How to add an existing filesystem to the web-gui?

Troubleshooting
1

Brief description of the problem

How to add an existing filesystem to rockstor?

Detailed step by step instructions to reproduce the problem

In a few days i want to add an existing btrfs filesystem to rockstor, in order to simplify my config and solve a massive problem/bug in the current ubuntu samba code (from wily to yakkety up to now).
So i have an rockstore VM installation and added vm test disk to the existing install. I manually created an partition and btrfs file system to the disk.
After adding an serial # i was able to see the test disk in the web-gui, but the rockstore refuses to use it. its claiming: 
disk is unusable cause of an non btrfs file system

Which is not true since i created an btrfs fs, but i guess the problem is here that its NOT created by rockstor itself?
How can i add an existing fs to the installed VM so that its usable via web-gui?!
Imho there should be an “import” function for existing filesystems.

Web-UI screenshot

Bildschirmfoto vom 2017-01-18 14-36-03.png1920×1080 202 KB

2

@g6094199 Hello again.

Currently Rockstor only deals with whole disk btrfs so that would be why you are only offered this option (currently), and why Rockstor refuses to use it.

Any existing whole disk btrfs does offer an import option, see Data Import section of Reinstalling Rockstor There are conditions to this such as the pool being imported must have a label.

So your current option is to only use whole disk btrfs (and label the pools) if you want Rockstor to be able to import it.

This whole disk btrfs issue may change in the not too distant future but is a big change that will require quite a bit of testing. We have an open issue that should allow extending disk management capabilities into ‘btrfs in partition’ members (as long as there is only one btrfs partition per drive) in the following issue:

Changes against that same issue also improve the user feedback you would receive in your particular setup.

So hopefully that is reassuring for future capabilities in this direction but for now you are best to stick with whole disk btrfs and to make sure you label your pools.

Hope that helps.

3

He Phiiip,

thx for bringing light into this!
i can successfully import an external disk now!
but for furture use this problem should be really addressed, cause its not what a “standard” user would expect :slight_smile:
but as i see you are working on it.

so thanks so far!

4

I recently did the exact same thing your trying to do :slight_smile:

See this post for some tips on setting it up ahead of time

Importing a BTRFS array from a different server - #3 by DylanCharpentier