Fix Missing ZFS Pools on Proxmox (Permanent Solution)

If you are running Proxmox, you might occasionally encounter an issue where your ZFS pools fail to import automatically after a reboot. While you can fix this manually each time, there is a simple way to make the solution permanent.

The Problem

After a restart, your ZFS pool might be missing from the Proxmox GUI or the command line. Usually, you can bring it back temporarily using:

zpool import <pool_name>Code language: Bash (bash)

However, this manual step is frustrating to perform after every reboot.

The Permanent Solution

The issue often occurs because the zfs-import-scan.service skips the import process if it doesn’t see a specific cache file. We can bypass this check by creating a systemd override.

Follow these steps:

1. Create the override directory:

mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/zfs-import-scan.service.d/Code language: Bash (bash)

2. Create and edit the override file:

nano /etc/systemd/system/zfs-import-scan.service.d/override.confCode language: Bash (bash)

3. Add the following lines to the file to disable the file-check condition:

[Unit] ConditionFileNotEmpty=Code language: TOML, also INI (ini)

4. Reload the systemd daemon to apply the changes:

systemctl daemon-reloadCode language: Bash (bash)

From now on, Proxmox will scan and import your ZFS pools automatically during the boot sequence, even if the cache is empty.