Convert to ZFS

[Yamakuzure]

Hi everybody.

Since Funtoo has a rather nice (but rather sparse) ZFS install guide, I set up a small VM and played around with it a bit. My current thought on ZFS is something like "*WOW*".
So, as there are two other great wiki guides from Gentoo and Arch (surprise!), that do explain a whole lot more about really fascinating features of zfs, I though about converting my laptop.

But I do not really like the idea of having to reinstall everything from scratch. So I wondered whether the following idea is in order, or if I'd go nuts with it:

1. Install ZFS (okay, that one's clear.)
2. Reboot from ZFS enabled SysRescCD
3. Mount old partitions and backup all data on an external harddrive using rsync -a
4. Unmount old partition and wipe/repartition the harddrive
5. Create the required zpool(s) and datasets
6. copy data back
7. chroot into the the old/new installation and enable zfs like described in the Funtoo guide
8. Cross fingers
9. reboot
10. pray.

So, what do you think?

Edith just remembered: All my important data is stored in truecrypt containers, reducing their copy to a few single big files. Some other directories are squashed using squash_mount (mv overlay) including the portage tree and /var/db, so there are a few larger files only, too.
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Important German:

1. "Aha" - German reaction to pretend that you are really interested while giving no f*ck.
2. "Tja" - German reaction to the apocalypse, nuclear war, an alien invasion or no bread in the house.

[djdunn]

I think its exactly what i did and it worked just fine
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“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”

― Plato

[Yamakuzure]

[Yamakuzure]

aaaand it worked.

Just a little reminder for future reference, if you want lz4 compression for the root dataset, then it must be compiled into the kernel. (Grew some grey hair over that...)
_________________
Important German:

1. "Aha" - German reaction to pretend that you are really interested while giving no f*ck.
2. "Tja" - German reaction to the apocalypse, nuclear war, an alien invasion or no bread in the house.

[dscherger]

I have done a similar installation and it has been working great for a couple of months, however now I have a gnome upgrade pending and things aren't looking so good.

Gnome requires systemd via the gnome/systemd profile and systemd requires genkernel-next but the initramfs I'm getting from genkernel-next is causing kernel panics during boot.

Has anyone else been through this? Any ideas?

Thanks

[Yamakuzure]

Which genkernel-next are you using?
_________________
Important German:

1. "Aha" - German reaction to pretend that you are really interested while giving no f*ck.
2. "Tja" - German reaction to the apocalypse, nuclear war, an alien invasion or no bread in the house.