# Problem with root raidz3. Unable to boot up or import.



## busin (Mar 6, 2012)

I have a problem with a zfs raidz3. The array consists of nine 2 terabyte drives: three Seagate Barracuda Greens, three Samsung F4, and three different Caviar Greens.  Sadly, two Barracudas failed a while ago, so I took them out with no problem.  Recently, they returned, so I put them back in.  One worked, but the other quickly failed. Unfortunately, one of the WD failed as well.  The other Seagate did finish resilvering.  So, the array has three Samsung Spinpoint that have been in the whole time, two WD caviar greens that have been in the whole time, a Seagate Barracuda that has been in the whole time, and one freshly resilvered Barracuda.  

After it finished resilvering the good Seagate, I shut down.  The bad Seagate has dropped out, and was unavailable, and the WD drive was repeatedly being detected, and dropped, and automatically resilvered.  I shut down, and rebooted, having removed both the faulty drives.  However, it wonâ€™t boot up. It simply has a spinning slash.  I have tried putting the drives back in, and taking the new Seagate out, but it does not make a difference.  So, I then attempted to import the array in mfsBSD 9.0 se.

Using *zpool import*, I am able to see the array.  It says the status is degraded, and one or more devices being resilvered, but is importable.  Attempting to do *zpool import tank*, to actually import it, will cause it to pause for a moment, and then return to the prompt.  Attempting to do anything else zpool related will cause it to give an error: 
	
	



```
internal error: failed to initialize  ZFS library
```

On freebsd FreeBSD 9.0 release, burnt to a DVD, it does the same, but requires me to do *zpool import â€“f tank* in order to do anything.  

I can see the array, and it isnâ€™t telling me anything is wrong when I try to import it, but the zpool libraries fail whenever I try. I've tried using kldload to load zfs.ko but it doesn't change anything.

Does anyone have any advice?


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## peetaur (Mar 6, 2012)

If you import a pool that has a *mountpoint=/*, importing it stops things from working (since your executables and libraries just got hidden/replaced). If this is the case, you need to use *altroot*. For example:
`# zpool import -f -o altroot=/z mypool`

Does that sound like what is happening?

(and then after using altroot on a bootable pool, you often also need to use the cachefile option also, and then copy it to /boot/zfs/)


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## busin (Mar 6, 2012)

Hey, that sounds exactly like what is happening. I'm not at home right now, but I'll be able to try that out in a few hours. Thanks for your help.


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## busin (Mar 16, 2012)

Alright, that was my issue, sorry for the long time without replying, but I wanted to make sure everything was fixed before claiming so.
Mounting it somewhere else, as peetaur suggested solved my issue.
Thanks for the help.


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