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    PC Engines apu2 experiences

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    • demD
      dem @Vollans
      last edited by

      @vollans I did a quick test in a virtual machine to figure out what the commands would be. This appears to work:

      On a running 2.4.5-p1 system:

      zpool checkpoint zroot
      

      Booted from the 2.5.0 installer and in the Rescue Shell:

      zpool import -f -N --rewind-to-checkpoint zroot
      zpool export zroot
      poweroff
      
      QinnQ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • L
        logan5247 @Vollans
        last edited by

        @vollans Thanks for this write up! I am installed on UFS but may go back and switch to ZFS now. I'm a Linux guy, so ZFS has always been out of my wheelhouse.

        When I do the initial setup and pfSense is working, do I:

        1. Perform a snapshot then and leave it around for years and years? Is this safe? I'm thinking like a VM snapshot where you don't want to have a snapshot hang around for long periods of time.
        2. Only perform snapshots before an upgrade, do the upgrade, then remove the snapshot after it's working?

        Thanks again!

        V V 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • V
          VAMike @logan5247
          last edited by

          @logan5247 said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

          @vollans Thanks for this write up! I am installed on UFS but may go back and switch to ZFS now. I'm a Linux guy, so ZFS has always been out of my wheelhouse.

          This is an issue mainly because UFS in pfsense performs recovery so incredibly badly. I don't fully understand why something as heavy as ZFS seems to be the only solution.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • V
            Vollans @logan5247
            last edited by

            @logan5247 I don’t see any inherent dangers in leaving the snapshot hanging around, unless you are really tight for space. Snapshots only record changed files, so it’s not a huge thing. Personally, I use it for a couple of reasons.

            1. Fully installed with patches base OS before any fiddling - that way if you screw up you can roll back and undo your “magic” that was more Weasley than Granger.

            2. Snapshot once fully tweaked and working, so you’ve got a known working system to roll back to

            3. Just before a major upgrade

            Here’s my snapshot catalogue:

            NAME                              USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
            zroot                            2.90G  9.21G    88K  /zroot
            zroot@210219                         0      -    88K  -
            zroot@2-4-5p1-base                   0      -    88K  -
            zroot@2-4-5-p1                       0      -    88K  -
            zroot/ROOT                       2.14G  9.21G    88K  none
            zroot/ROOT@210219                    0      -    88K  -
            zroot/ROOT@2-4-5p1-base              0      -    88K  -
            zroot/ROOT@2-4-5-p1                  0      -    88K  -
            zroot/ROOT/default               2.14G  9.21G  1.84G  /
            zroot/ROOT/default@210219         146M      -  1.14G  -
            zroot/ROOT/default@2-4-5p1-base  36.3M      -  1.43G  -
            zroot/ROOT/default@2-4-5-p1      36.5M      -  1.43G  -
            zroot/tmp                         512K  9.21G   512K  /tmp
            zroot/var                         776M  9.21G   396M  /var
            zroot/var@210219                  183M      -   527M  -
            zroot/var@2-4-5p1-base           52.1M      -   409M  -
            zroot/var@2-4-5-p1               61.5M      -   434M  -
            

            The space used as it goes along is tiny. The upgrade to 2.5 that I ended up rolling back from only used about 900MB IIRC.

            L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • K
              kevindd992002
              last edited by

              Without doing manual snapshots, is there an advantage of using ZFS over the old UFS? I am on ZFS on a single SSD and I forgot what its advantage is when I posted here a few years ago.

              V QinnQ 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • V
                Vollans @kevindd992002
                last edited by

                @kevindd992002 Better resilience if you have a crash. UFS has a horrid habit of collapsing in an unrecoverable heap, ZFS is far more likely to recover gracefully.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • QinnQ
                  Qinn @kevindd992002
                  last edited by

                  @kevindd992002 said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

                  Without doing manual snapshots, is there an advantage of using ZFS over the old UFS? I am on ZFS on a single SSD and I forgot what its advantage is when I posted here a few years ago.

                  ....of course RAID with ZFS gives more redundancy, best is more disks using RAID. As the problem with a single disk and "copies" is the same as creating an mdadm raid-1 using two partitions of the same disk: you have data redundancy, but not disk redundancy, as disk failure will cause the loss of both data sets.

                  Comparing UFS with ZFS, well ZFS, like btrfs, is copy-on-write, so power surges are never a problem and ZFS requires a system with ECC memory (APU2 has this), otherwise you're still not 100% safeguarded against bit errors.

                  Hardeware: Intel(R) Celeron(R) J4125 CPU @ 2.00GHz 102 GB mSATA SSD (ZFS)
                  Firmware: Latest-stable-pfSense CE (amd64)
                  Packages: pfBlockerNG devel-beta (beta tester) - Avahi - Notes - Ntopng - PIMD/udpbroadcastrelay - Service Watchdog - System Patches

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • L
                    logan5247 @Vollans
                    last edited by

                    @vollans Sorry to keep asking questions.

