Zfs plugin 6.0.12 Connection Lost on installation.

[procount]

I am trying to setup OMV6 on a Raspberry Pi4 with ZFS and the ZFS plugin, for the third time for my simple home NAS solution. The first 2 times were successful with earlier versions, but with this latest attempt the ZFS plugin 6.0.12 is failing to install with Connection Lost message. My first attempt was with Raspios64-lite OS which had Kernel v5.x. with no issues. On my second attempt, the Raspios64-lite kernel had updated to v6.1.x and ZFS would not work. I had to use backports to install it as follows:

sudo apt install -y git
sudo apt install -y raspberrypi-kernel-headers; # necessary for zfs-dkms to build

#for ZFS on Kernel 6.1
sudo sh -c "echo \"deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main contrib non-free\" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list"
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y -t bullseye-backports zfs-dkms #zfs-initramfs

On this third attempt with all the latest versions, OMV seems to have been updated. I used the same script above to install ZFS, but when I try to install the ZFS 6.0.12 plugin, I now get the connection lost issue during the installation of the plugin. I have tried several times with the same result. At the moment I have to resort to installing a backup of a previous OMV to get ZFS working. Does this plugin need upgrading for the latest OMV or Raspios64-lite version?

[ryecoaaron]

The connection lost happens when omv-engined is restarted when a plugin (any plugin) is installed. Nothing I can do to change that but it doesn't stop the install. Install the plugin from the command line should prove that. Just hit ctrl-shift-R in the web interface after installing.

I don't think there is anything that needs to be changed in the plugin. Personally, I would not use zfs on an RPi due to lack of resources and raid on usb (or an RPi) makes no sense. So, I don't test on the RPi. Since every ARM board is different, I could never test on all of them that OMV runs on anyway.

[procount]

Ah, I didn't understand the significance of connection lost. I thought a download connection had failed and hence it had not installed. Thanks for explaining. How can I install the plugin from the command line? This might help me a lot.

Zfs is working well for me now I have a decent NAS CMR drive (smr drives are no good). I am not using raid. Just using zfs for rollback snapshots and to send them to an off-site "mirror" as a backup. Could be better, but it suits my needs for now. Omv+zfs+docker+nextcloud+reverseProxy. Pi is overclocked to 2GHz with fan in argon case.

[ryecoaaron]

sudo apt-get install openmediavault-zfs

My RPis are OC'd to 2 or 2.1 as well. Super stable except for when I was testing zfs on them. I could never get a multi-TB rsync to finish on a single 18TB drive (zfs basic) on an 8GB rpi OC'd or not OC'd with large heatsink and fan (cpu temps always less than 30C). No problem doing the same on same system with ext4, xfs, or btrfs filesystems.

[procount]

Thanks for your insights and experience. I had somewhat similar experience on my first drives on zfs. Zfs would disconnect the drives during copying, until I found out they were SMR. Although I haven't tried offsite copying yet, I'm hoping the snapshot ability would be ok using zfs_autobackup. Btrfs is always an option if that fails.

[ryecoaaron]

I am using btrfs on one now but not using snapshots since it is a target for borgbackup from my primary server.