On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 08:51:48AM +0200, Daniel Braniss wrote: > > > > Recently some changes were made to how a root pool is opened for root > > filesystem > > mounting. Previously the root pool had to be present in zpool.cache. Now > > it is > > automatically discovered by probing available GEOM providers. > > The new scheme is believed to be more flexible. For example, it allows to > > prepare > > a new root pool at one system, then export it and then boot from it on a new > > system without doing any extra/magical steps with zpool.cache. It could > > also be > > convenient after zpool split and in some other situations. > > > > The change was introduced via multiple commits, the latest relevant > > revision in > > head is r243502. The changes are partially MFC-ed, the remaining parts are > > scheduled to be MFC-ed soon. > > > > I have received a report that the change caused a problem with booting on > > at least > > one system. The problem has been identified as an issue in local > > environment and > > has been fixed. Please read on to see if you might be affected when you > > upgrade, > > so that you can avoid any unnecessary surprises. > > > > You might be affected if you ever had a pool named the same as your current > > root > > pool. And you still have any disks connected to your system that belonged > > to that > > pool (in whole or via some partitions). And that pool was never properly > > destroyed using zpool destroy, but merely abandoned (its disks > > re-purposed/re-partitioned/reused). > > > > If all of the above are true, then I recommend that you run 'zdb -l <disk>' > > for > > all suspect disks and their partitions (or just all disks and partitions). > > If > > this command reports at least one valid ZFS label for a disk or a partition > > that > > do not belong to any current pool, then the problem may affect you. > > > > The best course is to remove the offending labels. > > > > If you are affected, please follow up to this email. > > GREATE!!!! > in a diskless environment, /boot is read only, and the zpool.cache issue > has been bothering me ever since, there was no way (and I tried) to re route > it.
I believe zpool.cache is not required only for root pool anymore and that you still need it if you want non-root pools to be automatically configured after reboot. Am I right, Andriy? Zpool.cache basically tells ZFS which pools should be automatically imported and file systems mounted. You can have disks in your system with ZFS pools that should not be auto-imported and zpool.cache is the way to tell the difference. -- Pawel Jakub Dawidek http://www.wheelsystems.com FreeBSD committer http://www.FreeBSD.org Am I Evil? Yes, I Am! http://tupytaj.pl
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