zfs discuss - Oct 2009 - Exported zpool cannot be imported or deleted.

I have an exported zpool that had several drives incur errors at the same time
and as a result became unusable.  The pool was exported at the time the drives
had problems and now I can''t find a way to either delete or import the
pool.

I''ve tried relabeling the disks and using dd to write several MB of
zero data to partition zero of every disk in the pool but the command
"zpool import" still shows the pool as available and all drives
online.

When I attempt to import the pool using "zpool import -f zpool1", the
system panics.

Is there any way possible short of reloading the OS and completely reformatting
the drives that I can get rid of this zpool?

Thanks,

Stacy Maydew
stacy.maydew at sun.com
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

Stacy Maydew wrote:
> I have an exported zpool that had several drives incur errors at the same
time and as a result became unusable.  The pool was exported at the time the
drives had problems and now I can''t find a way to either delete or
import the pool.
> 
> I''ve tried relabeling the disks and using dd to write several MB
of zero data to partition zero of every disk in the pool but the command
"zpool import" still shows the pool as available and all drives
online.
>
Write some (e.g. 1M) zeros to the end of disk/partition as well.

victor

> When I attempt to import the pool using "zpool import -f zpool1",
the system panics.
> 
> Is there any way possible short of reloading the OS and completely
reformatting the drives that I can get rid of this zpool?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Stacy Maydew
> stacy.maydew at sun.com

Hi Stacy,

Can you try to forcibly create a new pool using the devices from
the corrupted pool, like this:

# zpool create -f newpool disk1 disk2 ...

Then, destroy this pool, which will release the devices.

This CR has been filed to help resolve the pool cruft problem:

6893282 Allow the zpool command to wipe labels from disks
(This CR isn''t visible from the OpenSolaris bug database yet)

Cindy

On 10/21/09 14:11, Stacy Maydew wrote:
> I have an exported zpool that had several drives incur errors at the same
time and as a result became unusable.  The pool was exported at the time the
drives had problems and now I can''t find a way to either delete or
import the pool.
> 
> I''ve tried relabeling the disks and using dd to write several MB
of zero data to partition zero of every disk in the pool but the command
"zpool import" still shows the pool as available and all drives
online.
> 
> When I attempt to import the pool using "zpool import -f zpool1",
the system panics.
> 
> Is there any way possible short of reloading the OS and completely
reformatting the drives that I can get rid of this zpool?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Stacy Maydew
> stacy.maydew at sun.com