On Mon, Nov 5, 2018, 3:45 AM Piotr Kubaj via freebsd-ppc <freebsd-...@freebsd.org wrote: > > ZFS is by default not available for partitioning in bsdinstall. We can, > however, use manual partitioning in shell to make ZFS partitions. > > But what if we want to do ZFS on /? This is currently not supported > out-of-the-box. The reason is that Petitboot, used on POWER9 to boot kernel, > doesn't support loading modules (at least when booting FreeBSD). ZFS is by > default distributed only as a module, to overcome licensing issues. > > There are two ways to boot ZFS on root with Petitboot: > 1. We can use initramfs, which will load necessary modules. It's said to be > supported on FreeBSD/powerpc64, but no one knows how to create one for > FreeBSD :) > 2. We can actually compile a custom kernel with ZFS in it (not as a module). > This the approach that I use. Unfortunately, I can't redistribute this > kernel, because of ZFS's license. I created a custom installation iso, which > uses my kernel with ZFS included. > > Here are the steps to do it (on an installed powerpc64 system, but should be > possible on other architectures after redefining TARGET and TARGET_ARCH): > 1. cd /usr/src/sys/powerpc/conf > 2. cat << EOF > ZFS > include GENERIC64 > options ZFS > EOF > 3. cd ../../../ > 3. make buildworld buildkernel KERNCONF=ZFS > 4. cd release > 5. make release > > When it's done, there will be iso files in > /usr/obj/usr/src/powerpc.powerpc64/release. > > You can use it to install ZFS on root. > > Note that you need a FAT32 partition to mount on /boot. > This partition needs to have /boot/etc/kboot.conf file, with a line like: > FreeBSD='/kernel/kernel kernelname=/boot/kernel/kernel > vfs.root.mountfrom=zfs:zroot/ROOT/default' > > You also need the appriopriate /etc/fstab: > /dev/nda0p1 /boot msdosfs rw 2 2 > > Other than that, howto at > https://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot#Create_Partitions (from point > 2., omit 1.) is totally ok to follow. > > Thanks to mmacy for informing me about this little trick with including ZFS > to kernel. > > -- > _________________________________________ > / It has been said that man is a rational \ > | animal. All my life I have been | > | searching for evidence which could | > | support this. | > | | > \ -- Bertrand Russell / > ----------------------------------------- > \ ^__^ > \ (oo)\_______ > (__)\ )\/\ > ||----w | > || ||
I don't think there are any license issues distributing a FreeBSD kernel with ZFS statically linked like there are with Linux. For a long time it wasn't supported and ZFS will probably never be in GENERIC but a custom kernel with ZFS built in should be freely redistributable. I don't claim to be an expert on the license issues so if someone else has better information feel free correct me. -Bill Sorenson _______________________________________________ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
