Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 00:35:39 -0700 From: Artem Belevich <art@freebsd.org> To: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@acm.org> Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org, avg@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "can't load 'kernel'" on ZFS root Message-ID: <CAFqOu6jv93WKBLMDKPQCOKfOF6Q4zq6PWKQBjSgfWyVvkM4jFw@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20110907044800.GA96277@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> References: <20110907044800.GA96277@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
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On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@acm.org> wrote: > Secondly, I found that ZFS booting is extremely fragile - if your > default kernel & modules won't load automatically, there's no way to > boot the backup kernel because (as far as I can find) there's no way > to manually load /boot/zfs/zpool.cache - without which the kernel > can't mount the root FS. =A0In both above cases, recovering the system > required booting from recovery media. =A0There needs to be a documented > method for booting from a snapshot or clone. The magic command is: load -t /boot/zfs/zpool.cache /boot/zfs/zpool.cache It makes me wonder, though -- if we're probing devices anyways, why is zpool.cache existence mandatory? According to the name it's a *cache*, presumably to speed up zpool detection on a normal boot. Perhaps we can fall back to probing all drives if zpool.cache is missing. Slower boot definitely beats no booting at all. --Artem
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