Run zrepl on TrueNAS

Install the Package

Figure out what version of zrepl you’re going to need. The zrepl version must match on both the source and sink side of the replication. Once you know (e.g. v0.5.0) then you have to find the FreeBSD release branch that has that version. Your options are FreeBSD stable (your current machine), quarterly (slightly newer), or latest (newest)

Backup the configs we’re going to edit (rebooting would reset our edits to these config files so you can skip this if you’d like):

$ cp /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/local.conf /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/local.conf.orig
$ cp /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf.orig

Disable the TrueNAS package repo:

$ sed -i .orig 's/enabled: yes/enabled: no/' /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/local.conf

$ sed -i .orig 's/enabled: no/enabled: yes/' /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
$ pkg search zrepl

$ pkg search zrepl
zrepl-0.4.0_4                  ZFS dataset replication tool

$ sed -i .orig 's/enabled: yes/enabled: no/' /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/local.conf
$ cp /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
$ pkg update
$ pkg search zrepl

$ sed -i .orig 's/enabled: yes/enabled: no/' /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/local.conf
$ cp /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
$ sed -i .quarterly 's/quarterly/latest/' /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
$ pkg update
$ pkg search zrepl

$ pkg install -y zrepl

$ which zrepl
/usr/local/bin/zrepl

$ service zrepl onestatus
zrepl is not running.

Create a dataset

We need storage that won’t be erased on reboot/upgrade. Navigate to Storage -> Pools and create a dataset called zrepl, e.g. tank/zrepl mounted at /mnt/tank/zrepl. You can put this somewhere else if you like, as long as it’s on a storage pool. It might look like this:

$ zfs list
NAME                                                    USED  AVAIL     REFER  MOUNTPOINT
...
tank                                                    804M  27.8G       96K  /mnt/tank
...
tank/zrepl                                               96K  27.8G       96K  /mnt/tank/zrepl

Persist the rc script

The zrepl service rc script located at /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zrepl will get erased on reboot. To fix this, we copy it to our dataset:

$ cp /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zrepl /mnt/tank/zrepl/zrepl.rc.d

Create your job yml

# Move the default job file to your storage pool
$ mv /usr/local/etc/zrepl/zrepl.yml /mnt/tank/zrepl/zrepl.yml

Now edit /mnt/tank/zrepl/zrepl.yml (e.g. with nano) and configure it however you’d like. See zrepl’s configuration docs for more information.

Create the startup script

We now need a startup script that performs the following actions on TrueNAS boot:

• Re-enable the rc service (using sysrc)
• Symlink our backup copy of the rc.d service script back to the /usr/local/etc/rc.d directory
• Symlink our job yaml file to the default location that zrepl looks for (/usr/local/etc/zrepl/zrepl.yml)
• Start the rc service

To accomplish this, use my zrepl-start.sh script:

$ curl https://alan.norbauer.com/articles/zrepl-on-truenas/scripts/zrepl-start.sh -o /mnt/tank/zrepl/zrepl-start.sh
$ chmod +x /mnt/tank/zrepl/zrepl-start.sh

The contents of the script are straightforward:

#!/bin/bash

SCRIPT_DIR=$( cd -- "$( dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" &> /dev/null && pwd )

# Enable the service
if [ ! -f /etc/rc.conf.d/zrepl ]
then
    touch /etc/rc.conf.d/zrepl
    sysrc -f /etc/rc.conf.d/zrepl zrepl_enable=YES
fi

# Symlink the service rc.d script
if [ ! -f /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zrepl ]
then
    ln -s ${SCRIPT_DIR}/zrepl.rc.d /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zrepl
    chmod +x /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zrepl
fi

# Symlink the zrepl.yml job file
mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/zrepl
if [ ! -f /usr/local/etc/zrepl/zrepl.yml ]
then
    ln -s ${SCRIPT_DIR}/zrepl.yml /usr/local/etc/zrepl/zrepl.yml
fi

# Start zrepl service
service zrepl start

Validate that your zrepl dataset now looks like this:

$ ls -1 /mnt/tank/zrepl/
zrepl-start.sh
zrepl.rc.d
zrepl.yml

Add zrepl-start.sh to TrueNAS as a Post-Init startup script:

• Go to Web GUI -> Tasks -> Init/Shutdown Scripts -> Add
  • Description = “zrepl Startup”
  • Type = “Script”
  • Select /mnt/tank/zrepl/zrepl-start.sh
  • When = “Post Init” Submit
• Go to Web GUI -> Power (top-right) -> Restart (orrebootin shell)
• ssh back in
• Verify zrepl is running: service zrepl status and zrepl status
• Verify your config is valid: zrepl configcheck

And we’re done! Your TrueNAS machine should now reliably run the zrepl service and any jobs you define in /mnt/tank/zrepl/zrepl.yml