# Is ZFS enabled on FreeBSD8.0 sysinstall



## alie (Sep 22, 2009)

Hi guys,

I have simple question regarding FreeBSD 8.0 RC1:
Is ZFS enabled on FreeBSD8.0 sysinstall ? Sorry to ask this question since i dont have enough time to install FreeBSD 8.0 RC1 and i have limited free disk space on my HDD. I needs someone that have an experience with FreeBSD 8.0 RC1


----------



## phoenix (Sep 22, 2009)

No.  Sysinstall does not currently support anything other than plain UFS on standard slices/partitions.


----------



## danger@ (Sep 22, 2009)

well you can switch from sysinstall to fixit environment and create zfs-only system yourself. mfsBSD is also pretty useful for this task.


----------



## eydaimon (Oct 2, 2009)

@danger do you have any links which will explain how this can be done? I had high hopes that 8.0 would be more ZFS friendly.


----------



## danger@ (Oct 2, 2009)

The post at http://blogs.freebsdish.org/lulf/2008/12/16/setting-up-a-zfs-only-system/ describes how to install zfs on root, using GPT (which is quiet nice). I have done it several times inspiring by this howto and it works well.

Note, that I have never used the fixit environment from the installation CD to accomplish this task, I have rather used the mfsBSD to create a bootable iso file and did all the steps from there. For a few hints, you can read my article at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/remote-install/article.html about mfsBSD.


----------



## eydaimon (Oct 2, 2009)

I've read the article before. Would you be able to do a replace on the root drive with that setup? (you can on solaris)


----------



## eydaimon (Oct 12, 2009)

bump my question


----------



## eydaimon (Nov 28, 2009)

The article is no longer loading, and 8.0 was finally released for me to try this with.

Is there an easier way since (mfsBSD seems more complicated) ?


----------



## BeautifulFish (Dec 1, 2009)

they are all too complicated :\

i spent some hours trying to get zfs to work with 8.0-release on virtualbox, i was getting close to success but then there was that kernel panic: kmem_map too small

why isn't zfs in sysinstall just like ufs? it is very frustrating


----------



## Blueprint (Dec 1, 2009)

Probably because of licensing.

The GPT method in http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/ is pretty straight forward and accurate. Just pick which disk config you want to use.

How much ram are you allocating to your virtual machine?


----------



## BeautifulFish (Dec 1, 2009)

thanks very much, i was about to give up, i was using 768M only, i increased it to 1500M so it worked without that error, but now i have more errors..

this is the guide i am following:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot

there is no lib32 directory, instead there is proflibs, should i use it?

also when i got to the point:
make depend

i had an error regarding:
zroot/usr/lib/libstand.a

then it stopped, "make" didn't work and i had to restart the process again


----------



## Blueprint (Dec 1, 2009)

It sounds like you have the wrong disc mounted. I find it easiest to use the dvd for this zfs install. 

I'm not sure if you can use the disc1 + livefs combo because at that point in the guide (2.2) it seems to me that the install will want disc1 mounted again.

Unless you can umount livefs cd and mount disc1 while being in fixit. I dunno, ive only just started using freebsd myself.


----------



## BeautifulFish (Dec 1, 2009)

oh i am using the dvd 
the kernel panic is back again even with 1.5G RAM :\

maybe i will print the guide and try it on my real freebsd installation

it will suck though if it get screwed as i installed many things, including nvidia and compiz
EDIT-1: oh of course everything will be gone lol

btw a side question: is there a way to store .tbz files downloaded through pkg_add -r
can pkg_add -r look first in a directory to find .tbz files then if not found try to fetch them through ftp?


EDIT-2: following that guide, i now have ZFS :e
http://www.ish.com.au/solutions/articles/freebsdzfs

EDIT-3: actually i got it working now by followin this one:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot


----------



## twh (Jan 13, 2010)

BeautifulFish said:
			
		

> oh i am using the dvd
> the kernel panic is back again even with 1.5G RAM :\
> 
> maybe i will print the guide and try it on my real freebsd installation
> ...



ZFS is extremely memory intensive.  1.5GB of RAM isn't going to be enough, especially if you plan to write large amounts of data.  Using GB ethernet and SATA300, I was able to cause a panic with 4GB of RAM on a TB array.  8GB is the sweet spot if you are going to be running any kind of heavy load.  You will need x64 kernel if you plan to go over 4GB of memory.


----------



## Enter4 (Jan 13, 2010)

Does anybody know what to do after this guide was instaled "successfully" and doesnt work properly? Error: Boot loader too large.


----------

