Arch Linux Root on ZFS

ZFSBootMenu

ZFSBootMenu is an alternative bootloader free of such limitations and has support for boot environments. Do not follow instructions on this page if you plan to use ZBM, as the layouts are not compatible. Refer to their site for installation details.

Customization

Unless stated otherwise, it is not recommended to customize system configuration before reboot.

Only use well-tested pool features

You should only use well-tested pool features. Avoid using new features if data integrity is paramount. See, for example, this comment.

UEFI support only

Only UEFI is supported by this guide.

Preparation

Disable Secure Boot. ZFS modules can not be loaded if Secure Boot is enabled.
Because the kernel of latest Live CD might be incompatible with ZFS, we will use Alpine Linux Extended, which ships with ZFS by default.

Download latest extended variant of Alpine Linux live image, verify checksum and boot from it.
```
gpg --auto-key-retrieve --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com --verify alpine-extended-*.asc

dd if=input-file of=output-file bs=1M
```
Login as root user. There is no password.

Configure Internet

setup-interfaces -r
# You must use "-r" option to start networking services properly
# example:
network interface: wlan0
WiFi name:         <ssid>
ip address:        dhcp
<enter done to finish network config>
manual netconfig:  n

If you are using wireless network and it is not shown, see Alpine Linux wiki for further details. wpa_supplicant can be installed with apk add wpa_supplicant without internet connection.

Configure SSH server

setup-sshd
# example:
ssh server:        openssh
allow root:        "prohibit-password" or "yes"
ssh key:           "none" or "<public key>"

Set root password or /root/.ssh/authorized_keys.
Connect from another computer
```
ssh root@192.168.1.91
```
Configure NTP client for time synchronization
```
setup-ntp busybox
```
Set up apk-repo. A list of available mirrors is shown. Press space bar to continue
```
setup-apkrepos
```
Throughout this guide, we use predictable disk names generated by udev
```
apk update
apk add eudev
setup-devd udev
```
Target disk

List available disks with
```
find /dev/disk/by-id/
```
If virtio is used as disk bus, power off the VM and set serial numbers for disk. For QEMU, use -drive format=raw,file=disk2.img,serial=AaBb. For libvirt, edit domain XML. See this page for examples.

Declare disk array
```
DISK='/dev/disk/by-id/ata-FOO /dev/disk/by-id/nvme-BAR'
```
For single disk installation, use
```
DISK='/dev/disk/by-id/disk1'
```
Set a mount point
```
MNT=$(mktemp -d)
```
Set partition size:

Set swap size in GB, set to 1 if you don’t want swap to take up too much space
```
SWAPSIZE=4
```
Set how much space should be left at the end of the disk, minimum 1GB
```
RESERVE=1
```
Install ZFS support from live media:
```
apk add zfs
```

Install partition tool

apk add parted e2fsprogs cryptsetup util-linux

System Installation

Partition the disks.

Note: you must clear all existing partition tables and data structures from target disks.

For flash-based storage, this can be done by the blkdiscard command below:

partition_disk () {
 local disk="${1}"
 blkdiscard -f "${disk}" || true

 parted --script --align=optimal  "${disk}" -- \
 mklabel gpt \
 mkpart EFI 1MiB 4GiB \
 mkpart rpool 4GiB -$((SWAPSIZE + RESERVE))GiB \
 mkpart swap  -$((SWAPSIZE + RESERVE))GiB -"${RESERVE}"GiB \
 set 1 esp on \

 partprobe "${disk}"
}

for i in ${DISK}; do
   partition_disk "${i}"
done

Setup temporary encrypted swap for this installation only. This is useful if the available memory is small:

for i in ${DISK}; do
   cryptsetup open --type plain --key-file /dev/random "${i}"-part3 "${i##*/}"-part3
   mkswap /dev/mapper/"${i##*/}"-part3
   swapon /dev/mapper/"${i##*/}"-part3
done

Load ZFS kernel module
```
modprobe zfs
```

Create root pool

Unencrypted:

# shellcheck disable=SC2046
zpool create \
    -o ashift=12 \
    -o autotrim=on \
    -R "${MNT}" \
    -O acltype=posixacl \
    -O canmount=off \
    -O dnodesize=auto \
    -O normalization=formD \
    -O relatime=on \
    -O xattr=sa \
    -O mountpoint=none \
    rpool \
    mirror \
   $(for i in ${DISK}; do
      printf '%s ' "${i}-part2";
     done)

Create root system container:

zfs create -o canmount=noauto -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/root

Create system datasets, manage mountpoints with mountpoint=legacy

zfs create -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/home
mount -o X-mount.mkdir -t zfs rpool/root "${MNT}"
mount -o X-mount.mkdir -t zfs rpool/home "${MNT}"/home

Format and mount ESP. Only one of them is used as /boot, you need to set up mirroring afterwards

for i in ${DISK}; do
 mkfs.vfat -n EFI "${i}"-part1
done

for i in ${DISK}; do
 mount -t vfat -o fmask=0077,dmask=0077,iocharset=iso8859-1,X-mount.mkdir "${i}"-part1 "${MNT}"/boot
 break
done

