ZFS: Cannot delete snapshot (snapshot is cloned)? Destroy clone first!

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on March 4th 2014 - Listed in Unix Solaris ZFS

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On a ZFS backup server, a snapshot couldn't be deleted (destroyed) anymore:

zfs destroy -rR "lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-02-01-00:00"
cannot destroy 'lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-02-01-00:00': snapshot is cloned
no snapshots destroyed

As the output said, the snapshot was not destroyed and it was still listed in the zfs list output:

zfs list -t snapshot | grep myserver99 | tail
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-26-00:00   856M -  1.50T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-27-00:00   781M -  1.30T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-28-00:00   774M -  1.30T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-29-00:00   614M -  1.30T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-02-01-00:00   191M -  1.30T  -

The information "snapshot is cloned" points out that the selected snapshot was previousyl cloned and that the clone is still available.
A snapshot cannot be deleted until all of its clones were destroyed (or promoted to a real file system, but that's another topic).
(Source: http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/replication-problem-delete-a-cloned-snapshot.6625/)

To find the clones, the zfs database (zdb) needs to be consulted:

zdb -d lowiopool |grep "%"
Dataset lowiopool/backups/backups/server23/%daily-2012-12-26-00:00 [ZPL], ID 201724, cr_txg 12724738, 246G, 55 objects
Dataset lowiopool/backups/myserver99/%daily-2014-02-02-00:00 [ZPL], ID 11759, cr_txg 14376982, 1.38T, 3934622 objects

The second entry is our famous clone of the snapshot we tried to delete.

The clone can be deleted like another zfs filesystem or snapshot, using destroy:

zfs destroy lowiopool/backups/myserver99/%daily-2014-02-02-00:00
cannot open 'lowiopool/backups/myserver99/%daily-2014-02-02-00:00': dataset does not exist

Although a warning is shown "dataset does not exist", the clone was deleted:

zdb -d lowiopool |grep "%"
Dataset lowiopool/backups/backups/server23/%daily-2012-12-26-00:00 [ZPL], ID 201724, cr_txg 12724738, 246G, 55 objects

Now the snapshot we have tried to destroy at the begin, can be deleted:

zfs destroy -rR lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-02-01-00:00

Verification:

zfs list -t snapshot | grep myserver99 | tail
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-25-00:00   473M -  1.30T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-26-00:00   856M -  1.50T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-27-00:00   781M -  1.30T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-28-00:00   774M -  1.30T  -
lowiopool/backups/myserver99@daily-2014-01-29-00:00   628M -  1.30T  -

Yayy!

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