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    PC Engines apu2 experiences

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    • 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

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                • 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
                                      • S
                                        sikita @bigsy
                                        last edited by sikita

                                        @bigsy Ok, thank you. Seems to be GUI bug and does not involve using HW crypto.

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

                                          @sikita I am on pfSense 2.5.0 and here it says:

                                          Firefox_Screenshot_2021-03-12T16-51-01.718Z.png

                                          Do you have AES-NI enabled?

                                          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

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

                                            Can anyone share there System / Advanced / Networking on a APU2

                                            Mine are

                                            Firefox_Screenshot_2021-03-19T11-29-42.923Z.png

                                            as these are the defaults, grabbed them from a VM installation, which is not quit the same setup.

                                            The old and not anymore recommend settings from https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-throughput-pfsense/ are quit different!

                                            ...and there is a new settings present in 2.5.0. " hn ALTQ support"

                                            Could anyone elaborate on all these or there settings?

                                            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 0
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