable USB key and replace replace the faulty device in the freenas-boot pool.
Let’s login on FreeNAS and plug in your new USB key. We first find and verify what is the device name for the USB key, in my case it’s da2:
$ gpart part show da2
=> 1 60088319 da2 MBR (29G)
1 31 - free - (16K)
32 60088288 1 fat32lba (29G)
You see that MBR table and a FAT32 partition, in my case it can only be the new USB key. We will replace that with GPT partitions. This will contain a boot partition (MBR boot or EFI boot), and a ZFS partition. As root:
# Clean that MBR and create GPT partition table gpart destroy -F da2 gpart create -s GPT da2 # If you use MBR boot gpart add -s 64K -t freebsd-boot da2 gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 da2 # If you use EFI boot gpart add -s 128M -t efi da2 gpart bootcode -p /boot/boot1.efifat -i 1 da2 # Create the ZFS partition gpart add -t freebsd-zfs da2
Now it’s time to replace the device:
$ zpool replace -f freenas-boot da1p2 da2p2 cannot replace da1p2 with da2p2: device is too small # OOPS! :(
If you got the message device is too small, that is because you’ve been trying to replace a device with another one that is smaller than the original (in term of ZFS partition size I suppose). ZFS requires that you replace a device with another with a size greater or equal to the old one. This can be a problem especially if you have a ZFS partition along with others in the partition table like here, or if the vendor announces a certain disk size but only within a certain approximation. You could result in a disk announced to be the exact same size ending up to be very slighty shorter than your original disk. And as a result you won’t be able to use it to replace any disk in your ZFS pool/vdev. That’s why some recommend to create ZFS filesystems several percents less than the available disk size.
But since we messed up, instead we will create a pool on the other USB key and use ZFS send/recv to migrate the files.
# Create the pool on the new USB key. # Note that we have to call it freenas-boot2 # because freenas-boot already exists. zpool create freenas-boot2 da2p2 # Create a recursive snapshot of the original pool # that we will use to restore the backup. zfs snapshot -r freenas-boot@restore # Send the snapshot from the old to the new USB key. zfs send -R freenas-boot@restore | zfs recv -F freenas-boot2
We also need to save the original setting for bootfs because FreeNAS has its own way of managing the boot pool. We will set this value later on the new pool.
$ zpool get bootfs NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE freenas-boot bootfs freenas-boot/ROOT/11.3-U4.1 local
We still have to change that name from freenas-boot2 to freenas-boot. However we cannot do so on the running instance of FreeNAS because it already has a pool named freenas-boot. So, we will import it on another ZFS capable machine and fix its name.
(but if anyone knows how to do this live, I’m interested)
# On some other ZFS capable host (FreeBSD for instance ;) ) # import the pool and change its name back to freenas-boot. # The -f is required because it comes from another host. zpool import -f freenas-boot2 freenas-boot # Configure default boot filesystem. # Remember the value of bootfs we found before on the original pool. zpool set bootfs=freenas-boot/ROOT/11.3-U4.1 freenas-boot # Export the pool again. zpool export freenas-boot
Finally you can clear the old snapshot:
zfs destroy -R freebsd-boot@restore
Online.net’s Dedibox XC 2016 comes with 16 GB DDR3 and 1 To SATA or 250 GB SSD on a 8 cores Atom CPU. This is a very nice entry-level dedicated box for anyone who want to upgrade from a small VPS (yes, there is some upgrade in the air). There is only one HDD and no RAID though. But they offer (for free) a 100 GB FTP storage space which is more than enough to backup the base system and bootstrap it again in case of disk failure.
An advantage of dedicated over VPS is that you can install almost any OS you want. The management console comes with an easy install for FreeBSD 11 on UFS. But I thought it would be nice to use ZFS instead. Yeah, I hear you, why using ZFS with only one HDD and non-ECC memory? But with 16 GB it still comes as a viable alternative.
The method I used was adapted from a post on Online.net’s forum. So here we go. First, reboot in rescue mode from the console. Choose FreeBSD 10.2 (or higher) as the rescue OS. Once you are logged on the rescue, switch to root and bootstrap FreeBSD:
SWAP_SIZE=4g
TEMP_ROOT_PASSWORD="1337rul35"
# Create partitions table
gpart destroy -F ada0
gpart create -s gpt ada0
gpart add -t freebsd-boot -l boot -s 512K ada0
gpart add -t freebsd-swap -l swap -s $SWAP_SIZE -a 1m ada0
gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -l zfs0 ada0
# Install MBR
dd if=/dev/zero of=ada0p3 count=560 bs=512
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada0
# Create ZFS pool and FS
zpool create -f -m none -o altroot=/mnt -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache -O compress=lz4 -O atime=off zroot gpt/zfs0
zfs create -o mountpoint=/ zroot/ROOT
zfs create -o mountpoint=/usr zroot/usr
zfs create -o mountpoint=/var zroot/var
zfs create -o mountpoint=/tmp zroot/tmp
zfs create -o mountpoint=/www zroot/www
zfs create -o mountpoint=/usr/home zroot/usr/home
zpool set bootfs=zroot/ROOT zroot
# Bootstrap
cd /mnt
fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/11.0-RELEASE/base.txz
fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/11.0-RELEASE/kernel.txz
tar --unlink -Jxpf base.txz -C /mnt
tar --unlink -Jxpf kernel.txz -C /mnt
rm base.txz kernel.txz
# Configuration
# 1) fstab and swap
cat << EOF > /mnt/etc/fstab
ada0p2 none swap sw 0 0
EOF
# 2) rc.conf
cat << EOF > /mnt/etc/rc.conf
keymap="fr.acc"
ifconfig_igb0="DHCP"
ifconfig_igb1="DHCP"
fsck_y_enable="YES"
background_fsck="YES"
zfs_enable="YES"
sshd_enable="YES"
EOF
# 3) loader.conf
cat << EOF > /mnt/boot/loader.conf
zfs_load="YES"
vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:zroot/ROOT"
boot_multicons="YES"
boot_serial="YES"
comconsole_speed="9600"
console="comconsole"
comconsole_port="0x2F8"
EOF
# 4) TTY for serial console
cat << EOF >> /mnt/etc/ttys
ttyu1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure
EOF
# 5) Temporary root password
echo "$TEMP_ROOT_PASSWORD" | pw -R /mnt user mod -n root -h 0
# Last step
cd ~
zpool export zroot
zpool import -o altroot=/mnt -o cachefile=/tmp/zpool.cache zroot
cp /tmp/zpool.cache /mnt/boot/zfs
# Terminated!
halt
Now from the management console, reboot in normal mode and connect to your box using serial connection. You should be able to login with root and continue the configuration from there.