InstallationOnZFS

13 January 2024, 17:25:11

Hello all,

I installed Artix with ZFS along the lines of the guide in the Wiki (https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Main/InstallationOnZFS). The only thing I left out was the EFI stuff because I have legacy BIOS.

Everything went fine and I was just about to install all the desktop stuff when I updated the system.
I got the warning messages that both zfs-utils and zfs-dkms are newer than the repo packages (2.2.2-1) > 2.1.9 and I had the idea to downgrade the packages ... not a good idea, I learnt. I got a lot of errors (missing modules) and building the image fails with errors.

My question is: how do I get out of this mess? Rebooting will probably lead to a rescue shell.

Is there any way to rollback the downgrade (sounds impossible).

I do have the snapshots taken of the clean install mentioned at the end of the install:
zfs snapshot -r rpool_$INST_UUID/ROOT/default@install
zfs snapshot -r bpool_$INST_UUID/BOOT/default@install

I am relatively new to ZFS and snapshots so I don't know what's the best way to restore these two. It wouldn't be a big problem because I didn't install a lot of packages and only configured basic stuff like keyboard layout, network and groups etc.

Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks for reading.

Re: InstallationOnZFS

Reply #1 – 13 January 2024, 21:46:34

Removing zfs-dkms and zfs-utils and replacing them with the -git versions helped and the image generation was successful.
Boy, am I relieved.

I will have to install a lts-kernel as a safety net.

I found some helpful information here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/137pucy/zfs_not_compatible_with_kernel_63/

I am still interested in any helpful input as I am learning to walk with ZFS. I didn't know that things could break so easily.