I have, for years, been interested in *file systems*. Specifically a *file system* to run my personal systems on.
For most people **Ext4** is good enough and that is totally fine. But, as a power user, I like to have more control, more features and more options out of my file system.
I have played with most of file sytsems on Linux, and have been using **Btrfs** for a few years now. I have worked with NAS systems running on **ZFS** and have been very impressed by it.
The only problem is that **ZFS** wasn't been well suppored on Linux at the time. **Btrfs** promissed to be the **ZFS** replacement for Linux nativetly, especially that it was backed up by a bunch of the giants like Oracle and RedHat.
My decision at that point was made, and yes that was before RedHat's support for **XFS** which is impressive on its own.
Recently though, a new project gave everyone hope. `OpenZFS <http://www.open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_Page>`_ came to life and so did `ZFS on Linux <https://zfsonlinux.org/>`_.
.. TEASER_END
Linux has had **ZFS** support for a while now but mostly to manage a **ZFS***file system*, so I kept watching until I saw a blog post by **Ubuntu** entitled `Enhancing our ZFS support on Ubuntu 19.10 – an introduction <https://ubuntu.com/blog/enhancing-our-zfs-support-on-ubuntu-19-10-an-introduction>`_.
In the blog post above, I read the following:
We want to support ZFS on root as an experimental installer option, initially for desktop,
but keeping the layout extensible for server later on. The desktop will be the first
beneficiary in Ubuntu 19.10. Note the use of the term ‘experimental’ though!
My eyes widened at this point. I know that **Ubuntu** has had native **ZFS** support since 2016 but now I could install it with one click. At that point I was all in, and I went back to **Ubuntu**.
Ubuntu on root ZFS
==================
You heard me right, the **Ubuntu** installer offers an 'experimental' install on **ZFS**. I made the decision based on the well tested stability of **ZFS** in production environments and its ability to offer me the flexibility and the ability to backup and recover my data easily.
In other words, if **Ubuntu** doesn't work, **ZFS** is there and I can install whatever I like on top and if you are familiar with **ZFS** you know exactly what I mean and I have barely scratched the ice on its capabilities.
So here I was with **Ubuntu** installed on my laptop on root **ZFS**. So I had to do it.
..code:: text
# zpool status -v
pool: bpool
state: ONLINE
status: The pool is formatted using a legacy on-disk format. The pool can
still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Upgrade the pool using 'zpool upgrade'. Once this is done, the
pool will no longer be accessible on software that does not support
feature flags.
scan: none requested
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
bpool ONLINE 0 0 0
nvme0n1p4 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
pool: rpool
state: ONLINE
scan: none requested
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
rpool ONLINE 0 0 0
nvme0n1p5 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
..note::
I have read somewhere in a blog about **Ubuntu** that I should not run an upgrade on the boot pool.
and it's running on...
..code:: text
# uname -s -v -i -o
Linux #28-Ubuntu SMP Wed Dec 18 05:37:46 UTC 2019 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Well that was pretty easy.
ZFS Pools
=========
Let's take a look at how the installer has configured the *pools*.
..code:: text
# zpool list zo 23:21
NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CKPOINT EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT
bpool 1,88G 158M 1,72G - - - 8% 1.00x ONLINE -
rpool 472G 7,91G 464G - - 0% 1% 1.00x ONLINE -
So it creates a *boot* pool and a *root* pool. Maybe looking at the **datasets** would give us a better idea.
ZFS Datasets
============
Let's look at the sanitized version of the datasets.
