Pool discovery

Up to Table of Contents

This FAQ applies to: 0.6.9

Why is my pool not imported/found?

Version 0.6.9 has changed the default directory for block devices from /dev to /dev/disk/by-id

This resolves a number of long-time FAQ/issues:

/dev/fd0, /dev/cdrom making zpool import too slow
pools not being re-imported from cache because of changing device nodes (/dev/sdb becomes /dev/sdc or vice versa)

in this scenario, the zpool.cache and ZFS disk labels become out-of-synch and contradictory. By using stable device names (such as in /dev/disk/by-id) this problem doesn't occur

Note that, although care has been taken to ensure that this works with vdevs backed on device mapper (dm-crypt or lvm2, for example) it might not work on your particular linux box. In that case, you can always resort to the old behaviour by doing

zpool import -d /dev poolname

Note that multiple -d options may be given to zpool import