Future of ZFS on Ubuntu desktop

Project Discussion Desktop
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21

I know zfsbootmenu seems the new hotness, and I keep it around myself for recovery reasons, but I have had issues with the kexec logic on some hardware, and I especially think it needs a better SecureBoot strategy, if any.

I personally prefer UKI images that boot directly from UEFI firmware using the EFI partition for the time being. I have this set up on an Ubuntu desktop machine, with the benefit that Ubuntu still uses the classic kernel + initrd logic that I can easily revert back to if needed. I just bundle them in a UKI image and sign them, all with sbctl (which I also use to sign ZBM EFI binaries by the way, not solving the SecureBoot issues I have had). Just add 2 commands to the regular update logic you have.

It has been exceptionally reliable, and I have since then upgraded my natived encrypted rootpool to include all the new stuff without any boot issues. Grub is installed on the system to avoid dependency issues in the future, but grub-install was never executed, and would not interfere with the UEFI boot entries for the UKI anyway.

22

I use ZOL and OpenZFS for my desktop since 2018. Basically I run my VMs from OpenZFS and I store all my data on OpenZFS. My host OS is a minimal install of Ubuntu and it is irrelevant whether I use OpenZFS or ext4 for booting the Host OS. I did not like the first boot from ZFS implementation, it was a typical overkill and I had to write scripts to undo stuff I disliked. I also booted from the 22.04 version of OpenZFS and I liked that simpler version better.

Since many years I moved my apps to VMs and my Host OS is a minimal install of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with OpenZFS and VirtualBox and I run it from a 20GB ext4 partition (nvme 3400/2300 MB/s). The VMs boot from OpenZFS and on my Ryzen 5 5600GT, Xubuntu 24.04 LTS boots in less than 5 seconds, other flavors boot in 5 to 10 seconds. Windows XP boots in 25 seconds (1 core) and Window 11 Pro also in 25 seconds (6 cores). For Linux I use by default 4 cores.

Response times are instantaneous due to my L1ARC (8GB of 32GB).