Re: [CFT] Patch to bsdinstall to support root-on-ZFS and GELI

On 10/8/2013, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> On 10/07/13 21:59, Allan Jude wrote:
>> Devin Teske and I have been working on a big patch to bsdinstall to
>> implement installing on a ZFS pool. It supports both GPT and MBR, the 4k
>> sector gnop trick, and optional GELI encryption. We would like to commit
>> this in time for 10.0-BETA1 so it needs some testing to work out any
>> obvious bugs before we send it off to re_at_ to get it committed.
>>
>> It includes a single configuration menu that allows you to select all of
>> the required details, including which drives to use (gets details from
>> camcontrol, also includes an inspection utility that presents the
>> detailed output of camcontrol inquiry/identify, and gpart show), what
>> ZFS RAID level to use (taking in to consideration the selected number of
>> drives), GPT/mbr, 4k YES/no, GELI yes/NO, pool name, etc.
>>
>>
>> Additional, it includes some other changes to bsdinstall:
>> 1. Change the default to the 'non-standard keyboard mapping' prompt to no
>> 2. Replace the 3 separate dialogs to configure an ipv4 address with just 1
>> 3. Remove the dialog asking if you wish to enable crash dumps, this
>> feature has been combined into the regular 'services to enable' dialog
>> and enabled by default
>>
>>
>> You can browse the patches here:
>> http://druidbsd.cvs.sf.net/viewvc/druidbsd/bsdinstall_zfs/
>>
>> I've built a bootonly.iso (10.0-ALPHA4) to make testing easier,
>> available compressed (48 MB) or uncompressed (211 MB):
>>
>> http://www.allanjude.com/bsd/zfsbootonly_2013-10-06.iso.xz
>>
>> http://www.allanjude.com/bsd/zfsbootonly_2013-10-06.iso
>>
>>
>> We look forward to your feedback
>>
>
> Thanks for doing this! I had a few comments:
> 1. ZFS is not bootable on all architectures. Could you adjust that menu
> item to only display for i386, amd64, and (I think?) sparc64. Use uname
> -m, not -p, for this.
> 1a. The script is broken on sparc64 in any case, which uses VTOC8
> instead of GPT.
> 2. Why are you using camcontrol? That is guaranteed not to work on
> non-CAM systems. You should use the GEOM ident string if you need an ID.
> 3. Any plans to integrate this into the regular partition editor? ZFS
> support is important enough that I will definitely not get in the way,
> even as a bolt-on, but it would be a shame for it to stay that way. The
> editor is also designed for ZFS to be added.
> 4. What is this gnop stuff for?
> 5. I think some substantial part of the MBR code will blow up if you are
> reinitalizing a previously formatted disk (the bsdlabel will be retasted
> and come back from the dead).
> -Nathan

I wrote some support for adding ZFS to the partition editor a couple of
months ago, around the time that 9.2 was branched.  One of the biggest
things that I have not done is integrate setting up a zfs mirror between
any disks before creating the zpool.  Nor did I do the gnop hack to
create 4K disk blocks before creating the pool.

I more or less changed the partedit program to take an argument when
invoked with "ufs" (same as current behavior) or "zfs", which knows
about zfs setup stuff.  The hookup to the actual scripts was, shall
we say, much less intrusive than what has been published here.

I guess it's time to dig out the patches and make them available to
others.

-Kurt