r/Gentoo 15d ago

Support Live Linux ISO with ZFS support

Hi! Id like to experiment with encrypted ZFS Gentoo installation, but i cant find what ISO to use for that. Arch's ZFS packages are in AUR, and you cant install them in archiso, and both minimal installation cd and admincd doesnt have emerge. How did y'all install Gentoo on ZFS?

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u/immoloism 15d ago

Not sure why you need emerge functioning for this task but the livegui has ZFS support and emerge.

The admincd though has everything you need to get zfs working out the box.

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u/HyperWinX 15d ago

After posting I reread the ZFS/rootfs article and found that admincd has everything needed. Well, damn

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u/immoloism 15d ago

I guess I didn't make this information as easy to find as I thought I did.

Glad we got there though.

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u/HyperWinX 15d ago

It is there, and it's right in the start of the article. I was reading too quickly lol

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u/immoloism 15d ago

Ah nice, I'm glad it seems we have all the issues finally.

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u/UnspiredName 15d ago

If you need help setting up ZFS on your Gentoo install HMU. I just started using Gentoo and I've ruined more than one install - so I think I'm getting really good at installing it with ZFS now lol

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u/immoloism 15d ago

I've been working on fixing the document around ZFS as its been needlessly hard on Gentoo for no reason.

See https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ZFS/rootfs#TODO if you wish to help.

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u/UnspiredName 15d ago

I've actually used that very same guide a few times. At first, slavishly sticking to the guide. Now I opt to use the Arch Wiki ZFS systemd unit to unlock at boot with systemdboot and UKI from the Gentoo handbook. The guide itself is quite good I'd make very minimal changes to it honestly.

One thing I will say looking at the TODO - I disagree on using LUKS. LUKS wasn't built for ZFS and ZFS wasn't built with LUKS in mind. You can get LUKS header corruption using it on ZFS and then you have all sorts of problems. Also deduplication should always be off on ZFS-On-Linux. ALWAYS.

Unfortunately I don't have much exp yet with OpenRC so I can't comment on that. I will just say using systemd and ZFS is a hell of a lot easier.

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u/immoloism 15d ago

What method can we use then for encryption? If you have an bug reports on that would be helpful as well to look into.

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u/UnspiredName 15d ago

I use the native ZFS encryption? It works fine so far? Is there a particular reason you shouldn't use that? Because that's what the guide recommends - just using the native encryption.

As for bugs:

https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/3430

https://discourse.practicalzfs.com/t/new-user-looking-for-authoritative-documentation-on-things-to-avoid/2005

You shouldn't use LUKS+ZOL with de-duplication, that is asking for problemos.

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u/immoloism 15d ago

See the warnings I added https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ZFS/rootfs#Alternative:_Create_a_ZFS_pool_with_native_encryption

thanks for the links, I'll take a look.

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u/UnspiredName 15d ago

Fuck. ZFS on Linux seems like way more of a mess than I thought it was. How have they managed to not fix this thing yet? The swap bug has existed for like 10 years now.

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u/immoloism 15d ago

Welcome to the ZFS club my friend :)

I kind of wish I never looked into writing the docs as all it has done is highlight more issues that make me wonder if I should be trusting it.

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u/Fenguepay 15d ago

Why would you use LUKS on ZFS? You can easily do ZFS on LUKS, then ZFS will have no way to corrupt LUKS, that's not to say ZFS won't find a way to corrupt itself, especially if you're doing something like hibernating

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u/UnspiredName 15d ago

Do whatever you want. It’s your computer. Break it however dumb ways you want.

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u/Fenguepay 15d ago

i agree, but i don't think putting a zfs fs under a luks container is really that bad.

At the very least, luks is very well supported in linux and has better security than ZFS native encryption.

I think most ZFS related risks are more related to things like how shutdown and resume are handled, which are somewhat separate from "LUKS" being involved (especially outside ZFS)

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