Arch Linux

rantanran

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2014-12-20

Posts: 16

ZFS pool does not show up with zpool status

My "dream" for my small home server:
* very clean minimal Arch installation an SSD
* importing an existing zfs pool for my storage and backups ( name of the pool is storage)
* applications like btsync, logitech media server, kanboard, calibre server, pyload, etc in separate docker containers

First thing I did: exporting my existing zfs pool storage from my actual ubuntu setup.

Then I did a clean Arch install on my HP N54L on a spare 2,5 HDD I had laying around.
The Arch System is on a separate disk with ext4 as filesystem.
Just added me as a user and installed sudo etc.

Next was the installation of yaourt went flawless.

With yahourt i wanted to get and install the zfs stuff for arch.
First I installed the spt-git package and afterwords the zfs-git package.

With

modprobe zfs

I loaded the kernel modules for zfs.

So far so good.

But with

sudo zpool status

I could not detect a ZFS pool.

I thought giving a importing the pool a shot

sudo zpool import storage

and it worked!

According to the wiki i set up the cache file for automatic restart

sudo zpool set cachefile=/etc/zfs/zpool.cache storage

, started and enabled the systemd service for zfs.target.

After restarting the system the mountpoint is empty and i still can't see my zpool with the zpool status command. Manually importing the pool works, but it's a little bit confusing.

Does somebody have an idea or can point me in the right direction?
I did a lot of googling around, but nope...

best regards
rantanran

ukhippo

Member

From: Non-paged pool

Registered: 2014-02-21

Posts: 366

Re: ZFS pool does not show up with zpool status

The first part is expected: zpool status does not "detect" pools, it shows the status of the pools being used by the ZFS system. Since you hadn't created or imported any pools, there were no pools to show the status of.

As for it not auto-importing the pool on boot, what basic troubleshooting have you done? You should at least see what, if any, errors have been logged to the journal.

rantanran

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2014-12-20

Posts: 16

Re: ZFS pool does not show up with zpool status

Ok, did not know that with zpool status.

But when I use zpool list it should list all available pools, but my pool is not listet.
It is only listed when importing it manually.

What do you mean by basic troubleshooting?
I am still a beginner in things with arch linux.

Did a journalctl and found this:

Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: Starting Import ZFS pools by cache file...
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: Started Flush Journal to Persistent Storage.
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver zpool[286]: cannot import 'storage': one or more devices is currently unavailable
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: zfs-import-cache.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: Failed to start Import ZFS pools by cache file.
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: zfs-import-cache.service: Unit entered failed state.
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: zfs-import-cache.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: Starting Mount ZFS filesystems...
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: Started Mount ZFS filesystems.
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: Reached target Local File Systems.
Oct 03 21:49:49 archserver systemd[1]: Starting Create Volatile Files and Directories...

ukhippo

Member

From: Non-paged pool

Registered: 2014-02-21

Posts: 366

Re: ZFS pool does not show up with zpool status

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ge … leshooting and the other articles it links to for tips about troubleshooting.
For kernel/system/services problems you should always check the journal. If any create log files independent of the journal, you should check those log files too.

Your journal is showing zpool logging that it cannot import the pool, and giving the reason why. You can further investigate the journal to see if there is anything about why the devices are unavailable at that time. As you have a specific message, you can google that and use other info from your journal to select the most likely search results.