@jcumming @wizeman @fpletz @globin

Result of nixpkgs-review pr 96432 1

bareos is marked as broken and deepin.dde-api (on which all other deepin packages depend) is marked as broken as well. I have no idea why nixpkgs-review tried to build them. (@Mic92?)

@ofborg test zfs.stable zfs.unstable

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/prs-ready-for-review/3032/274

* zstd compression

😮 nice

@jonringer That has been in the pipeline for a few years now. It was presented at the OpenZFS Developer Summit 2017.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWnWEitDPlM
Slides: https://openzfs.org/w/images/b/b3/03-OpenZFS_2017_-_ZStandard_in_ZFS.pdf

yea, but i forgot about it, and seemed like a pipe dream.

And looking at the PR history, it looks like it was slow to adopt

Actually, there seems to be an issue when using the zstd compression; every feature flag enabling the compression is invalid, including the following:

1. redaction_bookmarks
2. redacted_datasets
3. bookmark_written
4. log_spacemap
5. livelist
6. device_rebuild
7. zstd_compress

The zfs version registers as zfs-2.0.0-rc1, but the kmod seems to be stuck as 0.8.4-1.

@shadowrylander

1. How did you install this?
2. Did you reboot? (and did you reboot into the correct generation?)
3. Did you upgrade your zpool?

On my machine I get

$ modinfo zfs | grep ^version
version:        2.0.0-rc1
$ zfs --version
zfs-2.0.0-rc1
zfs-kmod-2.0.0-rc1

Alright, so, two things:

• I'm using it to create a new zpool, using a Gnome3 ISO I created with the module file
• I just realized that, while I had included zfs in the supported filesystems (the lists of strings), I hadn't included zfsUnstable, which could be why my kmod value didn't change.

I'm trying to create the zpool again with a new ISO with the changes.

bareos is marked as broken and deepin.dde-api (on which all other deepin packages depend) is marked as broken as well. I have no idea why nixpkgs-review tried to build them. (@Mic92?)

This is fixed in master of nixpkgs-review now. Needs a release.

Same issue as from my post before. Nothing's changed; however, I forgot to mention I'm on NixOS 20.09, if that makes a difference.

Oh, and I also added the imported overlay to nixpkgs.overlays in the ISO's config file.

Same issue as from my post before. Nothing's changed; however, I forgot to mention I'm on NixOS 20.09, if that makes a difference.

you would need to check out the branch, update your configuration.nix to use the zfsUnstable package.

  boot.zfs.enableUnstable = true;

Then you would need to do a nixos-rebuild boot -I nixpkgs=/path/to/nixpkgs to then create a new generation pulling in changes from this PR

EDIT:
Then you would need to reboot and select the new generation

you could potentially try nixos-rebuild build-vm, but I'm not sure how zfs will react to a guest OS importing pools

Actually, I'm using the original overlay created by @hmenke over on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/ihc2se/help_in_packaging_the_latest_zfs_release/g2zifld?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

ah, well, my steps will work generically over all PRs, but either one should work.

I know; great advice for a newbie such as myself!

Using zstd-3 fine on my end. You probably need to upgrade the pool before using it.

Yeah, but I'm creating a new one! Why wouldn't that work, though? 🤔

I thought compression could be enabled/disabled at any time, shouldn't you be able to just say zfs set compression=zstd-3 tank?

Well, I was going to recreate my pools anyway, so... 😅

Wait! ... Does this work in the end?

It seems to work for everyone except you, so it's quite likely that you are doing something wrong.

Entirely possible; I'll get back to you on that. Am I supposed to be unable to create pools, though? It seems everyone has no trouble upgrading their pools.

Also, I'm using a ZFS root on all my systems, which is why I can't upgrade in-place; I'd be rebooting with another zfsUnstable version without upgrading the pool, which would render my system inoperable. Rebuilding and switching doesn't seem to work properly on my system(s).

I just built an ISO and I can create pools in a VM just fine.

Can you give me the config file for the iso?

This is my current config for the ISO, built using nix-build -A config.system.build.isoImage -I nixos-config=modules/installer/cd-dvd/installation-cd-graphical-gnome.nix default.nix:

# This module defines a NixOS installation CD that contains GNOME.

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

with lib;

{
  imports = [ ./installation-cd-graphical-base.nix ];

  nixpkgs.overlays = [ (import ../../../../../zfsBackports.nix) ];
  # boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_zen;
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ vscodium zfsUnstable black python38 rsync etcher kitty bat exa diskus git nixops sd tmux byobu neovim curl wget xz woeusb ];
  # boot.initrd.kernelModules = [ "zfsUnstable" ];
  # boot.initrd.availableKernelModules = [ "zfsUnstable" ];
  # boot.initrd.supportedFilesystems = [ "zfsUnstable" "xfs" "btrfs" "ext4" "fat" "vfat" ];
  # boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "zfsUnstable" "xfs" "btrfs" "ext4" "fat" "vfat" ];
  # boot.zfs.enableUnstable = true;
  # boot.extraModulePackages = with config.boot.kernelPackages; [ zfsUnstable ];

  isoImage.edition = "gnome";

  services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome3.enable = true;

  services.xserver.displayManager = {
    gdm = {
      enable = true;
      # autoSuspend makes the machine automatically suspend after inactivity.
      # It's possible someone could/try to ssh'd into the machine and obviously
      # have issues because it's inactive.
      # See:
      # * https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/63790
      # * https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/22
      autoSuspend = false;
    };
    autoLogin = {
      enable = true;
      user = "nixos";
    };
  };

}

I can't seem to update the kmod version; it's still stuck at 0.8.4; I also cannot create new pools, with the same errors as before.

