Re: [gentoo-user] Install on ZFS

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:31 AM, John Covici <covici@××××××××××.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to know which cd has zfs support.  I could not find one,
> so I wrote some catalyst stuff to make an install cd with zfs support,
> but it would be nice if I would not have to do that, a fair bit of
> work.
>

IMO this is the easiest option out there:
http://www.funtoo.org/ZFS_Install_Guide

(Just the parts about loading the zfs module.)

It uses an Ubuntu 16.04 boot USB, and installs the packaged zfs
modules/etc.  You could certainly add them to a Gentoo or
systemrescuecd boot disk, but Ubuntu should work just as well.  All
you need is something you can boot with that can create filesystems,
mount them, expand tarballs, and run chroot.  A lot of rescue CDs lack
zfs support due to the whole GPL linking non-GPL concern, which many
believe is illegal.

If you're not putting root/usr on zfs then it is pretty easy to get
zfs running on Gentoo (though in this case you probably don't even
need a zfs-capable boot cd to start it).  If you want to put root on
zfs it gets trickier, and if you want to put boot on zfs it gets
trickier still.  There are docs for both, but I've never actually done
them.  If you want boot on zfs then your bootloader needs to support
it and there are limitations on what features you can enable on your
pool.  I think that if boot is non-zfs then there are fewer
restrictions on root, but you need some scripts to unmount it cleanly
when shutting down (unless using systemd+dracut where you can pivot
back to the initramfs for this - which apparently hasn't actually been
tested on Gentoo).

Is this your first Gentoo install, or your first Gentoo+ZFS install?
If the former, you're definitely not doing this the easy way...

-- 
Rich