PC-BSD 9.1-BETA1 (64 bit) : No ZFS pools located

[mirix]

Hi,

I have tried installing the 64-bit version of PC-BSD 9.1-BETA1 on my laptop. I have chosen the defaults (full disk ZFS installation) except for the desktops environments (this far I have tried XFCE and LXDE).

The system cannot boot:

zfsboot: error 1 lba 48
zfsboot: error 1 lba 0
zfsboot: No ZFS pools located, can't boot

I have tried two different hard drives:

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 320 GB
WD Scorpio Black 320GB (WD3200BEKT-22A25T1)

ZFS had always been problematic with the second model and, in fact, I have never been able to perform a ZFS install no matter which method I used.

However, I had successfully installed PC-BSD 9.0 in the first drive.

In the past, I needed to entirely wipe out the drives with dd prior to installing PC-BSD. However, this does not work now.

The laptop has a 2.5 GHz Core2 Duo and 4GB of RAM.

[mirix]

I retried the installation with all the defaults (KDE) just clicking NEXT at every step. This time the installation worked and I was able to boot and login into the system. It looks great.

I wonder if the difference is due to having chosen KDE or to the fact that there was a ZFS system already in place from the previous installation attempt.

Anyway, I am going to test the system. It is getting pretty close to what I am looking for. Right now, I only miss a lighter DE and a package management system like apt-get with 40 thousand packages to choose from. Maybe a Linux jail will do for the time being.

[mirix]

UPDATE:

The filesystem is showing an erratic behaviour on boot.

First, I rebooted from KDE menus to find the ZFS pools error. After a reboot, the problem was gone.

Next, I changed the hostname and powered down the computer from the KDE menus. Same problem. I needed a reboot (CTRL + ALT + DEL) in order to be able to boot again...

How is it possible that the ZFS pools are sometimes found but sometimes are not?

[kmoore134]

I don't know if changing the hostname had anything to do with it or not.
Did you check output of "dmesg", anything unusual in there? Read errors,
etc?

[snowch]

I have just hit the same problem on a new install of PCBSD9.1-x64-DVD.iso

I just accepted all the defaults and get the following error when booting:

zfsboot: error 1 lba 64
zfsboot: error 1 lba 0
zfsboot: No ZFS pools located, can't boot

I am trying to install on a Dell Inspiron 1545

I have subsequently installed with UFS and there are no boot problems with UFS.

[kmoore134]

Can you re-install, and on the disk screen select Customize -> Advanced
-> and then select the option for GPT when you install? I think we're
seeing some bugs in the zfsboot loader here and will need to let the
FreeBSD folks know.