ZFS

[Aadolf]

hi
I think there was a feature in 17.1 road-map and that was  "ZFS rc mount awareness" but now there isn't such a feature.
What was that (ZFS rc mount awareness )  ?

thanks

[franco]

Hi,

Yes, you are right. I tracked down several FreeBSD issues in preparation for 17.1 that took most of my time planned for other things amongst "zfs rc mount awareness".

It simply mean if you had a working ZFS custom install, OPNsense would boot fine on it, which it currently doesn't.

Since the installer doesn't support ZFS installation yet, the former was really only for advanced users and made not a lot of sense in another way than the prerequisite for proper ZFS support.

With all the work having happened for FreeBSD 11.0 in the past months, full ZFS support shifts to the 17.7 roadmap.

I will note this in the 17.1-RC release notes.


Cheers,
Franco

[Aadolf]

Good news.
Thanks.

[dcol]

So any progress on ZFS yet?

[franco]

It‘s true, being postponed up until now.

Bootstrapping into a FreeBSD with ZFS would be a good first start, but it’s impractical for most users as the installer should also be capable of installing OPNssense on ZFS, which is the larger and more tedious work.

That being said, OPNsense can’t boot ZFS yet, so please don’t try to bootstrap from a FreeBSD on ZFS.

I don’t know how much time there still is, 18.1 is quite full in terms of goals and code reworks but I would like to ask you to keep prodding, because that has shown to be quite effective.

Sorry for not being able to be more assertive on the matter.


Thank you,
Franco

[krad]

Can you elaborate why one that is, other than not supported yet. I ask as im new to opnsense but very experienced with freebsd, and zfs builds.  Initially looking around at what is available in the base userland, I suspect I could get it going in and incorporate boot environments, unless there is something hidden in there. All the libraries, kernel modules and loaders appear to be there, which is a good start. After all it does look like opnsense is a fairly bog standard freebsd build with tweaks, config management and a gui.

[franco]

It was state here very recently: https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=8521.0

Translated:

Requires time for development. Every now and then somebody brings up a new networking feature they want to merge and that is subsequently prioritised...

We need to do two things:

1. ZFS Boot Awareness: With a FreeBSD on ZFS you can install OPNsense using opnsense-bootstrap, but the system won't boot because /usr/local/etc/rc is not aware of ZFS and the kernel module is missing.

2. When 1. is done the installer needs to gain a ZFS installation mode.


Cheers,
Franco

[dcol]

Whatever makes ZFS happen. Been waiting a long time.

[franco]

Ok, here's some progress then: https://github.com/opnsense/core/issues/2386


Cheers,
Franco

[opnfwb]

Nice! Thank you Franco! Been looking forward to this as well. Great feature to have for areas that aren't stable on power and need to resume with a minimum of data loss, UFS is not too friendly in that regard.

[franco]

Yikes, yes, UFS recovery is

[franco]

Apart from that latent joke earlier, feel free to try this bootstrap method into the latest development version with a standard amd64 FreeBSD 11.1 ZFS install (do not deviate from the defaults: auto, stripe):

-- REDACTED, see later replies --


Cheers,
Franco

[franco]

PS: Careful on updates, 18.1.7 will not retain this support, but I'm positive it'll be in 18.1.8.

[dcol]

# pkg install ca_root_nss
# fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opnsense/update/master/bootstrap/opnsense-bootstrap.sh
# sh ./opnsense-bootstrap.sh -t opnsense-devel

So, if I wanted to test an OPNsense ZFS build, I would install a FreeBSD 11.1 ZFS build, then run these commands?

[franco]

Yes, but make sure it's amd64 and all defaults for ZFS (striped). More modes may work, but they haven't been tested. Encryption doesn't work for sure.

These changes will all be in 18.1.8 from the looks of it to make the required installer changes easier.


Cheers,
Franco