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Date:      Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:12:00 -0400
From:      Nathanael Hoyle <nhoyle@hoyletech.com>
To:        Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr>, freebsd-fs@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Booting from ZFS raidz
Message-ID:  <49E774F0.1020706@hoyletech.com>
In-Reply-To: <20090416164053.GA80978@keltia.freenix.fr>
References:  <9461581F-F354-486D-961D-3FD5B1EF007C@rabson.org>	<C3970DC5-43A8-4F04-AC55-292F27A30275@lassitu.de>	<20090416160128.GA831@keltia.freenix.fr> <20090416164053.GA80978@keltia.freenix.fr>

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Ollivier Robert wrote:
> According to Ollivier Robert:
>   
>> with tank containing a raidz array, zpool refuses to set the property,
>> saying it is not available.  Using the same commandline on a mirror works.
>>     
>
> BTW all messages I've found on this subject assume (like the script does)
> that one can do installworld/installkernel.
>
> I can setup the whole gpt thing from livefs, even extracting all dists on
> the newly zfs pool manually by playing with livefs/dvd1 but it can not boot
> afterwards because / can not be found.
>
> I must have missed something...  I long for pcbsd setup with zfs support in
> fact I think :(
>   

To my knowledge, RAID-Z root (boot) pools are not supported.  I know 
that this is true for upstream (Solaris) ZFS, and unless the FreeBSD 
folks implemented it when I wasn't looking, you can't do it on FreeBSD 
either.  I believe the current implementation essentially reads 
"through" the mirror structure on a mirrored device and can find all of 
the data by "dumb" sequential reads on the first disk, just as it would 
with unpooled disks.  In the case of RAID-Z the boot loader would have 
to be far more intelligent in locating where to read the next block 
from.  It is my understanding that this is a planned future improvement 
(at least for upstream) but haven't heard any update on it in a while.

-Nathanael



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