Trouble Initializing Disks OmniOS / Napp-it

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cbutters

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Sep 13, 2016
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I have two questions about initializing disks into my napp-it server (omnios).

Question 1) Whenever I drop brand new disks to rebuild mirrors with a larger disks, napp-it cannot see the drives in the "Initialize" section unless I put the drive first into a windows machine and initialize it in windows. Why can't napp-it do this itself? (I'm sure it probably can but I have something wrong.)

Question 2) So while testing my pool I simulated a hardware failure by popping a drive that was part of a mirror out (no hotspares); I then popped it back in a few minutes later expecting it would rebuild itself automatically. This did not happen. The drive continued to show as "REMOVED". so I tried the napp-it interface to replace the drive... this didnt work, it showed no drives available to replace. So I attempted to delete the "REMOVED" drive to see if I could then add it. I was able to remove the drive and now my mirror is now just a single disk; but the server now does not see the removed drive to be able to extend the pool again as a mirror. The removed drive does not show up as an initialization target either.

Question 2A) What should I have done to recover after popping the existing drive out and popping it back in (assume that the drive that was popped in and out is healthy).

Question 2B) After "deleting" the drive from the pool... How come napp-it refuses to see the drive anymore? Why can't I reinitialize the drive?

-EDIT So after actually allowing things to reboot, I could use the removed drive again to add to the pool. Is it possible to do this without rebooting?
 
Last edited:

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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I suppose your disk controller is not hot plug capable or enabled.

SAS HBAs are always hot plug capable. Sata/ AHCI is often hot plug capable but you may need to enable in bios and in OmniOS. You can enable Sata hotplug for OmniOS in System > Appliance tuning or by adding

* enable sata hotplug
set sata:sata_auto_online=1

to /etc/system.
 

asche

New Member
Oct 6, 2017
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There may be more to this ...

I used to run an ext4 mdadm RAID1 with, inter alia, one 4TB Ironwolf and one 4TB Seagate NAS drive under Arch. Worked perfectly for a few years. Then I put that on hold.

Later on, tried to re-purpose both 4TB disks in my ESXi/OmniOS/napp-IT setup (Dell T30 with a Dell H200 in IT mode). No hot-plug.

The Ironwolf 4TB works, an ebay-bought Seagate NAS 4TB works. My existing 4TB Seagate NAS drive *breaks* both OmniOS and ESXI: Both start up. OmniOS serves NFS to ESXi fine. But:

- SMB does not work
- I can't login over the (VMware/browser) console to OmniOs
- I can't SSH into OmniOS (no login prompt)
- the HBA starts to throw wild errors (in mpt_sas)
- OmniOS complains about "set sata:sata_auto_online=1" being set multiple times (it isn't)
- OmniOS/napp-it shows the two working drives but not the problematic Seagate NAS drive
- eventually, the HBA errors cause ESXi to toggle it from "passthrough" to "not passed through" on reboot

Changing the power and SAS-to-SATA cables does not help (swapped them with those of the other two working disks).

Of course, that very same 4TB Seagate NAS drive works when plugged into a regular Win10 bare metal machine ...
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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I would do an intensive disk test (WD data lifeguard, Seagate Sea Tools etc)
 

asche

New Member
Oct 6, 2017
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Disk tests don't turn up any errors. Wondering why a bad disk would torpedo the SSH and SMB services but not NFS?