Yesterday, I updated my RELENG_8 ZFS-only system that has worked like a champ 
for ages.  After a successful install{kernel,world} and reboot, I noticed the 
20121130 entry in /usr/src/UPDATING and upgraded my ZFS pool via "zfs upgrade 
-a".  I also upgraded my boot blocks as requested, and as per the "ZFS notes" 
section of /usr/src/UPDATING.

Unfortunately rebooting with the upgraded pool failed.  The "windmill" boot 
spinner spins for a tiny amount of time and then stops dead. :-(  I don't get 
to the boot loader menu at all.

I downloaded a very recent RELENG_8 snapshot 
(FreeBSD-8.3-RELENG_8-r244923-JPSNAP-amd64-amd64-memstick.img) from 
pub.allbsd.org and was able to boot successfully from USB using that.  I 
entered Fixit Mode and tried to write the boot blocks on the memstick image 
onto my hard drives but the resultant system still wouldn't boot.  The commands 
I used (from Fixit Mode) are these:

        gpart bootcode -b /dist/boot/pmbr -p /dist/boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad4
        gpart bootcode -b /dist/boot/pmbr -p /dist/boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad6

(ad4 and ad6 are my two hard drives.)

If I "load zfs" before booting the USB memstick then I can see my old pool 
listed when I do "zfs import".  I haven't tried importing the pool because I'm 
not sure if that would make the problem worse.

Does anyone have any advice in restoring this system to bootability?  I 
followed the standard "root on ZFS" recipe using a two drive mirror when 
installing the system initially.  Each drive uses GPT with three partitions: 
freebsd-boot, freebsd-swap, and freebsd-zfs in that order.  Like I said at the 
start, all this worked for a long time until just now when I upgraded the pool 
to enable "feature flags" support. :-(

Any help is appreciated.

Cheers,

Paul.


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