ZFS and reordering drives

[Gary Corcoran]

James R. Van Artsdalen wrote:
> Baldur Gislason wrote:
>> When I plugged them back in they didn't go in the right order
>> and now both of my pools are broken.
> zpool.cache is broken.  Rename /boot/zfs/zpool.cache so that ZFS won't
> load it, then import the pools manually.  (a reboot might be needed
> before the import; not sure).

If one were booting from ZFS, would you be out of luck (since you wouldn't
be able to access the zpool.cache before booting), or is there a way
around this problem?  Just wondering, I've avoided booting from ZFS so far.

> The problem is that ZFS is recording the boot-time assigned name
> (/dev/ad0) in the cache.  I'm hoping to get GEOM to put the disk serial
> number in /dev, i.e., /dev/serialnum/5LZ958QL.  If you created the pool
> using serial numbers then the cache would always work right.

Is there any way today, to avoid using the boot assigned drive name (e.g.
/dev/ad2) when creating the zpool?  Again just wondering, I don't need
a solution this year...

Thanks,
Gary