When is 'zpool offline' required?

I was just playing around with a test ZFS system and was running through replacing a bad drive and I forgot to issue a ‘zpool offline’ command.
Everything seemed to go ok anyway. The system started resilvering, etc. When is ‘zpool required’? Under what conditions can I omit it?

Is there a dedicated mailing list for ZFS user questions?

Thanks,

Joe

Joe McGuckin
ViaNet Communications

joe_at_via.net
650-207-0372 cell
650-213-1302 office
650-969-2124 fax



> On Jan 12, 2021, at 10:35 AM, Kurt Jaeger <pi_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
>> How should I label and prepare the drives for ZFS?  Someone ought to write a ???cookbook??? on that!
> 
> Basically, what I once did, was this:
> 
> zpool create bck raidz2 ada2 ada3 ada4 ada5 ada6 ada7 ada8 ada9
> 
> Therefore: raw disks, nothing else.
> 
>> Do I need to start the volume on a particular sector boundary?
>> 
>> Are the 4096 byte sector drives usable?
> 
> I think the default is now 4096 anyway.
> 
> https://charsiurice.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/checking-ashift-on-existing-pools/
> 
> describes the command to check for 4096 blocks:
> 
> zdb -C | grep ashift
> 
> If it displays
> 
> 	ashift: 9
> 
> the blocks are 512 bytes.
> 
> If it displays
> 
> 	ashift: 12
> 
> the block size is 4096.
> 
> -- 
> pi_at_opsec.eu            +49 171 3101372                    Now what ?