zpool creation on geli failed with FreeBSD-9.0

[Christopher J. Ruwe]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:13:36 +1000
Da Rock <freebsd-questions at herveybayaustralia.com.au> wrote:

> On 04/10/12 02:07, Christopher J. Ruwe wrote:
> > I was trying to install FreeBSD 9.0 using a geli encrypted disk and
> > ZFS on my ThinkPad R500 this weekend. I failed.
> >
> > Having sucessfully initialized the geli part and having attached the
> > provider, my attempt to create a zpool on the geli section thus
> >
> > $>  zpool create ntank /dev/ada0p2.eli
> >
> > failed with the message
> >
> > Cannot create 'ntank': invalid argument for this pool operation.
> >
> > I could not convince the system to create the zpool on the geli
> > part, so I gave up and created the zpool on the unencrypted
> > partition instead to have a working machine for the week. I would,
> > however, like to have my data on an encrypted partition though. Has
> > anyone witnessed and resolved this issue or does anyone have other
> > ideas?
> 
> Someone using ZFS will be able to verify this, but from my
> understanding ZFS runs on the hardware and you can *possibly* put
> geli on top of ZFS.
> 
> You can put geom on ZFS but not the other way around.
> 
> HTH
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I had a zpool on a geli on FreeBSD-8.0 to 8.2 and
8-stable. I opted for a complete reinstall of 9.0 instead of upgrading
due to issues with xmonad, which I did not understand then. I am
"furious" at my decision now that I have seen that a update would
possibly have been much easier than to reinstall, had I at that time
understood what was causing problems with xmonad.

Cheers, Christopher