How to recover zfs pool when root fs fails?

Question

I have a FreeBSD 8.0 amd64 box w/ 1 ATA drive for system root and 4 SATA drives as a RAIDZ pool. The ATA drive isn't mirrored nor part of any pool, but also doesn't hold any valuable data (other then the system).

How can I recover my zpool if this ATA drive fails for any reason, but assume my RAIDZ vdev SATA drives remain intact? Should I also use at least a mirror configuration for that?

jlliagre · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-14T18:09:01.577

1

Your raidz can be imported as a whole after you reinstall the OS or from a bootable media. You just need to use the '-f' option otherwise the system will think it is in use by another OS.

edited May 14 '10 at 18:09

answered May 13 '10 at 07:57

jlliagre

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so you are saying that the zfs import command works even when the zfs pool wasn't properly exported for migration? – user27138 May 14 '10 at 10:34
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Absolutely, that's the "-f" purpose. – jlliagre May 14 '10 at 18:08

How to recover zfs pool when root fs fails?

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