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20Apr/150

zfs and portage’s var directories

While /var is usually for non-crucial content, caches[3], pid files, etc, portage has a different idea [1]:

/var/db/pkg Portage stores the state of your system
/var/lib/portage The versions for the applications you have explicitly installed

These directories store the current tree state, there is no way recreating them if they are deleted.[2]

So if you plan to use ZFS with separate / and /var to take a snapshot of /, install some packages and then rollback the snapshot as you changed your mind, your / and /var will be out of sync!

/var/db/pkg and /var/lib/portage has to be on /.

mkdir /usr/var_db_pkg /usr/var_lib_portage
cp -r /var/lib/portage /usr/var_lib_portage
cp -r /var/db/pkg /usr/var_db_pkg
rm -rf /var/lib/portage /var/db/pkg
ln -s /usr/var_lib_portage /var/lib/portage
ln -s /usr/var_db_pkg /var/db/pkg

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Directories
[2] Or at least it is painfull. To avoid the initial circular-dependency hell, issue:

emerge --nodeps dev-lang/perl dev-lang/python dev-libs/libxml2 dev-util/cmake dev-util/pkgconfig sys-apps/acl ys-apps/systemd sys-devel/automake sys-libs/glibc sys-libs/ncurses sys-libs/zlib virtual/libudev

[3] what you'd have to recreate: powertop's calibration measurements, gentoolkit's busybox and initramfs

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20Apr/150

zfs set ditto blocks after file system creation

"The copies property works for all new writes, so I recommend that you set that policy when you create the file system or immediately after you create a zpool." [1]

So how can you force a complete reread-rewrite?
With (non-incremental) backup and restore:

# settings properties won't work:
zfs set copies=2 POOL/FS
zfs snapshot SNAPSHOT
zfs send SNAPSHOT | xz --threads=12 --verbose > FILE.img.xz
zfs destoy POOL/FS
xz --threads=12 --decompress --verbose  FILE.img.xz -c | zfs receive POOL/FS

# so you have to create & override a new FS with copies=2
zfs snapshot SNAPSHOT
zfs send SNAPSHOT | xz --threads=12 --verbose > FILE.img.xz
zfs destoy POOL/FS
zfs create ... -o copies=2  POOL/FS
xz --threads=12 --decompress --verbose  FILE.img.xz -c | zfs receive POOL/FS -F

[1] https://blogs.oracle.com/relling/entry/zfs_copies_and_data_protection

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28Feb/150

ZFS dataset hierarchy on a single user machine

# the pool
zpool create -o ashift=12 -O mountpoint=none -O atime=off -O snapdir=visible rpool /dev/mapper/crypt_zfs

# Create filesystems: rootfs, var and home
# rootfs and home has 2 copy of each file as a mirror in single dev.
zfs create -o copies=2 -o compress=lz4 -o mountpoint=/ rpool/rootfs
zfs create -o copies=2 -o compress=lz4 -o mountpoint=/home rpool/home

# var is not a child of rootfs and the zfs daemon will mount it 
# after systemd creates it, leading to a: cannot mount /var, 
# dir already exists error. see link[1]
zfs create -o compress=lz4 -o quota=20G -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/var
# on the second thought, copies=2 makes more sence than  quota
zfs create -o copies=2 -o compress=lz4 -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/var
# /etc/fstab should be this line only:
rpool/var      /var        zfs        defaults    0 0

# var has 2 children with no compression
zfs create -o compress=off -o mountpoint=/var/portage/distfiles
rpool/var/portage_distfiles
zfs create -o compress=off -o mountpoint=/var/portage/packeges
rpool/var/portage_packages

# swap check blocksize with: getconf PAGESIZE, default is 4K
zfs create -V 4G -b 4K rpool/swap
mkswap -f /dev/zvol/rpool/swap
swapon /dev/zvol/rpool/swap

# snapshot of rootfs before sysupdates
# snapshot of home regularly
# reset var to initial (right after bootstrap) snapshot when it's too big
zfs umount -a
zpool set bootfs=rpool/rootfs rpool
zpool export rpool
zpool import -R /mnt/rpool rpool

chroot /mnt/rpool
# install...

TODO: making rootfs readonly and mounting it readwrite only at system updatws.

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=160825

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16Feb/150

zfs backup to file

#create snapshot
zfs snapshot POOL/FS@DESCRIPTION
#list snapshots
zfs list -t snapshot
#save
zfs send SNAPSHOT | xz --threads=12 --verbose > FILE.img.xz
#restore
xz --threads=12 --decompress --verbose  FILE.img.xz -c | zfs receive POOL/NEW_FS
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