Why is the cachefile zpool property not persisted?

[FiloSottile]

I have a pool with a custom cachefile, let's say /var/tmp/zpool.cache.

After a reboot, I run

zpool import -c /var/tmp/zpool.cache -a

The import succeeds, but the cachefile setting is back to the default.

NAME  PROPERTY   VALUE                         SOURCE
test  cachefile  -                             default

I would have expected that either

1. the zpool property would be persisted in the pool, like all others
2. the -c argument would be used as the cachefile of the imported pool

What am I missing?

[ghost]

With zpool import -c the given cachefile is only used to find the pools for importing. It does not change the property on the pools. To do that you should use zpool set.

[FiloSottile]

That's fair enough on -c, although I wonder what users want to use a cache file for importing, but then not to track changes to the pool.

However, I did also use zpool set (that's how the cache file was created, I did not move it manually) and the value was back to the default after zpool import.

It's deeply surprising that I explicitly set a custom cache file, update my boot script to pass it to zpool import -c, and then at the next boot the cache file gets recreated at /etc/zfs/zpool.cache anyway.

[ghost]

Ok I understand your concern now, that is indeed surprising.