Re: ZFS patches.

From: Aristedes Maniatis <ari_at_ish.com.au>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:28:27 +1000
On 30/07/2008, at 6:17 AM, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:

> I believe it is possible (with or without the patch) to boot purely  
> off
> of ZFS.  The ish.com.au document describes how to do this in "Step
> Three: solving the ZFS boot problem".
>
> https://www.ish.com.au/solutions/articles/freebsdzfs
>
> I simply choose not to utilise that method.  I'm a bit paranoid about
> non-UFS root filesystems.  My main concern revolves around booting  
> into
> single-user, which is an important part of the whole build/install  
> world
> process -- does it actually work with ZFS as a root fs, and if so, is
> any sort of craziness required to accomplish it?

Our article referenced above does still involve a UFS root filesystem,  
but once the boot process gets under way it is moved out of the way  
and replaced with the live ZFS root partition. We've had no problem  
booting into single user mode with this setup.

The main down side is that you have a small extra bootable UFS  
partition (ours are 1Gb) with a kernel and absolutely basic system  
which is used for nothing more than bootstrapping the system. Oh, and  
it takes a while to wrap your brain around the whole concept. Having  
the extra partition means that every time you do

make installkernel

you'll also need to copy that kernel from the live ZFS root into the  
UFS partition. That's a nuisance to have to remember.

On the plus side, you get to have your entire live filesystem under  
ZFS and whatever snapshot/RAID/backup/encryption/other ZFS neat  
feature you care to throw at it.


Ari Maniatis



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Received on Wed Jul 30 2008 - 07:44:17 UTC

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