                    1. ) If I snapshot zroot do I need to snapshot zroot/ROOT and zroot/ROOT/default? Does zroot not include everything else?
                    1. Let's say I did a snapshot, made a change, and successfully rolled back:
                    zfs rollback zroot/var@20210308
                    zfs rollback zroot/ROOT/default@20210308
                    zfs rollback zroot/ROOT@20210308
                    zfs rollback zroot@20210308
                    shutdown -r now
                    

                    And now my zfs list looks like this (after the rollback):

                    NAME                          USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
                    zroot                         674M  12.4G    96K  /zroot
                    zroot@20210308                   0      -    96K  -
                    zroot/ROOT                    665M  12.4G    96K  none
                    zroot/ROOT@20210308              0      -    96K  -
                    zroot/ROOT/default            665M  12.4G   665M  /
                    zroot/ROOT/default@20210308   388K      -   665M  -
                    zroot/tmp                     144K  12.4G   144K  /tmp
                    zroot/var                    7.02M  12.4G  6.62M  /var
                    zroot/var@20210308            400K      -  6.62M  -
                    

                    How do I know what set of filesystems I'm running on? Is there something like an "active" marker in zfs list?

                    V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • V
                      VAMike @logan5247
                      last edited by

                      @logan5247 this really should get its own zfs thread, it has nothing to do with the apu2

                      V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • V
                        Vollans @VAMike
                        last edited by

                        @vamike I agree, but quickly in summary, you're always running the one without the @ sign - that's the current live version. You can see that the size of the "backup" of zroot is nothing. The size of zroot/ROOT/default's backup is bigger. zroot doesn't include the other, effectively, "partitions".

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • QinnQ
                          Qinn @dem
                          last edited by Qinn

                          @dem said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

                          @vollans I did a quick test in a virtual machine to figure out what the commands would be. This appears to work:

                          On a running 2.4.5-p1 system:

                          zpool checkpoint zroot
                          

                          Booted from the 2.5.0 installer and in the Rescue Shell:

                          zpool import -f -N --rewind-to-checkpoint zroot
                          zpool export zroot
                          poweroff
                          

                          I would like to know how you booted from the 2.5.0 installer using a virtual pfsense machine and got to the Rescue Shell?

                          Hardeware: Intel(R) Celeron(R) J4125 CPU @ 2.00GHz 102 GB mSATA SSD (ZFS)
                          Firmware: Latest-stable-pfSense CE (amd64)
                          Packages: pfBlockerNG devel-beta (beta tester) - Avahi - Notes - Ntopng - PIMD/udpbroadcastrelay - Service Watchdog - System Patches

                          demD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • demD
                            dem @Qinn
                            last edited by

                            @qinn In VirtualBox I put the file pfSense-CE-2.5.0-RELEASE-amd64.iso in the virtual optical drive and booted to this screen, where I selected Rescue Shell:

                            02_rescue.png

                            QinnQ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • QinnQ
                              Qinn @dem
                              last edited by

                              @dem Thanks for the quick reply, I understand that.
                              What I would like to know is how you get to the Virtual pfSense from here as the virtual pfsense machine is not running and access the checkpoint you made?

                              Btw I am using VM workstation!

                              Hardeware: Intel(R) Celeron(R) J4125 CPU @ 2.00GHz 102 GB mSATA SSD (ZFS)
                              Firmware: Latest-stable-pfSense CE (amd64)
                              Packages: pfBlockerNG devel-beta (beta tester) - Avahi - Notes - Ntopng - PIMD/udpbroadcastrelay - Service Watchdog - System Patches

                              demD V 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • demD
                                dem @Qinn
                                last edited by dem

                                @qinn Sorry I wasn't clear: I put the installer image into the virtual optical drive of the same virtual pfSense instance that I checkpointed, so the installer has access to the same virtual disk and can locate the checkpointed zroot pool.

                                Edited to add: My goal was to simulate booting an apu2 from the memstick image in order to rewind a checkpoint, but I don't have a spare apu2 to test with. If I actually ran pfSense in a virtual machine I would use virtual machine snapshots before any upgrade.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • V
                                  VAMike @Qinn
                                  last edited by

                                  @qinn I never would have guessed this was somehow specific to the apu2

                                  demD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • demD
                                    dem @VAMike
                                    last edited by

                                    @vamike It's not, but @vollans rolled back an upgrade of his apu2 using ZFS and that sparked interest in using ZFS to recover from a failed upgrade.

                                    V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • V
                                      VAMike @dem
                                      last edited by

                                      @dem so he should start another thread so that people actually interested in apu2 experiences can find those without digging through unrelated zfs support questions

                                      V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • V
                                        Vollans @VAMike
                                        last edited by

                                        @vamike I agreed it wasn't relevant here 2 days ago, and stopped responding. 🤷

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • S
                                          sikita
                                          last edited by sikita

                                          Why pfsense 2.5 shows "AES-NI CPU Crypto: No" when in 2.4.x there was YES on APU2? Also on 2.5 there is in other line: Hardware crypto AES-CBC,AES-CCM,AES-GCM,AES-ICM,AES-XTS

                                          B QinnQ 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • B
                                            bigsy @sikita
                                            last edited by

                                            @sikita said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

                                            Why pfsense 2.5 shows "AES-NI CPU Crypto: No" when in 2.4.x there was YES on APU2?

                                            Anything to do with this problem? If so, it appears to be fixed in 2.5.1.

                                            S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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