Installing zfs the (relatively) easy way - openmediavault (2024)

CAVEATS: OMV does not have integrated support for ZFS, and it's likely you will have to manage ZFS disks manually from the command line, at least until the ZFS plugin is completed. ZFS is also complex, and you need to be aware of its system requirements before using. Reading http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html is a really good idea.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Having said all that, I've just installed ZFS on OMV 0.5.37. The instructions on the forum seem to be a little out of date, so I thought it might be useful to document how I did it here.

1) Install the OMV-extras plugin
http://omv-extras.org/simple/i…install-omv-extras-plugin

2) Install the 3.2 backport kernel from the OMV-extras section of the web interface.

3) Log in via the command line or ssh

4) As root, run

apt-get install build-essential

ZFS requires a build environment on the server since it builds its own modules for the specific kernels on your system - in my case it didn't build any for the 2.6 kernel, so I suspect the 3.2 backports kernel is a necessary pre-requisite.

5) Follow these instructions to build and install the zfs modules

http://zfsonlinux.org/debian.html

This package claims to be for wheezy, but seems to work fine on squeeze/OMV.

6) Edit /etc/default/zfs

You may need to edit this file to enable mount on boot /dismount on shutdown, since zfs-mountall doesn't seem to have been installed.

That's it! I'm awaiting the arrival of new disks to confirm this setup has worked properly, but the zfs commands seem to run successfully without complaining about missing kernel modules.

ETA: Disks have arrived, are installed, and I have a working OMV setup based on ZFS. See my post below for a hack to allow OMV to use ZFS filesystems as OMV shared folders.

Zitat von "christiscarborough"

The way I got around this was to create a stub ext4 file system on a small USB flash disk. This filesystem contains only symbolic links to the ZFS filesystems in the pool, which are then imported into OMV as shared folders. It is a bit of a hack, and when OMV fully supports ZFS, I'll be delighted to retire it, but it works for now.

I tried to shrink the root "/" a little bit (using gparted after installation), and then create another small partition (e.g., /dev/sda4) for the same purpose.
I first mount /dev/sda4 to say /tank, then remove the "lost-found" from /dev/sda4, and finally manually mount the zfs pool to the same path /tank.
It seems ok too.

now on my test machine:

bruin@omv:~$ /sbin/blkid/dev/sda1: LABEL="root" UUID="5cac462c-6692-45bf-9de2-3f7e425104a4" TYPE="ext4" /dev/sda3: LABEL="backup" UUID="81a55061-e905-4fd5-9076-f13488cafd47" TYPE="ext4" /dev/sda5: LABEL="swap" UUID="a76cea18-fb07-4f68-b36e-4f5ba78aa7f9" TYPE="swap" /dev/sda4: UUID="bd44dbb4-c83f-4539-a7ff-65111a48d312" TYPE="ext2" /dev/sdb1: TYPE="zfs" /dev/sdb2: TYPE="zfs" /dev/sdb3: TYPE="zfs" /dev/sdb4: TYPE="zfs" bruin@omv:~$ df -haFilesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on/dev/sda1 49G 3.0G 43G 7% /tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /lib/init/rwproc 0 0 0 - /procsysfs 0 0 0 - /sysudev 10M 228K 9.8M 3% /devtmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev/shmdevpts 0 0 0 - /dev/ptstmpfs 3.9G 4.0K 3.9G 1% /tmp/dev/sda4 624G 128K 624G 1% /tanktank 624G 128K 624G 1% /tankbruin@omv:~$ bruin@omv:~$ uname -aLinux omv 3.2.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.54-2~bpo60+1 x86_64 GNU/Linux

As you can see, actually I also created another partition intended for backing up the root '/' partition (using ghost, probably).

Zitat von "bruin"

I tried to shrink the root "/" a little bit (using gparted after installation), and then create another small partition (e.g., /dev/sda4) for the same purpose.
I first mount /dev/sda4 to say /tank, then remove the "lost-found" from /dev/sda4, and finally manually mount the zfs pool to the same path /tank.
It seems ok too.

In case anybody tries to reproduce this...

I tried to do the same thing you did, and while it shows up nicely in the File Systems tab, it was not usable yet as it was not recognized as a volume. I had to add an entry to the <fstab> section of the /etc/openmediavault/config.xml file:

<mntent><uuid>xxxx-xxxxx-xxxx</uuid><fsname>/dev/sda4</fsname><dir>/tank</dir><type>ext4</type><opts></opts><freq>0</freq><passno>0</passno></mntent>

Using that it seems to work fine. Thanks for your idea! (And thanks to for the mntent info!)

Zitat von "christiscarborough"

CAVEATS: OMV does not have integrated support for ZFS, and it's likely you will have to manage ZFS disks manually from the command line, at least until the ZFS plugin is completed. ZFS is also complex, and you need to be aware of its system requirements before using. Reading http://zfsonlinux.org/faq.html is a really good idea.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Having said all that, I've just installed ZFS on OMV 0.5.37. The instructions on the forum seem to be a little out of date, so I thought it might be useful to document how I did it here.

Just having gone through the process with OMV 0.6 git (to get wheezy): it works, but with a little more pain. The main reason is that for 0.6 backports now is 3.12. Unfortunately the current zfs version (0.6.2) doesn't support 3.12, so you need to build zfs git. To do that you need to clone spl and zfs from https://github.com/zfsonlinux and build spl, install it, and then build and install zfs. The basic instructions from http://zfsonlinux.org/generic-deb.html almost work, just also install the autoconf and libtool packages and run ./autogen.sh in both spl and zfs and you should be fine.

Hope it helps!

Which version of the kernel is supported? AFAIK there are more than just the 3.12 kernel in the wheezy-backports.

Greetings
David