Re: ZFS pool creation in a large disk

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Rocky Hotas <rockyhotas%firemail.cc@localhost> writes:

> I would naively erase the whole disk /dev/wd1, thus deleting the GPT,
> and then create a pool with `zpool create <pool_name> /dev/wd1': this
> way, however, I am not sure that a disk with no filesystem and no
> partition table would be accepted.

I have not gotten up to speed on recent ZFS, but generally most systems
these days understand GPT, and having a GPT label/partition means that
they won't give a "disk is empty - do you want to format it?" prompt.

> On the other hand, if I keep GPT, create a single FFSv2 partition, and
> then `zpool create <pool_name> /dev/wd1', I am not sure that an external
> system would read/write this pool (it may not know, or may not be
> compatible with, FFSv2).

There is a difference between a gpt partition type code being ffs, and
the partition actually being formatted with ffs.

FreeBSD seems to have a tyep code "freebsd-zfs"

  https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/single-disk-with-zfs-best-practices.70817/

And there are zfs types from other systems

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table




It sounds to me from other list messages that it is normal in NetBSD to
have a partition of type ffs which really contains zfs.  But there may
be a netbsd zfs partition type now; I have not managed to have a 9.0 box
yet, but I hope soon, and partly to try out zfs.