Making a ZFS pool on 6.12 - needs some love

[thany]

I'm just trying to make the simplest possible ZFS pool: one drive, no fancy settings.

 

Here's what I did:

 

1. Stop the array

2. Add pool - giving it a name and 1 slot

3. Assign into it a totally empty new spinning rust drive

4. Click on the pool name

5. Set the filesystem to zfs

6. Set autotrim to Off

7. Apply & Done

8. Start the array

 

Actual result:

 

That one drive says "Unmountable: Unsupported or no file system"

 

Expected result:

 

Since I said the pool should be of the ZFS filesystem, I would expect it to make new (empty!) disks that filesystem. It doesn't make sense to yell at the user for the filesystem not being present, when the OS probably should have created the filesystem as part of creating the pool.

 

So my question is two-fold:

 

1. What is the responsibility of the OS when it comes to creating a pool of new devices, and creating filesystem structures on it?

2. Where can I find a concise but complete guide on how exactly to create a ZFS pool?

 

For now:

 

I'm just going to use the FORMAT option near the bottom on the Main tab, in hopes that it will satisfy the new pool with an actual filesystem. I'm also going to hope that in a future version of unRAID, this process will have recieved some more love, giving the user a smoother experience without them being yelled at

[itimpi]

All the steps do that you outline is create the partition structure correctly - it does not create the empty file system so you still have to issue the format to actually create the file system.   I can see a case for an auto format occurring, but I can also see a strong case against it from a support perspective at it would make it rather easy to end up with data loss.

[JorgeB]

4 hours ago, thany said:

I'm just trying to make the simplest possible ZFS pool: one drive, no fancy settings.

It's always been like that, with any filesystem, like mentioned we don't want auto-format.

[Kilrah]

4 hours ago, thany said:

I'm just going to use the FORMAT option near the bottom on the Main tab, in hopes that it will satisfy the new pool with an actual filesystem.

That's how it works. Don't want to have it format automatically without warning, what if you chose the wrong drive or FS setting, whoops your drive is gone, filesystem is corrupted, whoops gone without giving you a chance to try and correct it...

[Espressomatic]

This is an old thread, but I see room for two changes that would alleviate the lack of "love" and provide more information for anyone going through this.

 

1. Allow creating a pool without shutting down the array - I can't fathom why we need to shut down current array drives and shares (and basically the entirety of Unraid) to make a new pool using completely new disks.

 

2. After creating a pool, generate a pop-up informing the user that it needs to be formatted to show up as a usable filesystem - offer the ability to start or skip the format in that pop-up.

 

There's no amount of hand-holding that will prevent unintended data loss in every circumstance. IMO, the above would do a much better job than what we have now for that and to make the whole thing more informative and much more intuitive.

Edited June 30 by Espressomatic