ZFS and glabel

[Ivailo A. Tanusheff]

Dear all,

I run to an interesting issue and I would like to discuss it with all of you.
The whole thing began with me trying to identify available HDD to include in a zfs pool through a script/program. 
I assumed that the easiest way of doing this is using glabel. For example:

root at FreeBSD:~ # glabel status
                                      Name  Status  Components
gptid/248e758c-e267-11e3-95bb-08002796202b     N/A  ada0p1
           diskid/DISK-VBdd471206-91164057     N/A  ada5
           diskid/DISK-VBe98b5e75-0d8cf6dc     N/A  ada8
           diskid/DISK-VB7d006584-01beca12     N/A  ada6
           diskid/DISK-VB721029c3-66a60156     N/A  ada7
           diskid/DISK-VB31481dbb-639540a1     N/A  ada2
           diskid/DISK-VB95921208-4eb19f41     N/A  ada4

So far it is OK and if I create pool like zpool create xxx ada4 then the line for ada4 will disappear from the glabel status.
As far as I remember though it is not recommended to use production pools based on the device naming, so I wanted to switch to gpt lable, i.e.  diskid/DISK-VB95921208-4eb19f41.
When I recreate pool like:
zpool create xxx           diskid/DISK-VB95921208-4eb19f41    the pool is created without problems, but the device does not disappear from the glabel status list, thus making my program running wrong.
Is this a problem with the zfs implementation, my server or the general idea is wrong?

BTW, if I label the disk additionally, like: 
glabel create VB95921208-4eb19f41 ada4
zpool create xxx label/VB95921208-4eb19f41

The glabel status again shows the right information. The problem with the latest approach is that if someone executes:
glabel destroy -f VB95921208-4eb19f41

The result becomes:
pool: xxx
 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://illumos.org/msg/ZFS-8000-HC
  scan: none requested
config:

        NAME                   STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        xxx                    UNAVAIL      0     0     0
          6968348230421469155  REMOVED      0     0     0  was /dev/label/VB95921208-4eb19f41

And the data is practically unrecoverable.

So my questions are:
- Is there a way to make glabel to show the right data when I use diskid/DISK-VB95921208-4eb19f41     
- Which is the most proper way of creating vdevs - with disk name (ada4), diskid (diskid/DISK-VB95921208-4eb19f41) or manual labeling? 
- How may I found which disks are free, if the diskid approach is the best solution?


Regards,

Ivailo Tanusheff

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