I'm also using a modified version of your overlay, @hmenke:

# From: [u/_hmenke](https://www.reddit.com/user/_hmenke/)
# Answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/ihc2se/help_in_packaging_the_latest_zfs_release/g2zifld?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

self: super: 
let
  patches = [];
  version = "2.0.0-rc1";
  src = self.fetchFromGitHub {
    owner = "openzfs";
    repo = "zfs";
    rev = "zfs-${version}";
    sha256 = "0d1m5zwgqzfwbscvb60zvzkjgl5nkbvas22vjsyci3xygz0qwjsb";
  };
in
{
  linuxPackages_latest = super.linuxPackages_latest.extend (linuxPackagesSelf: linuxPackagesSuper: {
    zfsUnstable = linuxPackagesSuper.zfsUnstable.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: rec {
      inherit patches version src;
      name = "zfs-kernel-${version}-${linuxPackagesSuper.kernel.version}";
      postPatch = (builtins.replaceStrings [ "./module/zfs/zfs_ctldir.c" ] [ "./module/os/linux/zfs/zfs_ctldir.c" ] oldAttrs.postPatch);
    });
  });

  linuxPackages_latest_xen_dom0 = super.linuxPackages_latest_xen_dom0.extend (linuxPackagesSelf: linuxPackagesSuper: {
    zfsUnstable = linuxPackagesSuper.zfsUnstable.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: rec {
      inherit patches version src;
      name = "zfs-kernel-${version}-${linuxPackagesSuper.kernel.version}";
      postPatch = (builtins.replaceStrings [ "./module/zfs/zfs_ctldir.c" ] [ "./module/os/linux/zfs/zfs_ctldir.c" ] oldAttrs.postPatch);
    });
  });

  linuxPackages_zen = super.linuxPackages_zen.extend (linuxPackagesSelf: linuxPackagesSuper: {
    zfsUnstable = linuxPackagesSuper.zfsUnstable.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: rec {
      inherit patches version src;
      name = "zfs-kernel-${version}-${linuxPackagesSuper.kernel.version}";
      postPatch = (builtins.replaceStrings [ "./module/zfs/zfs_ctldir.c" ] [ "./module/os/linux/zfs/zfs_ctldir.c" ] oldAttrs.postPatch);
    });
  });

  zfsUnstable = super.zfsUnstable.overrideAttrs(oldAttrs: rec {
    inherit patches version src;
    name = "zfs-user-${version}";
    postPatch = (builtins.replaceStrings [ "./lib/libshare/nfs.c" ] [ "./lib/libshare/os/linux/nfs.c" ] oldAttrs.postPatch) + ''
      substituteInPlace ./config/zfs-build.m4 --replace "/etc/default" "$out/etc/default"
      substituteInPlace ./contrib/initramfs/conf.d/Makefile.am \
        --replace "/usr/share/initramfs-tools/conf.d" "$out/usr/share/initramfs-tools/conf.d"
      substituteInPlace ./contrib/initramfs/conf-hooks.d/Makefile.am \
        --replace "/usr/share/initramfs-tools/conf-hooks.d" "$out/usr/share/initramfs-tools/conf-hooks.d"
    '';
  });
}

you'll want:

  boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "zfs" ];
  boot.zfs.enableUnstable = true;

to use the unstable version, and enable zfs

I tried with both, but they didn't work; I'll try again and confirm.

actually, looking at your command, nix-build -A config.system.build.isoImage -I nixos-config=modules/installer/cd-dvd/installation-cd-graphical-gnome.nix default.nix this will inherit the nixpkgs from your channels, which probably won't have the changes, you also need to set nixpkgs to somehting that includes the changes.

please see #96432 (comment)

Didn't work; I set your options in the config and added the the -I nixpkgs-overlays=[relative zfsUnstable overlay path] to the command, but the kmod version still remains at 0.8.4, and the zpool creation errors still occur.

RIght now it's a real pain and since you are struggling with correctly building an image, you should just wait for about a week or so until the unstable channel is fixed. Honestly I also don't get why you are so focussed on creating pools with 2.0.0-rc1 rather than just create the pool with 0.8.4, install normally and then upgrade the pool to 2.0.0-rc1 after everything is set up successfully.

With that out of the way, my cdimage.nix reads:

{config, pkgs, ...}:
{
  imports = [
    <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/installation-cd-minimal.nix>
    <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/cd-dvd/channel.nix>
  ];
  boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_latest;
  boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "zfs" ];
  boot.zfs.enableUnstable = true;
  nix.nixPath = [
    "nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz"
    "nixos-config=/etc/nixos/configuration.nix"
    "/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels"
  ];
}

Note that I have set a custom NIX_PATH that points to the master branch on GitHub so that you can get the correct version of zfsUnstable. This is definitely not a permanent solution because in the long run this will result in countless rebuilds on your local machine, because the binary cache lags behind.

Then to build the image you also have to override NIX_PATH to point to master.

NIX_PATH="nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz:nixos-config=cdimage.nix" nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -A config.system.build.isoImage

Keep in mind that when you are installing from this image, you will have to add the custom NIX_PATH to the configuration.nix generated by nixos-generate-config and you will probably have to pass the --channel argument to nixos-install. Otherwise your system will use the zfsUnstable that is currently on the unstable channel and that is still 0.8.4, so you have an unbootable system. Make sure that the correct kernel module is picked up before you reboot (I haven't actually tried installing from this image, only creating pools).

Hmm... You're right; too many temporary changes. I'll take your advice and wait for the update in the unstable channel; so a week or so, correct?

You can take a look at https://status.nixos.org/. Currently nixos-unstable is blocked by a failing test. You will have to wait until it is “green” again.

Found it! Thank you all so much for all the help!