Arch Linux

Gekume123

Member

Registered: 2020-09-19

Posts: 29

ZFS as root "cannot mount /root directory not empty"

I have installed ArchLinux on a ZFS filesystem, and from the title, that's the message I get on boot from zfs-mount.service.

However, it seems like everything mounts fine. From Google, I saw that a few people had the same error because the directories were being created before ZFS tries to actually mount them. But I'm not sure how to fix it.

zfs list has this output:
http://ix.io/2Dky

When I boot from a life USB, and run 'zpool import -a -R /mnt' I see that without mounting anything (zfs mount -a), the /var directory, the /root directory, and the /home directory all show up in /mnt, with all their files.

This doesn't make sense to me, since I haven't imported the root dataset (zfs mount zroot/ROOT/default) or everything else.

If I attempt to mount zroot/ROOT/default, it says "cannot mount - /mnt not empty". Which seems like the same problem.

How can I fix this? Thanks so much.

andym

Member

From: France

Registered: 2019-01-16

Posts: 61

Re: ZFS as root "cannot mount /root directory not empty"

Just a guess but could it be that you are mounting a filesystem on a directory which is not empty, and ZFS is warning you about it

When I boot from a life USB, and run 'zpool import -a -R /mnt' I see that without mounting anything (zfs mount -a), the /var directory, the /root directory, and the /home directory all show up in /mnt, with all their files.