Mounting ZFS File Systems

ZFS automatically mounts file systems when file systems are created or when the system boots. Use of the zfs mount command is necessary only when changing mount options or explicitly mounting or unmounting file systems.

The zfs mount command with no arguments shows all currently mounted file systems that are managed by ZFS. Legacy managed mount points are not displayed. For example:

# zfs mount
tank                            /tank
tank/home                       /tank/home
tank/home/bonwick               /tank/home/bonwick
tank/ws                         /tank/ws

You can use the -a option to mount all ZFS managed file systems. Legacy managed file systems are not mounted. For example:

# zfs mount -a

By default, ZFS does not allow mounting on top of a nonempty directory. To force a mount on top of a nonempty directory, you must use the -O option. For example:

# zfs mount tank/home/lalt
cannot mount '/export/home/lalt': directory is not empty
use legacy mountpoint to allow this behavior, or use the -O flag
# zfs mount -O tank/home/lalt

Legacy mount points must be managed through legacy tools. An attempt to use ZFS tools results in an error. For example:

# zfs mount pool/home/billm
cannot mount 'pool/home/billm': legacy mountpoint
use mount(1M) to mount this filesystem
# mount -F zfs tank/home/billm

When a file system is mounted, it uses a set of mount options based on the property values associated with the dataset. The correlation between properties and mount options is as follows:

Property

Mount Options

atime

atime/noatime

devices

devices/nodevices

exec

exec/noexec

nbmand

nbmand/nonbmand

readonly

ro/rw

setuid

setuid/nosetuid

xattr

xattr/noxattr

The mount option nosuid is an alias for nodevices,nosetuid.

You can use the NFSv4 mirror mount features to help you better manage NFS-mounted ZFS home directories. For a description of mirror mounts, see ZFS and File System Mirror Mounts.