System Configuration

Download and extract minimal Arch Linux root filesystem:

apk add curl

curl --fail-early --fail -L \
https://america.archive.pkgbuild.com/iso/2024.01.01/archlinux-bootstrap-x86_64.tar.gz \
-o rootfs.tar.gz
curl --fail-early --fail -L \
https://america.archive.pkgbuild.com/iso/2024.01.01/archlinux-bootstrap-x86_64.tar.gz.sig \
-o rootfs.tar.gz.sig

apk add gnupg
gpg --auto-key-retrieve --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com --verify rootfs.tar.gz.sig

ln -s "${MNT}" "${MNT}"/root.x86_64
tar x  -C "${MNT}" -af rootfs.tar.gz root.x86_64

Enable community repo

sed -i '/edge/d' /etc/apk/repositories
sed -i -E 's/#(.*)community/\1community/' /etc/apk/repositories

Generate fstab:

apk add arch-install-scripts
genfstab -t PARTUUID "${MNT}" \
| grep -v swap \
| sed "s|vfat.*rw|vfat rw,x-systemd.idle-timeout=1min,x-systemd.automount,noauto,nofail|" \
> "${MNT}"/etc/fstab

Chroot

cp /etc/resolv.conf "${MNT}"/etc/resolv.conf
for i in /dev /proc /sys; do mkdir -p "${MNT}"/"${i}"; mount --rbind "${i}" "${MNT}"/"${i}"; done
chroot "${MNT}" /usr/bin/env DISK="${DISK}" bash

Add archzfs repo to pacman config

pacman-key --init
pacman-key --refresh-keys
pacman-key --populate

curl --fail-early --fail -L https://archzfs.com/archzfs.gpg \
|  pacman-key -a - --gpgdir /etc/pacman.d/gnupg

pacman-key \
--lsign-key \
--gpgdir /etc/pacman.d/gnupg \
DDF7DB817396A49B2A2723F7403BD972F75D9D76

tee -a /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-archzfs <<- 'EOF'
## See https://github.com/archzfs/archzfs/wiki
## France
#,Server = https://archzfs.com/$repo/$arch

## Germany
#,Server = https://mirror.sum7.eu/archlinux/archzfs/$repo/$arch
#,Server = https://mirror.biocrafting.net/archlinux/archzfs/$repo/$arch

## India
#,Server = https://mirror.in.themindsmaze.com/archzfs/$repo/$arch

## United States
#,Server = https://zxcvfdsa.com/archzfs/$repo/$arch
EOF

tee -a /etc/pacman.conf <<- 'EOF'

#[archzfs-testing]
#Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-archzfs

#,[archzfs]
#,Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-archzfs
EOF

# this #, prefix is a workaround for ci/cd tests
# remove them
sed -i 's|#,||' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-archzfs
sed -i 's|#,||' /etc/pacman.conf
sed -i 's|^#||' /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Install base packages:

pacman -Sy
pacman -S --noconfirm mg mandoc efibootmgr mkinitcpio

kernel_compatible_with_zfs="$(pacman -Si zfs-linux \
| grep 'Depends On' \
| sed "s|.*linux=||" \
| awk '{ print $1 }')"
pacman -U --noconfirm https://america.archive.pkgbuild.com/packages/l/linux/linux-"${kernel_compatible_with_zfs}"-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Install zfs packages:

pacman -S --noconfirm zfs-linux zfs-utils

Configure mkinitcpio:

sed -i 's|filesystems|zfs filesystems|' /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
mkinitcpio -P

For physical machine, install firmware

pacman -S linux-firmware intel-ucode amd-ucode

Enable internet time synchronisation:
```
systemctl enable systemd-timesyncd
```
Generate host id:
```
zgenhostid -f -o /etc/hostid
```

Generate locales:

echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen

Set locale, keymap, timezone, hostname

rm -f /etc/localtime
systemd-firstboot \
--force \
--locale=en_US.UTF-8 \
--timezone=Etc/UTC \
--hostname=testhost \
--keymap=us

Set root passwd
```
printf 'root:yourpassword' | chpasswd
```

Bootloader

Install rEFInd boot loader:

# from http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html
# use Binary Zip File option
pacman -S --noconfirm unzip
curl -L http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.14.0.2/refind-bin-0.14.0.2.zip/download --output refind.zip

unzip refind.zip
mkdir -p /boot/EFI/BOOT
find ./refind-bin-0.14.0.2/ -name 'refind_x64.efi' -print0 \
| xargs -0I{} mv {} /boot/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI
rm -rf refind.zip refind-bin-0.14.0.2

Add boot entry:

tee -a /boot/refind-linux.conf <<EOF
"Arch Linux" "root=ZFS=rpool/root rw zfs_import_dir=/dev/"
EOF

Exit chroot
```
exit
```

Unmount filesystems and create initial system snapshot

umount -Rl "${MNT}"
zfs snapshot -r rpool@initial-installation

Export all pools
```
zpool export -a
```
Reboot
```
reboot
```
Mount other EFI system partitions then set up a service for syncing their contents.