Unable to Mount NVME Hard Drive

ProfessorManhattan

Hey, so I had an extra NVME drive laying around and thought it would serve well as a place to store Squid proxy files on pfSense. I am unsure how to mount it though. I tried a dozen or so commands and tutorials without success.

Here's the output of geom disk list

Geom name: nvd0
Providers:

Name: nvd0
Mediasize: 500107862016 (466G)
Sectorsize: 512
Mode: r0w0e0
descr: **
ident: **
rotationrate: 0
fwsectors: 0
fwheads: 0

Geom name: da0
Providers:

Name: da0
Mediasize: 299966445568 (279G)
Sectorsize: 512
Mode: r2w2e7
descr: HP RAID 1(1+0)
lunid: ***
ident: ***
rotationrate: unknown
fwsectors: 32
fwheads: 255

I tried running:

mount /dev/nvd0 /media (Error message: mount: /dev/nvd0: Invalid argument)
mount /dev/nvme0 /media (Error message: mount: /dev/nvme0: Block device required)
mount /dev/nvme0ns1 /media (Error message: No such file or directory)

Does anyone know how I can mount the NVMe drive?

Gertjan

Hi,

Formatting it first ?

stephenw10

Yeah you need to create a partition to mount first:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/disks-adding.html

Be aware though that pfSense does not actually support multiple drives for anything other than disk mirrors. If you do this be sure you know what will happen if, for example, the fstab is rewritten.

Steve

jimp

I'd use ZFS on there, but otherwise, what ^ he said.

gpart create -s gpt nvd0
gpart add -t freebsd-zfs -l data nvd0
zpool create data gpt/data
zfs set mountpoint=/data data

Salt to taste.

Since that's ZFS, no need to mess with fstab.

ProfessorManhattan

@jimp If I use this method, can I have a usable hard drive? @stephenw10 said that pfSense does not support multiple hard drives.

stephenw10

There are some things that could use it. The syslog-ng package can specify a log storage location including a different drive for example.

Steve

Gertjan

@ProfessorManhattan said in Unable to Mount NVME Hard Drive:

If I use this method, can I have a usable hard drive?

First, check out what ZFS is.
If your pfSense isn't using ZFS right : it is an install option, something you choose at the very beginning.

You could compare adding a drive to pfSense as adding a drive to a PC using some Windows OS :
It (the SATA port) has to be enabled in the BIOS) and the BIOS has to recognize it.
When booting your OS Windows, there will be NO D: or E: that represents the drive. You have to use the DiskManger thing to partition it. And format it using FAT32 or more recent scheme. You have to assign a drive letter.
Only then ... you ... can use that D:\ drive - Windows itself doesn't care about it, it lives on the C:\ and won't touch the new D:\ what so ever.

FreeBSD drives are mounted using the /etc/fstab file.
This file can be edited, and will get overwritten by pfSense whenever it sees fit (upgrades etc).
Consider using the EarlyShellCmd and have your drive mounted wherever you want. It will be something like /root/mybidrive/
The directory /root/mybidrive/ will be situated on your new big drive, not the original pfSense drive.
You could even do more dramatic things like placing the entire /var/ on another drive but you wind up modifying hardcoded settings and files. It not worth it ... Just re install pfSense on the newer, bigger drive.
Don't forget : it's a firewall , not some Desktop PC etc.