# Is update zfs drivers without OS update possible?



## gnoma (Sep 15, 2012)

Aloha, 
I have a problem with my backup server. It is FreeBSD 8.
I tryed to make backups with zfs(8) snapshots. The filesystem version is 14, and if I try to update the filesystem, it tells me that 14 is the latest version.
But some of my servers are Freebsd 9. There the zfs(8) filesystem version is 28.
So when I try to transfer snapshot from version 28 to version 14, I got nice fat error for version incompatibility.
I tryed to transfer it according the zfs(8) documentation using: [CMD="zfs send -i tank/dana@snap1 tank/dana@snap2 | ssh host2 zfs recv newtank/dana"]ssh[/CMD]

So my question is if there is a way to update zfs drivers on FreeBSD 8, then update the filesystem version, without updating the whole OS and everything running on this server?

Thank you.


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## gkontos (Sep 15, 2012)

gnoma said:
			
		

> Aloha,
> I have a problem with my backup server. It is FreeBSD 8.



That doesn't say much. You will have to be more specific.



			
				gnoma said:
			
		

> So my question is if there is a way to update zfs drivers on freebsd 8, then update the filesystem version, without updating the whole OS and everything running on this server?



You need to update both the kernel and the world also. The rest of the software is irrelevant.


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## noobster (Sep 15, 2012)

Probably the simplest solution is to upgrade your FreeBSD 8 to version 8.3 because it has support for ZFS version 28. And in the future make sure you keep all your ZFS versions in sync, so only do an upgrade if you can upgrade all of them to the same new version.


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## gnoma (Sep 16, 2012)

Hello,



> Probably the simplest solution is to upgrade your FreeBSD 8 to version 8.3 because it has support for ZFS version 28. And in the future make sure you keep all your ZFS versions in sync, so only do an upgrade if you can upgrade all of them to the same new version.



I'd love to do that, but this means to install same version of OS FreeBSD on each server.
So when I have new server, I should either install older version OS, or upgrade all other servers to the latest FreeBSD version.

Or may be there is a way to install latest version of OS, but when creating zpool to specify version 14, not 28 or later? Is this possible?
Because using `# zpool create`, it always creates the latest filesystem version supported by this driver.

If this is not possible, I think I'll find another backup solution 

Thank you.


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## gkontos (Sep 16, 2012)

You can always create earlier ZFS versions than the defaults. Just use the -o version= flag when creating the pool.


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## gnoma (Sep 17, 2012)

Hello,

This is the workaround I need.

Thank you.


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## phoenix (Sep 17, 2012)

gnoma said:
			
		

> I'd love to do that, but this means to install same version of OS FreeBSD on each server.



Re-read what the original post said.  You don't need the same version of *FreeBSD* on every server.  You need the same version of *ZFS* on each server.

Both FreeBSD 8.3 and 9.0 have the same version of ZFS:  *ZFSv28*

Thus, if you upgrade your 8.x server to 8.3, then upgrade your pool, then upgrade your filesystems, everything will work.  And, since you are doing a minor version upgrade (8.x to 8.x), you won't have to re-install your ports.


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## gnoma (Sep 18, 2012)

Yes, I saw that, but I was looking for permanent solution. This will probably help for the next year or two, may be even less. But I hope that this servers will remain running longer time and new servers will come up into the system. 
For now I will update all Freebsd 8 systems to 8.3 and filesystem version 28. But from this moment on, looks like all new systems will be madden with ZFS version 28.

Thank you for the assist.


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