ZFS patches.
Aristedes Maniatis
ari at ish.com.au
Wed Jul 30 09:44:16 UTC 2008
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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