debian-jessie-zfs-root

Installs Debian GNU/Linux 8 Jessie to a native ZFS root filesystem using a Debian Jessie Live CD and ZFS packages from backports.org.

If you like this project, you may also want to try to install a Debian Stretch ZFS root system.

Usage

1. Boot Jessie Live CD ('standard' edition)
2. Login (user: user, password: live) and become root
3. Setup network and export http_proxy environment variable (if needed)
4. Run this script
5. User interface: Select disks and RAID level
6. Let the installer do the work
7. User interface: install grub to all disks participating in the array
8. User interface: enter root password and select timezone
9. Reboot

Fixes included

• grub (v2.02, included in Debian 8), especially grub-probe, does not support all ZFS features and subsequently refuses to install. This script disables feature@hole_birth and feature@embedded_data (and you must not enable those features after installation).
• The ZFS SPL uses the system hostid, which isn't initialized correctly on Debian systems.
• Workaround for grub (v2.02) mysteriously not searching devices in /dev/disk/by-id but in /dev.
• Some mountpoints, notably /var, need to be mounted via fstab as the ZFS mount script runs too late during boot.
• The EFI System Partition (ESP) is a single point of failure on one disk, this is arguably a mis-design in the UEFI specification.

Bugs

• Booting via EFI has not been tested at all.
• RAID10 Mirror with >= 6 disks fails to boot with grub, probably a grub bug. The (Virtualbox) BIOS does not detect more than 4 drives connected to a virtual SATA controller and therefore grub isn't able to access them. Operating the drives in a SCSI or mixed SATA/IDE/SCSI RAID10 configuration works fine, even with 6 or more drives.

Credits

• https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-16.04-Root-on-ZFS
• https://janvrany.github.io/2016/10/fun-with-zfs-part-1-installing-debian-jessie-on-zfs-root.html