Open Source

Experimenting with compression off

Leave a Comment / Disks, File Systems, FreeBSD, hardware, nvme, Open Source, ZFS, ZFS / By /

Now that the new storage is in place, I thought to test with compression on and off. Perhaps also use both lz4 and zstd. For reference, this is one of a series of posts regarding compression testing on zpools: Experimenting with compression off – you are here Experimenting with compression=lz4 Experimenting with compression=zstd Compression results My plan: create three zpools of two mirrored devices and test. There will be three posts: compression off, […]

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Adding in new NVMe cards and sticks – and replacing two SSDs

Leave a Comment / DELL, Disks, FreeBSD, hardware, Open Source, R730, ZFS / By /

I notice I also worked with some SSDs at the end of this post – I have since amended the title of this post. In this post: FreeBSD 14.3 Today I removed two existing NVMe cards, each with a 1TB stick on it. Those sticks were added to these cards: If you want the same hardware, you can use these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. These are all

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r730-01: the drive replacement plan

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This post is mostly for my benefit, so I can keep track of my plan for adjusting space. It doesn’t contain much of educational value. For what I actually did, see zfs: setting compression and adding new vdevs One recent day, I powered off r730-01 and took inventory of the 16 drive bays. A short overview: [17:36 r730-01 dvl ~] % zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CKPOINT EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH

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Cannot override /etc/newsyslog.conf with /etc/newsyslog.conf.d/newsyslog.conf

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FreeBSD has a great concept of establishing default values and letting the user override them. That approach does not apply to newsyslog, and specifically, newsyslog.conf This idea came up on IRC after I said I was looking forward to a new FreeBSD 15 which allows the compression specified in newsyslog.conf to be overridden. Using /etc/newsyslog.conf.d Getting a clean copy First, I grabbed a pristine copy of /etc/newsyslog.conf from the repo: [12:34 r730-01 dvl

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Finding out more about nvme on FreeBSD

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Recently I’ve been playing with NVMe to find out more about monitoring for wear. Tried nvme-cli: [17:49 r730-01 dvl ~] % nvme list Failed to scan topology: No such file or directory Seems it is a known problem. Went with this instead: [17:52 r730-01 dvl ~] % sudo nvmecontrol devlist nvme0: Samsung SSD 980 PRO with Heatsink 1TB nvme0ns1 (953869MB) nvme1: Samsung SSD 980 PRO with Heatsink 1TB nvme1ns1 (953869MB) With more information

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Mounting and unmounting zfs filesystems within a #FreeBSD jail

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I have a jail on r730-01 called dvl-ingress01. Here are some filesystems related to that jail: [11:50 r730-01 dvl ~] % zfs list | grep dvl-ingress01 | grep repos NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT data02/freshports/dvl-ingress01/ingress/repos 8.65G 1011G 112K /jails/dvl-ingress01/var/db/ingress/repos data02/freshports/dvl-ingress01/ingress/repos/doc 706M 1011G 678M /jails/dvl-ingress01/var/db/ingress/repos/doc data02/freshports/dvl-ingress01/ingress/repos/ports 3.53G 1011G 2.30G /jails/dvl-ingress01/var/db/ingress/repos/ports data02/freshports/dvl-ingress01/ingress/repos/src 4.44G 1011G 2.73G /jails/dvl-ingress01/var/db/ingress/repos/src data02/freshports/dvl-ingress01/repos 120K 1011G 120K /jails/dvl-ingress01/var/db/ingress/repos That is not a complete list, but it illustrates the filesystems I’m working with

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Updating a FreeBSD 14.2 host to FreeBSD 14.3 via freebsd-update

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I’m ready to update r730-01 (I see that link is from 2024 – I’ll refresh it after this update) from FreeBSD 14.2 to FreeBSD 14.3. First, some clean up: [21:04 r730-01 dvl ~] % bectl list BE Active Mountpoint Space Created 14.2-RELEASE-p4_2025-08-08_112039 – – 342M 2025-08-08 11:20 default NR / 11.6G 2024-06-19 16:38 testing – – 74.0M 2025-08-09 10:59 [21:04 r730-01 dvl ~] % sudo bectl destroy 14.2-RELEASE-p4_2025-08-08_112039 [21:04 r730-01 dvl ~] %

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Using a sparse git checkout to build vuxml files

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This post shows how I used a git spare checkout to build vuxml files without having the whole ports tree present. In this post: FreeBSD 14.2 FreeBSD 14.3-STABLE git-2.50.1 git-tiny-2.50.1 This came about when recent commits to security/vuxml weren’t showing up on in my host, despite doing pkg audit -F – this was several hours after the commit. trouble told me to check this jail on that host. Eventually I figured out the

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Clear the existing good drive and add it to the new zpool

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In recent posts: Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD x8dtu: adding in the smaller drive Swapping zpools – moving from using main_tank to using data If you have a look over those posts, you’ll see why you never want to downsize a zpool. In this post: FreeBSD 14.2 removing the zfs labels from an drive which was part of a zpool which is no longer in use destroying the

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x8dtu: adding in the smaller drive

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I was up at 5:30 AM today. I packed the car and headed out. I arrived within the datacenter at about 8:15 or so. By 8:50, I was on IRC and the photos of the FreeBSD racks were uploading. Since I was going there anyway, I did some inventory and disposal work (a decommissioned server, about 25 old HDD, and various bits and pieces). I must say though, I’m not liking this option.

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