Creating Filesystems

Steps

1. Become root or assume an equivalent role with the appropriate ZFS rights profile.

   For more information about the ZFS rights profiles, see 8.4 ZFS Rights Profiles.

2. Create desired hierarchy.

   In this example, we create a filesystem that will act as a container for individual file systems:

   # zfs create tank/home

   
   

   Now we can group our individual filesystems under the home file system in our pool tank

3. Set inherited properties.

   Now that we have established a filesystem hierarchy, we want to set up any properties that should be shared among all users:

   # zfs set mountpoint=/export/zfs tank/home # zfs set sharenfs=on tank/home # zfs set compression=on tank/home

   
   

   For more information on properties and property inheritance, see 5.2 ZFS Properties.

4. Create individual filesystems.

   Now we can create our individual user filesystems. Note that we could have also created the filesystems first and then changed properties at the home level. All properties can be changed dynamically while filesystems are in use.

   # zfs create tank/home/bonwick # zfs create tank/home/billm

   
   

   These filesystems inherit their property settings from their parent, so they be automatically mounted at /export/zfs/user and shared via NFS. There is no need to edit the /etc/vfstab or /etc/dfs/dfstab file.

   For more information on creating filesystems, see 5.1.1 Creating a Filesystem.

   For more information on mounting and sharing filesystems, see 5.5 Mounting and Sharing File Systems.

5. Set filesystem-specific properties.

   As mentioned in the previous task, we want to give bonwick a quota of 10 Gbytes. This places a limit on the amount of space he can consume, regardless of how much space is available in the pool:

   # zfs set quota=10G tank/home/bonwick

   
   

6. View the results.

   Display available filesystem information with the zfs list command:

   # zfs list NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT tank 92.0K 67.0G 9.5K /tank tank/home 24.0K 67.0G 8K /export/zfs tank/home/billm 8K 67.0G 8K /export/zfs/billm tank/home/bonwick 8K 10.0G 8K /export/zfs/bonwick

   
   

   Note that bonwick only has 10 Gbytes of space available, while billm can use the full pool (67 Gbytes).

   For more information on getting filesystem status, see 5.3 Querying Filesystem Information.

   For more information on how space is used and calculated, see 3.2 Space Accounting.