Managing ZFS Mount Points

By default, a ZFS file system is automatically mounted when it is created. You can determine specific mount-point behavior for a file system as described in this section.

You can also set the default mount point for a pool's file system at creation time by using the zpool create -m command. For more information about creating pools, see Creating ZFS Storage Pools.

All ZFS file systems are mounted by ZFS at boot time by using the Service Management Facility's (SMF) svc://system/filesystem/local service. File systems are mounted under /path, where path is the name of the file system.

You can override the default mount point by using the zfs set command to set the mountpoint property to a specific path. ZFS automatically creates the specified mount point, if needed, and automatically mounts the associated file system.

ZFS file systems are automatically mounted at boot time without requiring you to edit the /etc/vfstab file.

The mountpoint property is inherited. For example, if pool/home has the mountpoint property set to /export/stuff, then pool/home/user inherits /export/stuff/user for its mountpoint property value.

To prevent a file system from being mounted, set the mountpoint property to none. In addition, the canmount property can be used to control whether a file system can be mounted. For more information about the canmount property, see The canmount Property.

File systems can also be explicitly managed through legacy mount interfaces by using zfs set to set the mountpoint property to legacy. Doing so prevents ZFS from automatically mounting and managing a file system. Legacy tools including the mount and umount commands, and the /etc/vfstab file must be used instead. For more information about legacy mounts, see Legacy Mount Points.