TrueNAS Pool Names - All lowercase or should I use capitals

Software & Web Applications
1

Some people use all lowercase for their pool names and some use Capitals.

I think a pool name should

  • be one word
  • no spaces
  • although underlines and dashes are allowed I would not really want to use this.
  • Sometimes numbers are ok in large build
  • never special characters

There might be issues in using capital letters:

  • Creating Pools | TrueNAS Documentation Hub
    • Names can have upper or lowercase alphanumeric characters, but use lower-case alpha characters to avoid potential problems with sharing protocols.
  • Adding iSCSI Block Shares | TrueNAS Documentation Hub
    • Have the following ready before you begin adding your iSCSI block share:
      • Storage pool and dataset.
      • A path to a Device (zvol or file) that doesn’t use capital letters or spaces.
  • Shares | TrueNAS Documentation Hub
    • When creating zvols for shares, avoid giving them names with capital letters or spaces since they can cause problems and failures with iSCSI and NFS shares.
  • Some badly written TruenNAS apps perhaps need all lowercase in their path.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the best use of capitals or not for a pool name, a naming convention perhaps, do these thing I mention above have a real world issue any more?

Are there any other reasons for using all lower case

Although you can change a pool name it is not to be done lightly espeically with an established server so I would like to get my protocol sorted first.

Thanks

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2

In general, I prefer lowercase letters for most things I may have to touch from a command line.

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3

I do use mixed case but rarely a symbol in the pool name. I do sometimes use symbols in the dataset name. Worth noting that when doing NFS the full path will be used in TrueNAS as noted below from my HL15 setup.

Welcome to TrueNAS
Last login: Tue Sep  8 07:53:55 2026 from 172.16.16.70
root@hl15[~]# zpool list
NAME        SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  CKPOINT  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP    HEALTH  ALTROOT
Flashy     12.2T  2.21T  10.0T        -         -    21%    18%  1.00x    ONLINE  /mnt
Rusty      76.4T  27.4T  49.0T        -         -     1%    35%  1.00x    ONLINE  /mnt
boot-pool   464G  27.1G   437G        -         -    10%     5%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
root@hl15[~]# exportfs -v
/mnt/Flashy/XEN/Backups
		192.168.20.0/24(sync,wdelay,hide,no_subtree_check,sec=sys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash)
/mnt/Flashy/XEN/VDI
		192.168.20.0/24(sync,wdelay,hide,no_subtree_check,sec=sys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash)
/mnt/Flashy/XEN/Backups_Critical
		192.168.20.0/24(sync,wdelay,hide,no_subtree_check,sec=sys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash)
/mnt/Flashy/XEN/ISO
		192.168.20.0/24(sync,wdelay,hide,no_subtree_check,sec=sys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash)
/mnt/Flashy/Proxmox
		192.168.20.0/24(sync,wdelay,hide,no_subtree_check,sec=sys,rw,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash)
root@hl15[~]#
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4

Are there any things you can think of that using capitals in the pool name would cause issues with the various technologies on TrueNAS, maybe Apps?

Using capitals can look nicer and easier to read, but would using them cause issue?

5

The only issue is if you forget that you used them. Whenever possible I copy and paste paths to avoid typos that my brain misses.

2 Likes
6

Thanks Tom.

I will ask the TN team to re-evaluate some of the documentation in regards to this.