[zfs-discuss] ZFS Boot != ZFS Root

Jesse Hallio
Sun, 01 Jul 2007 11:08:34 -0000

I''m having problems figuring out how to configure ZFS root under the
new ZFS boot system. I''m not interested in ZFS boot, only in ZFS root.

My system consists of  two 4-disk raidz arrays configured as a single pool. The
disks have EFI labels and are not bootable. The computer boots off an USB dongle
that has a UFS partition to hold the kernels and boot_archives of several
solaris versions (trail of upgrades=)).

I''ve been trying to upgrade to snv66 and I''ve been using a
single disk ZFS pool (not the whole 8-disk pool, more about that in another
post). I installed snv66 in Parallels and ufsdumped the filesystem to the one
disk pool. The one disk pool also has a snv55b install that I can boot into.

I tried to configure the snv66 like in the older ZFS root system, but I
don''t seem to be able to make it work. The kernel and boot_archive are
located in /snv66 directory on the USB stick. Apparently the kernel defined in
the grub kernel line is not the kernel that is loaded. I had to copy the /snv66
directory to the root dataset so that the kernel could load itself(?) from there
(and not from the location defined by the kernel line). (Sounds like a bug to
me.) This is not a problem with the one disk environment but will apparently be
a problem when the root is moved to the 8-disk pool. (I''m not sure if
the new ZFS boot''s single disk pools only -limitation still applies at
this point.)

After that the kernel just panics and floods the screen with text for some
hundred milliseconds before rebooting so I don''t know what the next
problem is as I don''t have serial console or dump device.

Possible reasons that come to mind:
1) The install/dump from Parallels is not good and is causing the problems
2) There is some configuration gotcha with the new system I''m not aware
of
3) Build 66 bugs and panics whenever it sees zfsroot (like build 59 did)

Any ideas?

- Jesse Hallio


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