I’ve just migrated from CORE to SCALE as a clean install.
Like before, I installed SCALE on my SanDisk Tiny USB 16GB flash drive as was recommended in the past (I know it’s less likely to do with SCALE).
Following the migration guide, on first boot, I connected to the web-UI and imported the last Config backup. Most of the settings imported as expected.
But, in this backup, I’ve had two pools, one of them called “stash” was tagged as (System Dataset Pool) - I screen-captured it as recommended by the migration guide.
So I’m assuming, and please correct me if I’m wrong, this means that the USB flash drive is only used for the OS to load from, kind of read-only, where all the “write” stuff was done on my “stash” pool.
Now, after importing the old config, I don’t see my “stash” pool marked as (System Dataset Pool) anymore. In addition, I’m getting warnings that ‘boot-pool’ is consuming USB devices ‘sde’ which is not recommended.
From what I read, it’s for Logging and Reporting only.
Having this warning, can I assume that “stash” is not set as my (System Dataset Pool) anymore? If so, how do I set it back?
How do I make sure my USB flash drive will only be used for bootstrapping the OS and nothing more (read-only)?
No - in SCALE there is quite a lot of writes being done to the boot pool even if you move the system configuration dataset elsewhere - it is NOT just used for loading the O/S.
This makes a USB flash drive completely unsuitable for use as a boot drive.
I have a SSK USB SSD (looks like a flash stick, but it is a genuine SSD) that is more suitable. However you can also get USB disconnects in which case the TrueNAS server hangs.
See my comment from yesterday. I ran happily on a usb thumb drive for a while. Then it just didn’t any more. I had a config backup so restore was easy, but boot-pool is now on spinning rust instead of a usb thumb drive.
Thanks for the heads up. I re-installed on my spare SSD drive.
One thing though, it’s kind of a “waste” allocating a complete 250GB SSD just for TrueNAS without an option to also use it as a regular pool for fast access files, like SMB shares.
Is it possible to split it into different partitions, allocate one (~20GB) for OS and the rest as zfs pool?
In essence relatively easy. Start boot the installer, go into command line and edit one line in the install script (which allocates the boot pool partition) and it will use the 16GB or 32GB that you allocated and leave the rest available for you to allocate a regular pool on it. (I can’t remember whether I could do this in the UI or whether I needed to use the command line to create and export it and then import it into the UI.
But I first installed Bluefin by this method and I have upgraded several times for both major and minor releases without any issues.
Make sure that you replicate this extra SSD pool to your HDD pool as a backup.
The downsides of this are:
It puts you outside of formal iX support.
If you are doing this it is probably because you don’t have a surfeit of SATA ports - in which it case it won’t be mirrored.
The benefit of a separate dedicated boot drive is that you can easily rebuild it simply by reinstalling TrueNAS and restoring the configuration file. If you use the rest of the drive for something else, recreating the drive is more difficult.
Despite my not having a single issue with doing this despite several upgrades, that doesn’t mean I won’t experience such a problem in the future.
The upsides are:
You don’t need a precious SATA or NVME port for an SSD pool.
My personal recommendation…
Mission critical / enterprise usage - just buy better hardware
Home / family business where longer down time is just a minor annoyance - don’t do it unless it really makes a difference and you are prepared to live with the consequences.
What’s wrong with splitting the SSD into two partitions so what already occupied by the TrueNAS installer will become the first partition? I believe it involves updating grub to boot load from this partition. It’s quite easy to do with any other Linux distro.
I don’t need any formal support from iX, after all it’s a small Home NAS, fat from being enterprise solution. Worst case scenario reinstall and load config. How complex and not recommended this approach can be?
Ahh … I don’t care about the other partition being non redundant same as I don’t care about putting all my Steam games or other files in my Windows drives which are not redundant. Nothing to cry about it in case of disaster.
My precious and what I really care about is safely stored in a redundant pool also backed up in Backblaze B2.
Not really an issue IMO because you can always replicate to HDD as a backup.
I have done this myself without any problems so far and without any regrets.
(I have had some issues with using a USB SSD as my boot pool and some regrets on this, but I have had zero additional issues with adding other pools to this boot drive. I also have some regret on configuring my 5x 4TB pool as RAIDZ1 rather than RAIDZ2, but I have not had any drive fail yet much less have a 2nd fail at the same time, so it remains to be seen whether this regret is due to excess caution.)
I think if you look through the community forums, people who go down unpaved roads still get a lot of help.
As I said, I have had some issues with my USB SSD disconnecting but since I moved it to a different USB port it has been much more stable (up-time almost a month as I type this).
But zero issues with using a 16GB boot-pool and utilising the other space for a swap partition and an apps-pool.
In this case, you’re almost ready to split your boot device. Mind that it still requires to install to a suitably small device, because the installer wants a full device, mirroring the small drive with a partition and then removing the temporary install device. And mind that you’ll go the same hassle if you ever have to reinstall.
Is it worth it for a mere 200 GB of storage?
Start the installer and let it load. Before you kick off the actual installation use the option to open a shell / command line. Then edit the install script and find the line that creates the boot partition and change it so that it doesn’t use the entire drive but instead (say) 16GB. Save the file, exit the command shell and install TrueNAS.
It’s more than a years since I followed the detailed instructions on the old Community forum, so I can’t remember what line to search for and how to change it, but if someone can find it and add a link here that will make it easier for others.
