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Date:      Sun, 31 Oct 2010 13:20:16 -0500
From:      "James R. Van Artsdalen" <james-freebsd-fs2@jrv.org>
To:        Thomas Zander <thomas.e.zander@googlemail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-fs@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ZFS inresponsive.
Message-ID:  <4CCDB360.50609@jrv.org>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTi=vKSC_wULSzd9k2hF-gDTVeseqyzWrKHsAOMd2@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <BE2EF896-4990-4A75-9DD4-B0534DFE0B71@pean.org>	<20101031104209.771cc47e@r500.local> <AANLkTi=vKSC_wULSzd9k2hF-gDTVeseqyzWrKHsAOMd2@mail.gmail.com>

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Thomas Zander wrote:
> Same here, same setup. ZFS, GELI, USB.

It is not a good idea to use USB disks with ZFS.  It can cause pool loss.

Many (most?) USB enclosures use USB<->SATA chips that discard the
SYNC/FLUSH command to the disk.  As a result this opens a window of time
where disk writes might be reordered in a way that cause the ZFS
structures to become corrupted.  There's no problem in normal operation
but there may be a failure if there is a power loss.

The log entries in Fabian's note look like a USB SYNC/FLASH failure to
me - that USB enclosure should not be used with ZFS.

At one time there was talk of "deferred reallocation" in ZFS which would
deal with broken USB enclosures but I don't know if Sun ever got around
to this.



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