I have a strange situation here, in which I am unable to import an ZFS pool that I brought from another OS UNLESS I fdisk the disk of the pool. I am puzzled as to why this is happening and hoping to get an answer or an advice.The flow:An ZFS pool containing a single 3TB disk is created on a NAS4Free 9.3.0.2 system (FreeBSD).I export the pool and attach it to a NexentaStor 4.0.4 system (OpenSolaris).zpool import then showsroot@nexenta:/volumes# zpool import   pool: tank1     id: 17717822833491017053  state: UNAVAIL status: One or more devices are missing from the system. action: The pool cannot be imported. Attach the missing        devices and try again.   see: http://illumos.org/msg/ZFS-8000-3C config:        tank1                      UNAVAIL  insufficient replicas          c2t50014EE2B5B23B15d0p0  UNAVAIL  cannot openzdb -l on the disk shows label0 and label1 as expected but--------------------------------------------LABEL 2--------------------------------------------failed to read label 2--------------------------------------------LABEL 3--------------------------------------------failed to read label 3I then run fdisk c2t50014EE2B5B23B15d0p0. It says the disk is not initialized and offers to initialize and create 1 Linux partition.I let it do it. Then optionally delete the new partition and save.At this point an MBR is created on the first sector of the disk. The disk as a whole is still a device of the zpool.With the MBR on the disk, I am able to import the pool and as expected.Important details:Same process with a 256GB disk works as expected without fdisk involvement. I suspect this issue is related to disks over 2TB.What I have tried:See if disk size is detected correctly and the same on the different systems. It seems that disk geometry is different for fdisk on NexentaStor than for other systems. I am not certain how to verify.Why does the creation of the MBR on such a disk allows for proper read of the ZFS labels on the end of the disk?
Why can't I import an ZFS pool without partitioning the data disk with fdisk?
freebsd;zfs;freenas;opensolaris;nexenta