Friday evening + homelab VM + bad ideas = RHEL 9.7 on ZFS root.
-
Friday evening + homelab VM + bad ideas = RHEL 9.7 on ZFS root.
I patched convert2rhel until it stopped saying no.
New blog post: https://blog.hofstede.it/rhel-on-zfs-root-an-unholy-experiment/
-
R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
-
I incentive moved this topic from Uncategorized
-
Friday evening + homelab VM + bad ideas = RHEL 9.7 on ZFS root.
I patched convert2rhel until it stopped saying no.
New blog post: https://blog.hofstede.it/rhel-on-zfs-root-an-unholy-experiment/
@Larvitz
Thanks for great article!
-
@Larvitz
Thanks for great article!@pinkopanterata little less serious than my usual posts
-
Friday evening + homelab VM + bad ideas = RHEL 9.7 on ZFS root.
I patched convert2rhel until it stopped saying no.
New blog post: https://blog.hofstede.it/rhel-on-zfs-root-an-unholy-experiment/
Thank You for another interesting article - will definitely add it to next VN.
... and yes - ZFS on Linux mostly just works - even with root on ZFS.
Its not hard to achieve that.
The valuable ingredient that is missed most of the time is ZFS Boot Environments.
Its little harder to add and integrate ZFSBootMenu - but that is also doable - a lot of guides exist out there.
Another level is making that root on ZFS work with LUKS encryption ... but that leaves additional unencrypted /boot partition with EXT4 or XFS.
That is the level of integration Linux is not able to reach - the FreeBSD level. FreeBSD does not need any additional UFS /boot partition to 'decrypt' the root on ZFS that is installed on GELI encryption - its all supported by the FreeBSD loader(8) - the loader(8) asks you for GELI password before boot - then after typing proper password you have decrypted GELI and root on ZFS with ZFS Boot Environments to use.
What is more interesting - is that a Linux distribution that offers root on ZFS (with LUKS or not) with integrated ZFSBootMenu does not exist - there are only guides/howtos/... no single Linux installer does this ... which is strange because if you check these guides/howtos its relatively simple - you just need to type needed commands in particular order and its done.
More like political problem then a technical one ...
-
Thank You for another interesting article - will definitely add it to next VN.
... and yes - ZFS on Linux mostly just works - even with root on ZFS.
Its not hard to achieve that.
The valuable ingredient that is missed most of the time is ZFS Boot Environments.
Its little harder to add and integrate ZFSBootMenu - but that is also doable - a lot of guides exist out there.
Another level is making that root on ZFS work with LUKS encryption ... but that leaves additional unencrypted /boot partition with EXT4 or XFS.
That is the level of integration Linux is not able to reach - the FreeBSD level. FreeBSD does not need any additional UFS /boot partition to 'decrypt' the root on ZFS that is installed on GELI encryption - its all supported by the FreeBSD loader(8) - the loader(8) asks you for GELI password before boot - then after typing proper password you have decrypted GELI and root on ZFS with ZFS Boot Environments to use.
What is more interesting - is that a Linux distribution that offers root on ZFS (with LUKS or not) with integrated ZFSBootMenu does not exist - there are only guides/howtos/... no single Linux installer does this ... which is strange because if you check these guides/howtos its relatively simple - you just need to type needed commands in particular order and its done.
More like political problem then a technical one ...
@vermaden I ignored the political layer on purpose. I just had a couple of wines and wanted to see "what happens if I..." and then frankensteined a RHEL that boots with rEFInd on a ZFS root.. And (after patching serious parts of convert2rhel, removing sanity check functions), it did work and boot
I still wouldn't trust my actual data to that system and my personal infrastructure runs ons FreeBSD (Server) and OpenBSD (Firewalls) -
R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
