OpenSolaris

Heads up: Builds 86 and 87 are toxic for zfs root

Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:21:08 -0600
From: Evan Layton <Evan.Layton at sun dot com>
To: onnv-gate at onnv dot eng dot sun dot com
Subject: Heads up: Builds 86 and 87 are toxic for zfs root

If you are not running a ZFS root you can ignore the rest of this message.

Most people are not using zfs root at this time since zfs boot is not yet available.

If you're not sure if you're booted on a zfs root you can quickly tell
by simply running "df -h /".

If you're on zfs the output will look something like:
Filesystem              size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris   19G   2.0G   17G    11%    /

If not it should be more like:
Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0       15G   6.1G   8.6G    42%    /

The putback of CR 6664570 introduced a bug in the fs-usr script that
will cause machines with zfs root to fail to boot. A new CR (6684121) has
been filed to track this issue in the smf fs-usr script.

This is a problem for both builds 86 and 87. Build 88 will
introduce the zfs boot project which will resolve this issue.
If you want to bfu to builds 86 and 87 it is necessary to
apply the workaround described below.

There are a few options for working around this issue:
- bfu build 86/87 but apply the smf fix (the edit to fs-usr shown
   below) before rebooting.
- Apply the workaround below, if the machine was rebooted before
   applying the smf fix or you've already hit this problem.

If you attempt to boot zfs root on these builds you will see
errors similar to this example.

/usr/sbin/pmconfig: cannot open/create "/etc/.cpr_config", Bad file number
Apr 3 15:02:05 svc.startd[7]: svc:system/sysevent:default: Method
"/lib/method/svc-sysevent start" failed with exit status 95.
Apr 3 15:02:05 svc.startd[7]: svc:system/sysevent:default failed fatally:
transitioning to maintenance (see 'svcs -xv' for more details)
Requesting system Maintenance Mode
(See /lib/svc/share/README for more information.)
Console login service(s) cannot run

Root password for system maintenance (control-d to bypass):

The work around for this is to run "mount -o remount,rw /" while
in maintenance mode then edit /lib/svc/method/fs-usr and change
line 51 from:

if smf_is_globalzone && [ $rootiszfs = 0 ]; then

to:

if smf_is_globalzone; then

Then reboot.