Fedora Root on ZFS

Notes

As an alternative to the below method of installing Fedora Linux on a ZFS root filesystem, you can use the unofficial script fedora-on-zfs, which is more automated and can generate a Fedora Linux installation that is closer to an official Fedora Linux configuration. The fedora-on-zfs script is different from the below method in that it uses one of Fedora’s official kickstarts (fedora-disk-minimal.ks, fedora-disk-workstation.ks, fedora-disk-kde.ks, etc.) to guide the installation, but with a few overrides to add the ZFS functionality. Bug reports should be submitted to Greg’s fedora-on-zfs GitHub repo.

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:

# dracut demands system root dataset to have non-legacy mountpoint
zfs create -o canmount=noauto -o mountpoint=/ rpool/root

Create system datasets, manage mountpoints with mountpoint=legacy

zfs create -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/home
zfs mount rpool/root
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 Fedora root filesystem:

apk add curl
curl --fail-early --fail -L \
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/39/Container/x86_64/images/Fedora-Container-Base-39-1.5.x86_64.tar.xz \
-o rootfs.tar.gz
curl --fail-early --fail -L \
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/39/Container/x86_64/images/Fedora-Container-39-1.5-x86_64-CHECKSUM \
-o checksum

# BusyBox sha256sum treats all lines in the checksum file
# as checksums and requires two spaces "  "
# between filename and checksum

grep 'Container-Base' checksum \
| grep '^SHA256' \
| sed -E 's|.*= ([a-z0-9]*)$|\1  rootfs.tar.gz|' > ./sha256checksum

sha256sum -c ./sha256checksum

rootfs_tar=$(tar t -af rootfs.tar.gz | grep layer.tar)
rootfs_tar_dir=$(dirname "${rootfs_tar}")
tar x -af rootfs.tar.gz "${rootfs_tar}"
ln -s "${MNT}" "${MNT}"/"${rootfs_tar_dir}"
tar x  -C "${MNT}" -af "${rootfs_tar}"
unlink "${MNT}"/"${rootfs_tar_dir}"

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

Unset all shell aliases, which can interfere with installation:
```
unalias -a
```

Install base packages

dnf -y install @core kernel kernel-devel

Install ZFS packages

dnf -y install \
https://zfsonlinux.org/fedora/zfs-release-2-4"$(rpm --eval "%{dist}"||true)".noarch.rpm

dnf -y install zfs zfs-dracut

Check whether ZFS modules are successfully built

tail -n10 /var/lib/dkms/zfs/**/build/make.log

# ERROR: modpost: GPL-incompatible module zfs.ko uses GPL-only symbol 'bio_start_io_acct'
# ERROR: modpost: GPL-incompatible module zfs.ko uses GPL-only symbol 'bio_end_io_acct_remapped'
# make[4]:  [scripts/Makefile.modpost:138: /var/lib/dkms/zfs/2.1.9/build/module/Module.symvers] Error 1
# make[3]:  [Makefile:1977: modpost] Error 2
# make[3]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/kernels/6.2.9-100.fc36.x86_64'
# make[2]:  [Makefile:55: modules-Linux] Error 2
# make[2]: Leaving directory '/var/lib/dkms/zfs/2.1.9/build/module'
# make[1]:  [Makefile:933: all-recursive] Error 1
# make[1]: Leaving directory '/var/lib/dkms/zfs/2.1.9/build'
# make:  [Makefile:794: all] Error 2

If the build failed, you need to install an Long Term Support kernel and its headers, then rebuild ZFS module

# this is a third-party repo!
# you have been warned.
#
# select a kernel from
# https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/kwizart/

dnf copr enable -y kwizart/kernel-longterm-VERSION
dnf install -y kernel-longterm kernel-longterm-devel
dnf remove -y kernel-core

ZFS modules will be built as part of the kernel installation. Check build log again with tail command.

Add zfs modules to dracut

echo 'add_dracutmodules+=" zfs "' >> /etc/dracut.conf.d/zfs.conf
echo 'force_drivers+=" zfs "' >> /etc/dracut.conf.d/zfs.conf

Add other drivers to dracut:

if grep mpt3sas /proc/modules; then
  echo 'force_drivers+=" mpt3sas "'  >> /etc/dracut.conf.d/zfs.conf
fi
if grep virtio_blk /proc/modules; then
  echo 'filesystems+=" virtio_blk "' >> /etc/dracut.conf.d/fs.conf
fi

Build initrd

find -D exec /lib/modules -maxdepth 1 \
-mindepth 1 -type d \
-exec sh -vxc \
'if test -e "$1"/modules.dep;
   then kernel=$(basename "$1");
   dracut --verbose --force --kver "${kernel}";
 fi' sh {} \;

For SELinux, relabel filesystem on reboot:
```
fixfiles -F onboot
```
Enable internet time synchronisation:
```
systemctl enable systemd-timesyncd
```
Generate host id
```
zgenhostid -f -o /etc/hostid
```

Install locale package, example for English locale:

dnf install -y glibc-minimal-langpack glibc-langpack-en

Set locale, keymap, timezone, hostname

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

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
curl -L http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.14.0.2/refind-bin-0.14.0.2.zip/download --output refind.zip

dnf install -y unzip
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
"Fedora" "root=ZFS=rpool/root"
EOF

Exit chroot
```
exit
```
Unmount filesystems and create initial system snapshot You can later create a boot environment from this snapshot. See Root on ZFS maintenance page.
```
umount -Rl "${MNT}"
zfs snapshot -r rpool@initial-installation
```
Export all pools
```
zpool export -a
```
Reboot
```
reboot
```

Post installaion

Install package groups

dnf group list --hidden -v       # query package groups
dnf group install gnome-desktop

Add new user, configure swap.
Mount other EFI system partitions then set up a service for syncing their contents.