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Installing / on ZFS is fairly easy on most major Linux distributions, but Debian has been the main exception due to its initramfs generator lacking ZFS support.
by ryao 12y ago
Installing / on ZFS is fairly easy on most major Linux distributions, but Debian has been the main exception due to its initramfs generator lacking ZFS support. I am cautiously optimistic that will change.
If not, then this issue should go away when I publish ZFS support patches for syslinux later this year. syslinux is capable of generating initramfs archives on the fly, so adding ZFS support to it should largely eliminate the need for distribution-specific initramfs generators.
- LaikaF 12y agoI am not a particularly good Linux user ( I have to look up most commands/ where things are) and I had no problem getting ZFS set up on Debian. I'm worried now that you say this, because I feel I may have messed something up.
- StavrosK 12y agoHe's talking about the root partition being on ZFS, not just setting up an array.
- RexRollman 12y agoDon't most people just use a /boot partition anyway?
- ryao 12y agoIf it works for you, then there is no need to worry. I only said that because there are others who had difficulty setting this up.
- javanix 12y agoDo you boot from your ZFS partition? The initramfs limitation would only come into play in that situation, I believe.
- LaikaF 12y agoNaa, I'm good then. Or at least in that regard.
- XorNot 12y agozfs-initramfs is helpfully provided by the ZoL project and works great. The biggest problem is actually grub: grub hasn't really been updated to handle feature-flags yet, so booting off a ZFS partition is tricky. The easiest solution so far is just to keep /boot on a small ext4 partition, principally because ZFS changes seem to break grub a little too easily.
- ryao 12y agoGRUB2 upstream has support for feature flags and is compatible with ZoL 0.6.3. If Debian's GRUB2 does not support it, it would be rather out of date. You could make a version 28 pool if you need to use the Debian GRUB2 version.