Reviewing zpool status Output

The complete zpool status output looks similar to the following:

# zpool status tank
# zpool status tank
  pool: tank
 state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices could not be opened.  Sufficient replicas exist for
        the pool to continue functioning in a degraded state.
action: Attach the missing device and online it using 'zpool online'.
   see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-2Q
 scrub: none requested
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank        DEGRADED     0     0     0
          mirror-0  DEGRADED     0     0     0
            c1t0d0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            c1t1d0  UNAVAIL      0     0     0  cannot open

errors: No known data errors

This output is described next:

Overall Pool Status Information

This section in the zpool status output contains the following fields, some of which are only displayed for pools exhibiting problems:

pool

Identifies the name of the pool.

state

Indicates the current health of the pool. This information refers only to the ability of the pool to provide the necessary replication level.

status

Describes what is wrong with the pool. This field is omitted if no errors are found.

action

A recommended action for repairing the errors. This field is omitted if no errors are found.

see

Refers to a knowledge article containing detailed repair information. Online articles are updated more often than this guide can be updated. So, always reference them for the most up-to-date repair procedures. This field is omitted if no errors are found.

scrub

Identifies the current status of a scrub operation, which might include the date and time that the last scrub was completed, a scrub is in progress, or if no scrub was requested.

errors

Identifies known data errors or the absence of known data errors.

Pool Configuration Information

The config field in the zpool status output describes the configuration of the devices in the pool, as well as their state and any errors generated from the devices. The state can be one of the following: ONLINE, FAULTED, DEGRADED, UNAVAIL, or OFFLINE. If the state is anything but ONLINE, the fault tolerance of the pool has been compromised.

The second section of the configuration output displays error statistics. These errors are divided into three categories:

• READ – I/O errors that occurred while issuing a read request

• WRITE – I/O errors that occurred while issuing a write request

• CKSUM – Checksum errors, meaning that the device returned corrupted data as the result of a read request

These errors can be used to determine if the damage is permanent. A small number of I/O errors might indicate a temporary outage, while a large number might indicate a permanent problem with the device. These errors do not necessarily correspond to data corruption as interpreted by applications. If the device is in a redundant configuration, the devices might show uncorrectable errors, while no errors appear at the mirror or RAID-Z device level. In such cases, ZFS successfully retrieved the good data and attempted to heal the damaged data from existing replicas.

For more information about interpreting these errors, see Determining the Type of Device Failure.

Finally, additional auxiliary information is displayed in the last column of the zpool status output. This information expands on the state field, aiding in the diagnosis of failures. If a device is FAULTED, this field indicates whether the device is inaccessible or whether the data on the device is corrupted. If the device is undergoing resilvering, this field displays the current progress.

For information about monitoring resilvering progress, see Viewing Resilvering Status.

Scrubbing Status

The scrub section of the zpool status output describes the current status of any explicit scrubbing operations. This information is distinct from whether any errors are detected on the system, though this information can be used to determine the accuracy of the data corruption error reporting. If the last scrub ended recently, most likely, any known data corruption has been discovered.

Scrub completion messages persist across system reboots.

For more information about the data scrubbing and how to interpret this information, see Checking ZFS File System Integrity.

Data Corruption Errors

The zpool status command also shows whether any known errors are associated with the pool. These errors might have been found during data scrubbing or during normal operation. ZFS maintains a persistent log of all data errors associated with a pool. This log is rotated whenever a complete scrub of the system finishes.

Data corruption errors are always fatal. Their presence indicates that at least one application experienced an I/O error due to corrupt data within the pool. Device errors within a redundant pool do not result in data corruption and are not recorded as part of this log. By default, only the number of errors found is displayed. A complete list of errors and their specifics can be found by using the zpool status -v option. For example:

# zpool status -v
  pool: tank
 state: UNAVAIL
status: One or more devices are faulted in response to IO failures.
action: Make sure the affected devices are connected, then run 'zpool clear'.
   see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-HC
 scrub: scrub completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Tue Feb  2 13:08:42 2010
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        tank        UNAVAIL      0     0     0  insufficient replicas
          c1t0d0    ONLINE       0     0     0
          c1t1d0    UNAVAIL      4     1     0  cannot open

errors: Permanent errors have been detected in the following files: 

/tank/data/aaa
/tank/data/bbb
/tank/data/ccc

A similar message is also displayed by fmd on the system console and the /var/adm/messages file. These messages can also be tracked by using the fmdump command.

For more information about interpreting data corruption errors, see Identifying the Type of Data Corruption.