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    PC Engines apu2 experiences

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    • 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?

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            • 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".

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                • 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
                                          • stephenw10S
                                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                            last edited by

                                            There are no hn NICs on any APU so it makes no difference. You can disable it.

                                            Steve

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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