Solved ZROOT failure

LibreQuest

LibreQuest

Looking for help with ZFS. I am booted into a live FreeBSD 13.2 trying to fix my zroot.

Zpool import returns
ZFS filesystem version: 5
ZFS storage pool version: feature support (5000)
pool: zroot
id: 8141163279847660127
state: online
Status: some supported features are not enabled on the pool.
Action: the pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier ...
Config
Zroot online
Ada0p2 online

(Typing this out on a phone by the way)

Zpool status -x
No pools available

Zpool list -v
No pools available
 
The first command just printed out instructions on how to use zpool.

The second says
Cannot open 'zroot': dataset does not exist
 
I tried the first a second time. I had a typo. It says,

Cannot import 'zroot': no such or pool or dataset
 
Gpart status shows all partitions are ok. Gpart list looks good as well. And gpart show looks normal. Ada0 has efi on 1 freebsd-zfs on 2 and freebsd-swap on 3. And 5.5MB free space as well.
 
The last thing I did on this system before shutting it down was plugging in an HDMI monitor to the HDMI port, it's a laptop.
 
Did you actually type "zpool import -R /mnt zroot"? It's not clear that you've done anything other than a simple "zpool import" (which will list available pools, but not import anything).
 
Yep. Finally got something to mount the drive. I pulled the drive from the laptop and put it into a USB housing. Then booted up another FreeBSD ZFS system and typed this.

sudo zpool import -o readonly=on -f 8141163279847660127 temp

And that mounts the zroot of the other system as temp.

Now I just need to get my crap off the drive and I'm going to nuke the drive for this.
 
Shouldn't need to nuke anything. At worst, re-import without the readonly flag, run a scrub. If it succeeds, be happy and keep using it.
 
I got all my data. It's on another machine at the moment. But I'm nuking this thing. And it's now nuked and has FreeBSD 13.2 new install. So I can move my data back. No idea what it's problem was but if it happens again I'm going to take a hammer to this machine and get a different one.
 
LibreQuest said:
Yep. Finally got something to mount the drive. I pulled the drive from the laptop and put it into a USB housing. Then booted up another FreeBSD ZFS system and typed this.

sudo zpool import -o readonly=on -f 8141163279847660127 temp

And that mounts the zroot of the other system as temp.

Now I just need to get my crap off the drive and I'm going to nuke the drive for this.
Click to expand...
I agree you shouldn't have to nuke the drive, but I find it odd that all you did was you moved the drive to another system and it worked fine. That implies something on the laptop that was out of sync with the ZFS bits. Some things I can think of are maybe drive reordering in the bios or mismatch between the boot loader bits and the pool itself.
 
mer said:
I agree you shouldn't have to nuke the drive, but I find it odd that all you did was you moved the drive to another system and it worked fine. That implies something on the laptop that was out of sync with the ZFS bits. Some things I can think of are maybe drive reordering in the bios or mismatch between the boot loader bits and the pool itself.
Click to expand...
That sounds like it's correct. I think the laptop had some weird issue with the initial set up and something finally broke. No idea why or what. But it's reinstalled running a beautiful icewm with that sweet drm-kmod amdgpu driver. lol

I am very new to FreeBSD. I was about to use ufs this time but figured I should give ZFS another go on this hardware since it really seems like my laptop may have an issue rather than the file system or the drive.

EDIT: I should also note that prior to this issue the system boot would fail sometimes requiring a reboot before it would find the boot loader. That issue is not longer present. I've tested it a few times. If it comes back I'll just move to a different laptop. I'm sure I can find a used system online to replace it if needed.
 
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For me, one of the best things about ZFS even on a single device system, is boot environments (BE). Using them correctly they help in doing upgrades. If you are using binary packages, freebsd-update will create a new boot environment when it needs to. That new BE represents the state of the system before the upgrade and then the upgrade happens in the current BE. Something fails? Reboot and select the previous BE and you're back in business.
 
I did notice that I had a backup. I tried booting it. And then tried again. And then with verbose and with safe mode and with every other conceivable variable. But I couldn't get any of it to work.
 
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The issues are back. With random reboots, hard drive not being recognized. I remember I updated the bios on this laptop. Perhaps the update broke the system. Ive changed out ssds on the system with new install and it has the same issues. So it's a hardware issue with the laptop.

Edit: It's hammer time?
 
Did you restore default BIOS settings just after update?

I would recommend that you use software tool like Memtest86 first before you use any hardware tool like hammer. :D
 
rashey said:
Did you restore default BIOS settings just after update?

I would recommend that you use software tool like Memtest86 first before you use any hardware tool like hammer. :D
Click to expand...
Yes, I did restore. I've switched out drives, fresh install. Rebooted several times. Seems like it's actually working now. Maybe..
 
I have another system that did the same thing. I changed ahci to ata for Sata mode and it booted again. Weird. Also I've not had any issues with the laptop since the reinstall on a new drive.

EDIT: The bios reset after we had a power outage. Can confirm since we had another outage due to a storm with 100+ mph / 160 kph winds last night. The bios reset itself on power out. I really need to get a UPS on this system.
 
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