From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jul 9 12:56:45 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: current@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 51A4D1065678 for ; Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:56:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@FreeBSD.org) Received: from weak.local (freefall.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::28]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C2318FC12; Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:56:44 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@FreeBSD.org) Message-ID: <4874B58B.7000108@FreeBSD.org> Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:56:43 +0200 From: Kris Kennaway User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (Macintosh/20080421) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: aslam_mohamed@wordbank.com References: <20080708100701.57031cda@twoflower.in.publishing.hu> <4873C4FA.2020004@FreeBSD.org> <20080709062533.J58331@woozle.rinet.ru> <48749087.4070802@FreeBSD.org> <20080709145010.Q58331@woozle.rinet.ru> <48749EA7.40702@FreeBSD.org> <20080709152739.Q58331@woozle.rinet.ru> <4874A453.7060406@FreeBSD.org> <4874A981.7080106@wordbank.com> In-Reply-To: <4874A981.7080106@wordbank.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Dmitry Morozovsky , current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Thinking of using ZFS/FBSD for a backup system X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:56:45 -0000 aslam_mohamed@wordbank.com wrote: > Hi, > I have been using FreeBSD/ZFS for our backup system for last few > months.. We had 6TB external disks connected through Firewire to the > Server. Last week all the backup data disappeared along with the pool > and everything!!!..When I typed zpool status - it says no pool > available..Build up to this incident has always been a firefighting > situation for me. We use Rsync to sync all the servers to FreeBSD's ZFS > pool everyday. Most of the time Rsync hung on the middle of the syncing > process. When this happen I have to restart the server to run the > backup again and mount the ZFS pool (it requires manual mounting most > of the time!!). Sometimes it throws some error like - > GEOM: da0: corrupt or invalid GPT detected. > GEOM: da0: GPT rejected -- may not be recoverable. > GEOM: da1: corrupt or invalid GPT detected. > GEOM: da1: GPT rejected -- may not be recoverable > I don't know what caused the disappearance of the ZFS pool and if > someone could explain how I can retrieve the data from the external > disks, that would be really helpful?.. What you pasted says that the disks were rejected by GEOM because the partition table was "corrupt or invalid". I don't know for sure why this might be, but one possible cause would be if there is data corruption in your I/O path. Do you get errors from ZFS about checksum failures or other errors? Maybe there is a problem with the firewire stack, or support for your firewire hardware. The rsync hanging is almost certainly either for the same memory reasons we have been discussing, or a side effect of I/O problems to the disks. Kris