List Block Devices on FreeBSD

Recently, I found out that the ZFS pool on a FreeBSD is running out of space. There is no option to clean up this storage, but there are spare disks. So the next logical thing to do is to add 2 extra disks to the existing (mirror) ZFS pool. This FreeBSD server is a virtual machine (VM), and after attaching 2 physical disks to this VM, I had difficulty identifying these disks....

July 14, 2021 · 3 min · 567 words · kenno

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

Upgrading Freebsd 11.2 to 12.0-RELEASE

FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE was released today, and that means it’s time to upgrade 2 of FreeBSD 11.2 machines to this latest version. One of my FreeBSD boxes is a desktop used at work, and the upgrade went well without any issues. In this post, I’m going to document how the upgrade is done on my nas server at home. First ensure that the FreeBSD is up to date: root@nas:~ # freebsd-update fetch src component not installed, skipped Looking up update....

December 12, 2018 · 4 min · 679 words · kenno