Hi Noz, This problem was reported recently and this bug was filed:
6844090 zfs should be able to mirror to a smaller disk I believe slice 9 (alternates) is an older method for providing alternate disk blocks on x86 systems. Apparently, it can be removed by using the format -e command. I haven't tried this though. I don't think removing slice 9 will help though if these two disks are not identical, hence the bug. You can workaround this problem by attaching a slightly larger disk. Cindy noz wrote:
I've been playing around with zfs root pool mirroring and came across some problems. I have no problems mirroring the root pool if I have both disks attached during OpenSolaris installation (installer sees 2 disks). The problem occurs when I only have one disk attached to the system during install. After OpenSolaris installation completes, I attach the second disk and try to create a mirror but I cannot. Here are the steps I go through: 1) install OpenSolaris onto 16GB disk 2) after successful install, shutdown, and attach second disk (also 16GB) 3) fdisk -B 4) partition 5) zfs attach Step 5 fails, giving a "disk too small" error. What I noticed about the second disk is that it has a 9th partition called "alternates" that takes up about 15MBs. This partition doesn't exist in the first disk and I believe is what's causing the problem. I can't figure out how to delete this partition and I don't know why it's there. How do I mirror the root pool if I don't have both disks attached during OpenSolaris installation? I realize I can just use a disk larger than 16GBs, but that would be a waste.
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