Help a newb install ZFS on Rocky 9.4

Rocky Linux Help & Support
1

Hi all, I’m quite a newb. I want to install ZFS on Rocky Linux 9.4 but I’m running into trouble with the install process. I tried following the guide here

https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/RHEL-based%20distro/index.html#dkms

dnf install -y epel-release
dnf install -y kernel-devel
dnf install -y zfs

No match for argument: zfs
Error: Unable to find a match: zfs

Can anyone help a newb out? I want to format a scratch disk to ZFS for max performance.

2

Did you do

for EL8 and 9:

dnf install https://zfsonlinux.org/epel/zfs-release-2-3$(rpm --eval "%{dist}").noarch.rpm

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This worked. How did you know to do that?

4 
$ dnf install zfs
No match for argument: zfs
Error: Unable to find a match: zfs

Here dnf essentially says: “You have asked me to install ‘zfs’ but none of the package repositories that I know of do provide (package) ‘zfs’.”

That is correct. Rocky’s repositories do not have package ‘zfs’. Before this you did install two packages. The package kernel-devel has files that the ZFS requires. The package epel-release makes dnf aware of a third-party repository EPEL. The ZFS packages probably need packages from EPEL, but the ZFS packages are not in EPEL themselves (or the ‘zfs’ would be found).

Having seen ZFS before, I did remember that there is a separate third-party repository for its packages. Where was it? I did browse the same guide that you had followed and saw the missing step described there. Perhaps I did read more carefully or were more alert for familiar patterns?

The zfs-release and epel-release are both packages that make dnf aware of respective repositories. The former package file was in no known repo, but dnf can use local files and URLs. The latter package is in Rocky’s own repo to make use of EPEL as easy as possible.

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5

In addition, don’t forget that ZFS is unsupported by RH.

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Thanks for helping me. Wow after all that, ZFS is not supported by RH. Thats crazy haha.

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So, I’m doing research as to why ZFS isn’t supported by RH. Apparently its due to speculation or anxiety over the technologies license.

Is something like Open ZFS or ZFS a technology that is installed into the Kernel of Linux?

And if so, does that mean installing ZFS mean the user is basically running a system modified beyond the supported specification of the OS?

So it would be technically possible to install ZFS, but in doing so, one changes the Kernel, and are therefore out on their own?

If my assumptions are correct, well, this really sucks. ZFS seems like an increasing technology that’s just sitting there begging to be used. The performance and features look amazing.

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Yes, it might work perfectly, but if it goes wrong e.g. after an update, then no one will be able to help. If it’s just for fun, it’s probably ok.

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