Any plans for EC2 AMIs with RootOnZFS?

[Leif Pedersen]

I worked out a procedure to convert a UFS filesystem to ZFS, and I've used
it successfully many times on AWS and Azure instances. If the disk's data
will fit in RAM, it works with a memory disk. Otherwise you can attach a
second disk and substitute its device node for $extradisk. It is merely
intended as a quick hack to convert after a new installation before putting
important data on the machine, so it's not explained or robust. In other
words, be sure you understand it before you use it, and very much use it at
your own risk. But perhaps one could use the general idea to make a better
process.

http://devpit.org/wiki/Convert_UFS_to_ZFS

Because of `reboot -r`, it works without disturbing the uptime (although it
restarts all the services). That's a fun brag if you're into raising
eyebrows. ("I changed the boot filesystem without rebooting...can you do
that with _your_ favorite OS?") However, I'd suggest rebooting after to
test the boot procedure and be sure you don't leave your future self an
unpleasant 3 AM surprise.

-Leif


On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 4:38 PM Jay Edwards <jay at sentenai.com> wrote:

> I've got a fairly robust collection of utilities for Google Cloud that:
>
> 1) Starts up an official FreeBSD image
> 2) Mounts a separate drive (the ZFS target)
> 3) Installs the release; installs all of the various GCP packages
> 4) Configures a bunch of custom stuff applicable to me
> 5) Creates an image that is then used as a base for any further custom
> images.
>
> It shouldn't be that difficult to add AWS support.
>
> Jay Edwards
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 27, 2018 at 8:48 PM Colin Percival <cperciva at tarsnap.com>
> wrote:
>
> > [Adding freebsd-fs in the hope of finding more ZFS people.]
> >
> > On 12/23/18 3:51 PM, Colin Percival wrote:
> > > On 12/23/18 7:12 AM, Ben Woods wrote:
> > >> Is there any plans to provide official FreeBSD AMIs in the AWS
> > Marketplace
> > >> which use RootOnZFS out of the box?
> > >
> > > Nothing concrete yet, but it's on my radar.  Now that FreeBSD AMIs are
> > being
> > > published by a separate (release engineering) account, I'm more
> > comfortable
> > > with working on more "experimental" AMIs.  (And if this turns out to be
> > widely
> > > useful I'll talk to the release engineering team about adding it to the
> > set
> > > they publish.)
> >
> > I've created an experimental FreeBSD 12.0 ZFS AMI in the us-east-1
> region:
> > ami-0786f5b55d5aa573f
> >
> > Since I'm basically a ZFS newbie (I run it on my laptop, but only with
> the
> > default setup from the installer, and I've never used any of the fancy
> ZFS
> > features) I don't know if I've set everything up properly.  So far I have
> > one piece of feedback, which is that I should have marked canmount=off
> for
> > zroot.
> >
> > Can people please try out this AMI and let me know if there's anything
> else
> > (ZFS-related) which I should fix?  Some time next week I'll fix whatever
> > people notice and build AMIs for all the regions.
> >
> > --
> > Colin Percival
> > Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve
> > Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly
> paranoid
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