R710 – getting the drives ready

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

I recently installed 6 SSDs into an R710. In this post, I will describe what I did to the empty SSDs before I started using them. short test I ran a short test on each one of the drives. I already had smartctl. $ sudo smartctl -t short /dev/da0 smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE-p1 amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST […]

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Converting a Dell R710 into a ZFS-based FreeBSD 11.1 tape library bacula-sd

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If you’ve read even a little of what I’ve written, the following points will not come as a surprise: I like FreeBSD I’m a fan of backups I use Bacula I like ZFS I have tape libraries In this post, I will cover all of the above and more. Photos will be included. New gear Full disclosure: the following links contain my Amazon referrer code. On the left is the ICY DOCK 2.5″

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x8dtu

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NOTE: this post has been replaced by a newer version. The older post is still available This is x8dtu (named after the SuperMicro motherboard). This is the new FreshPorts server. In short: FreeBSD 11 booting off a mirrored pair of zfsroot SSDs 4.5TB of mirrored ZFS 196612 MB of RAM (yeah, that’s 196GB of RAM) SuperMicro X8TDU motherboard Intel Xeon E5620 @ 2.40GHz (two of those, giving 16 CPUs) NOTE: this post replaces

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Moving FreshPorts

Leave a Comment / DNS, FreeBSD, FreshPorts, PostgreSQL / By /

Today I moved the FreshPorts website from one server to another. My goal is for nobody to notice. In preparation for this move, I have: DNS TTL reduced to 60s Posted to Twitter Updated the status page Put the website put in offline mode: Sorry, the website is offline from 2017-11-05 17:01, for approximately 3 hours. It is now 2017-11-05 17:01. That works for both http and https: [dan@air01:~] $ wget -S http://www.freshports.org

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Dumping PostgreSQL 9.4 to upgrade to PostgreSQL 9.6

Leave a Comment / ezjail, FreshPorts, Jails, PostgreSQL / By /

FreeBSD 10.3 & PostgreSQL 9.4 on the old server, and FreeBSD 11.1 & PostgreSQL 9.6 on the new server. As part of the move from the old FreshPorts server (photos) to the new FreshPorts server, I’ll need to dump the database and copy it over. What? No zfs send? There is no ZFS on the old server. The rule of thumb when upgrading a PostgreSQL database is to dump with the pg_dump client

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/etc/rc.subr: 1391: Syntax error: “fi”: unexpected

Leave a Comment / DigitalOcean, ezjail, FreeBSD, freebsd-update, Jails, Open Source, Postfix, ZFS / By /

Yesterday, I upgraded a DigitalOcean droplet from FreeBSD 10.3 to FreeBSD 11.1 just before I headed to work. I’ve done such upgrades several times before. They all went well. This one did not. Several issues cascaded to prevent me from completely this task in a timely manner. Let me describe the events as they unfolded. The freebsd-update From memory, because the system is not back online as I type this, the command I

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Upgrading from FreeBSD 10.3 to 11.1 via freebsd-update and beadm

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Yesterday I modified a server from booting off a raidz2 array, to booting off a newly created zpool. Why? Because HBAs are a pain to boot off. Instead, this server is now booting off a ZFS mirror of two SSDs, both of which are directly attached to the M/B. Today, I am upgrading this server from FreeBSD 10.3 to FreeBSD 11.1 by making use of beadm. WARNING! Not all steps of the freebsd-update

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Moving boot from one zpool to another

Leave a Comment / beadm, Disks, FreeBSD, Open Source, ZFS / By /

I’ve been having boot issues with a server containing 20 HDD, all behind HBAs. I have decided to start booting off SSDs. In that previous blog post, there was much speculation about where to mount the new drives, etc. In the meantime, I came up with a solution which did not involve magnets and used a pair of INTEL 730 SSDs I had in another chassis. Let’s start with how I configured those

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Moving from zroot from one zpool to another

Leave a Comment / beadm, Disks, FreeBSD, hardware / By /

Please also see Moving boot from one zpool to another and Adding a zroot pool to an existing system. On my 20x HDD system at home (also known as knew), I am having a recurring problem with booting. This is also the same system mentioned in my FreeBSD Forums thread about some CAM errors. Side note: I now think those CAM errors may be temperature related.  EDIT: 2018-12-29: They were not temperature related.

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