[NBLUG/talk] Getting info off a laptop HD + How to mount ZFS

[cecrops at sandwich.net]

Thanks for the tip. Have some notes. 

How to mount a zfs drive in Debian Linux 

What, you thought mount would work? Haha, no.  

First, uninstall zfs-fuse if you have it because it does not support the latest version of zfs. You will want "ZFS On Linux" which comes in several packages that are currently in the "contrib" section of jessie-backports. If that is not in your apt/sources.list, add it. 

deb http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie-backports main contrib 
deb-src http://auto.mirror.devuan.org/merged jessie-backports main contrib

If you go looking for zfs-linux you only find a source package. Ignore it and install some of its dependencies. 

https://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=sourcenames&keywords=zfs-linux

I recommend against doing anything with initramfs or dracut unless you know what you are doing. Here's what I installed.

apt-get install -t jessie-backports libnvpair1linux libuutil1linux libzfs2linux libzfslinux-dev libzpool2linux zfs-dbg zfs-dkms zfs-zed zfsutils-linux 


They expect you to run zpool directly against your /dev directory and let it autodetect the ZFS drives. Given that my research brought up a couple of horror stories from people who tried to simply read a ZFS drive and munged their boot sequence or file system, I say, forget that. Instead, make a new directory like /tmp/dev and give it symlinks to the drive that you are trying to read, and nothing else. 

mkdir /tmp/dev 
ln -s /dev/sdb* /tmp/dev 


After everything else is set up, the drive is mounted with zpool. 

zpool import tank -d /mnt/dev/ -R /mnt/usb2
zpool import tank -d /mnt/dev/ -o readonly=on -R /mnt/usb2


To unmount the drive:

zpool export tank 


Further reading on ZFS and how it works: 

http://kbdone.com/zfs-basics/
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/zfsover-1/index.html
https://nexenta.com/rs/nexenta2/images/white_paper_nexentastor_zfs_intro_to_zfs_hybrid_storage_pool.pdf
http://fortuitous.com/docs/primers/ZFS_Primer.pdf




On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 04:28:56PM -0700, Derek B. Noonburg wrote:
> I've been using one of these:
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/ORICO-External-Docking-Station-Support/dp/B00CE65C4W/
> 
> with Linux, and it works fine.
> 
> - Derek
> 
> 
> On 2017 Sep 12, cecrops at sandwich.net wrote:
> > I'm looking to get information off of a laptop hard drive. Is there a
> > hackerspace around here that has something like a USB enclosure for
> > laptop-size drives?
> > 
> > I'm a bit sour on blindly buying commercial solutions since I once bought an
> > external USB drive to get info off of a desktop SATA drive and it turned out
> > that the USB enclosure was somehow keyed to the drive it came with and refused
> > to read a different drive. If someone knows of a product that works, I'll take
> > recommendations.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > talk mailing list
> > talk at nblug.org
> > http://nblug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
> 
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