New LTS, new FS?

[MAFoElffen]

@jbicha ---
Yes the autoinstall does work. I had to file a bug where there was an issue with late commands not working, but they are working now. Me and another tested that, and the patch from proposed, before it got pushed through.

Not in the docs, but the various sample desktop autoinstall scripts are located inside of the ubuntu-desktop-installer snap image... Found them while digging around.

@laserburn --
zsys was only included with 20.04, and was not included since then. It wasn't a default for 22.04. It's still in the repo's, but not needed.

/boot <> bpool is still there... This laptop:

mafoelffen@Mikes-ThinkPad-T520:~$ sudo zpool list
NAME      SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  CKPOINT  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP    HEALTH  ALTROOT
backups  1.46T   224G  1.24T        -         -     0%    14%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
bpool    1.88G   766M  1.13G        -         -     2%    39%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
dpool     856G  2.55M   856G        -         -     0%     0%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
hpool     396G  64.1G   332G        -         -    13%    16%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
kpool     992G   495G   497G        -         -     1%    49%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
rpool     496G  27.7G   468G        -         -     2%     5%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
mafoelffen@Mikes-ThinkPad-T520:~$ lsblk -e7 -o name,label,size,fstype,mountpoint,model
NAME   LABEL              SIZE FSTYPE     MOUNTPOINT MODEL
sda                       1.8T                       Samsung SSD 870 QVO 2TB
├─sda1 {SYSTEM}           550M vfat       /boot/efi  
├─sda2 Windows RE tools   500M ntfs                  
├─sda3 {Windows}        888.6G ntfs                  
├─sda4                     32G                       
├─sda5 bpool                2G zfs_member            
├─sda6 rpool              500G zfs_member            
├─sda7 hpool            397.4G zfs_member            
├─sda8                    983M                       
└─sda9                     30G                       
sdb                       1.8T                       Samsung SSD 870 QVO 2TB
├─sdb1 kpool             1000G zfs_member            
└─sdb2 dpool              863G zfs_member            
sdc                       1.8T                       Dogfish SSD 2TB
└─sdc1 backups            1.5T zfs_member

Not from the canned ZFS-On-Root install scripts... It was installed using the Server Edition LiveUSB as a boot medium, and it's console prompt environment.

It you need a bigger bpool, which you need to recreate it anyways if you plan to ever snapshot bpool, to get around a Grub bug that comes about after you do a ZFS bpool snapshot... snapshot bpool/BOOT. Send/Receive it somewhere for a backup... Destroy bpool. Grow the partition, and recreate bpool with these options:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread....0#post14175250
Send/Receive the dataset back into the new pool to restore it.
Those creation options will get around this bug:
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?64297

[laserburn2]

The new installer now makes it very visible that you can use a file to automate your install. Maybe that supports complex file system organization?

Does the new installer allow the user to change the size of bpool or /boot? That sounds like elementary stuff, not something that we should jump through hoops to get.

[laserburn2]

There indeed was no way to manually choose anything for zfs installation, so I just went with what installer offered me.

NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CKPOINT EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT
bpool 1.88G 97.6M 1.78G - - 0% 5% 1.00x ONLINE -
rpool 944G 22.9G 921G - - 0% 2% 1.00x ONLINE -

It's once again a small bpool, but it won't cause a problem until Ubuntu is upgraded. This is a six year old PC, slowly going towards replacement in a year or two, so that's not really a big concern.

[MAFoElffen]

The ZFS autoinstall scripts found inside the ubuntu-desktop-installer image, found at /snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/<version_number>/bin/subiquity/examples/ do work. Such as 'ai-zfs-efi-simple.yaml':

#cloud-config
autoinstall:
  version: 1
  identity:
    realname: ''
    hostname: ubuntu
    username: ubuntu
    password: '$6$wdAcoXrU039hKYPd$508Qvbe7ObUnxoj15DRCkzC3qO7edjH0VV7BPNRDYK4QR8ofJaEEF2heacn0QgD.f8pO8SNp83XNdWG6tocBM1'
  source:
    id: ubuntu-server-minimal
  early-commands:
    - apt-get install -y zfsutils-linux
  late-commands:
    # Let's avoid recreating LP: #1993318
    - zpool set cachefile= rpool
    - cp /etc/zfs/zpool.cache "/target/etc/zfs/"
    - mkdir -p "/etc/zfs/zfs-list.cache" "/target/etc/zfs/zfs-list.cache"
/snap/ubuntu-desktop-installer/1245/bin/subiquity/examples/ai-zfs-efi-simple.yaml:    - truncate -s 0 /etc/zfs/zfs-list.cache/rpool
    - >-
      env -i
      ZEVENT_POOL=rpool
      ZED_ZEDLET_DIR=/etc/zfs/zed.d
      ZEVENT_SUBCLASS=history_event
      ZFS=zfs
      ZEVENT_HISTORY_INTERNAL_NAME=create
      /etc/zfs/zed.d/history_event-zfs-list-cacher.sh
    - >-
      sh -c
      'sed -E "s|\t/target/?|\t/|g" "/etc/zfs/zfs-list.cache/rpool" > "/target/etc/zfs/zfs-list.cache/rpool"'
    - rm -f "/etc/zfs/zfs-list.cache/rpool"
  storage:
    version: 2
    swap:
      size: 0
    config:
      - {type: disk, id: d1, ptable: gpt, match: {size: largest},
         wipe: superblock, grub_device: true}
      - {type: partition, id: d1p1, number: 1, size: 1G, device: d1,
         flag: boot, wipe: superblock, grub_device: true}
      - {type: format, id: d1p1_format, label: efi, fstype: fat32,
         volume: d1p1}
      - {type: mount, id: d1p1_mount, device: d1p1_format, path: /boot/efi}
      - {type: partition, id: d1p2, number: 2, size: -1, device: d1}
      - {type: zpool, id: d1_rpool, pool: rpool, vdevs: [d1p2], mountpoint: /,
         pool_properties: {ashift: 12},
         fs_properties: {acltype: posixacl, relatime: on, canmount: on,
                         compression: gzip, devices: off, xattr: sa}}

How familiar are you with Ubuntu Desktop? Because ZFS-On-Root has been a part of the installer on Ubuntu since 20.04...

I tend to do my own manual installs. If you search my username in the Support Sections, you can find some of my recipes for that... All the commands needed, from the live environment of an Installer LiveUSB.

[laserburn2]

As I said, the computer is slowly heading towards retirement, then it's going to brother's kids and I expect kids will be wrecking it regularly, so not many reasons to worry about problems years down the road.

I did notice that the new Ubuntu no longer makes automatic snapshots when updating software. How are we supposed to make and organize zfs snapshots now?