How to Remove ZFS Meta Data on FreeBSD

It’s been quite a while since I last posted something here. It’s not that I haven’t come across many issues in tech, it’s just that I haven’t had enough time to write anything. So I’m going to share how to easily clear the ZFS metadata on a disk previously used in a ZFS pool. Here is an example - I have an external drive, and it is detected as /dev/da0 when plugged into a FreeBSD server....

May 26, 2021 · 2 min · 348 words · kenno

Using ZFS on an External Drive

I’m a fan of ZFS filesystem. It’s so good that I also use ZFS on most my Linux machines, though it’s painful at time when the ZFS kernel modules fail to compile. Why I like it so much comparing to other file system such as XFS, EXT4, BTRFS? ZFS allows me to quickly do snapshots and efficiently send snapshots over the network, and my nas runs FreeBSD which support ZFS natively....

November 12, 2020 · 3 min · 505 words · kenno

Replacing a Disk in a Zpool

ZFS is one of my favorite file systems. I use it at home on my nas server (running FreeBSD) as well as my Fedora 32 desktop. Today, I’m going to show you (and my future self) how to replace a (faulty) disk in a Zpool. The server I’ll be working on is nas2 and the pool is tank. List the status of the current pool. Password: root@nas2:~ # zpool status tank pool: tank state: DEGRADED status: One or more devices could not be opened....

September 20, 2020 · 3 min · 445 words · kenno

Remove Kernels on Fedora

I’m still running Fedora 31 on my main desktop though Fedora 32 beta has been out for a while. The only reason that stops me from jumping to F32 now is because ZFS 0.8.3 is not compatible with the kernel 5.6.* on F32. Rumor has it, ZFS 0.8.4 will support kernel 5.6. Tonight, while doing the system update with sudo dnf update -y on F31 desktop, I noticed that the kernel for F31 is now kernel-5....

April 26, 2020 · 2 min · 217 words · kenno

Fedora 30 Beta With ZFS Support

Up until today, I have been running Fedora 29 with the kernel 4.9. The current version of the kernel on Fedora 29 is 5.0. However, I had to stick with the 4.20 version for a very long while due to a thing I did a short while back. So what is that thing? Well, at one point ZFS (stable) no stopped working with the new kernel on Fedora 29. At then, I had a choice to either keep running older version of the kernel or trying out the new version of ZFS (testing)....

April 18, 2019 · 2 min · 380 words · kenno