Hacker News Reader

Comment by waynesonfire | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know if there is a way to install this on a Ubuntu 16.04 system? Would like to update from 0.8.4-1 but jonathonf hasn't build anything newer for this version of Ubuntu.

View on HN

Wouldn't it better updating OS. I mean, I'm all for stability and if it's isolated no problem it not getting patches, but it if you're going in for kinda hackish updates to 16.04 kernels then maybe bumping to a later OS version might be better? You're already adding volatility and potential issues, but at least with a supported build it reduces the latter (and former really)

I think you can just download the source and build it as if Ubuntu didn't support ZFS. https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Developer%20Resources... I haven't done this on Ubuntu, but I can attest that it works on Debian so unless Canonical did something "interesting" to break things it should Just Work™.

At the very least, you can do (and I have done) something similar with `apt source --build zfs-linux`. I wasn't terribly worth it for me (it takes some work?), but it's definitely possible/reasonable create backported native packages relatively easily.

Sweet thanks I'll try this.

There's a repo on the openSUSE Build Service: https://software.opensuse.org//download.html?project=home%3A...

I've had good results with this PPA for using later versions of ZFS on earlier Ubuntu versions (though it's only at zfs 2.1.5 at the moment, but it should be updated in not too long): https://launchpad.net/~jonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/zfs

You can install the Nix package manager on other Linuxes (or Mac) and use it to manage some packages. It keeps ZFS up to date and that may be an option for installing it on Ubuntu. I’ve never done this before so not sure, ask in the Nix community to verify.

I would suspect Nix wouldn't be the optimal way to manage Ubuntu kernel modules; I suppose you could use it to build them, but I don't think Nix without NixOS will e.g. configure DKMS for you.

This isn’t a good idea.

ZFS needs to be kept in sync with the kernel version. If you use Nix on Ubuntu, Ubuntu manages the kernel, so Nix can’t do anything.

ZFS on NixOS is pretty neat though. The exact version pinning means that ZFS and the kernel can be updated together and only once both packages build at a new version.

There’s also an open issue for more extensive checks, so hopefully eventually NixOS CI will be able to check not just that the ZFS and kernel are compatible (header-wise), but actually go through the motion of creating test ZFS dataset and make sure it actually works.

Yeah makes sense. I use ZFS on NixOS and it mostly just works. Sometimes there's a lag of a few weeks between when the kernel gets a minor update but ZFS isn't yet updated to match, and rebuilding NixOS will fail during that time. Not a showstopper, just a temporary annoyance, but it sounds like that CI pull request will fix this.

Oh, strange I’ve never had issues with this. Do you use unstable? If so that might explain it.

I tend to use stable for everything then overlay the unstable/git master versions of the packages I need.

EDIT: Actually ignore me, of course stable won’t have problems because updates are held back….

I don’t think the CI thing will help. I think what’s happening here is a build time check that prevents any new kernel version with ZFS until the upstream announces support. I don’t think this check will be removed even if there was better CI.

Also, possibly your issues might go away if you used ‘config.boot.zfs.package.latestCompatibleLinuxPackages’ (from NixOS wiki for ZFS). I think that version is only updated once upstream announces support for a newer kernel.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com