debian-stretch-zfs-root

Installs Debian GNU/Linux 9 Stretch to a native ZFS root filesystem using a Debian Jessie Live CD and ZFS packages from backports.org.

As the time of this writing, Debian 9 (Stretch) is in 'frozen' state and therefore there is no Stretch Live CD available. So you need to use a Jessie Live CD for installation. Debian Stretch Live CD Images are available now and this script both supports Jessie and Stretch Live CD Images.

Usage

1. Boot Jessie Live CD ('standard' edition)
2. Login (user: user, password: live) and become root
3. Setup network and export http_proxy environment variable (if needed)
4. Run this script
5. User interface: Select disks and RAID level
6. Let the installer do the work
7. User interface: install grub to all disks participating in the array
8. User interface: enter root password and select timezone
9. Reboot

Fixes included

• grub (v2.02, included in Debian 9), especially grub-probe, does not support all ZFS features and subsequently refuses to install. This script disables feature@hole_birth and feature@embedded_data (and you must not enable those features after installation).
• Some mountpoints, notably /var, need to be mounted via fstab as the ZFS mount script runs too late during boot.
• The EFI System Partition (ESP) is a single point of failure on one disk, this is arguably a mis-design in the UEFI specification.

Bugs

• Booting via EFI has not been tested at all.

Credits

• https://github.com/hn/debian-jessie-zfs-root
• https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-16.04-Root-on-ZFS
• https://janvrany.github.io/2016/10/fun-with-zfs-part-1-installing-debian-jessie-on-zfs-root.html