Installing UEFI ZFS Root on Ubuntu 19.10

There is a newer version of this guide for Ubuntu 20.04.

---

With Ubuntu 19.10 there is finally (experimental) ZFS setup option. And frankly, you should use it instead of the manual installation procedure. However, manual installation does offer it's advantages - especially when it comes to pool layout and naming. If manual installation is needed, there is great Root on ZFS installation guide that's part of ZFS-on-Linux project but its final ZFS layout is a bit too complicated for my taste. Here is my somewhat simplified version of the same intended for a singe disk installations.

After booting into Ubuntu desktop installation we want to get a root prompt. All further commands are going to need root credentials anyhow.

Terminal  Copy
sudo -i

The very first step should be setting up a few variables - disk, pool, host name, and user name. This way we can use them going forward and avoid accidental mistakes. Just make sure to replace these values with ones appropriate for your system.

Terminal  Copy
DISK=/dev/disk/by-id/ata_disk
POOL=ubuntu
HOST=desktop
USER=user

To start the fun we need debootstrap package. With 19.10 ZFS is available in main repository so we don't need to add universe as in the previous Ubuntu versions.

Terminal  Copy
apt install --yes debootstrap

General idea of my disk setup is to maximize amount of space available for pool with the minimum of supporting partitions. If you are planning to have multiple kernels, increasing boot partition size might be a good idea. Major change as compared to my previous guide is partition numbering. While having partition layout different than partition order had its advantages, a lot of partition editing tools would simply "correct" the partition order to match layout and thus cause issues down the road.

Terminal  Copy
sgdisk --zap-all                        $DISK

sgdisk -n1:1M:+127M -t1:EF00 -c1:EFI    $DISK
sgdisk -n2:0:+512M  -t2:8300 -c2:Boot   $DISK
sgdisk -n3:0:0      -t3:8309 -c3:Ubuntu $DISK

sgdisk --print                          $DISK

Unless there is a major reason otherwise, I like to use disk encryption.

Terminal  Copy
cryptsetup luksFormat -q --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 \
    --pbkdf pbkdf2 --hash sha256 $DISK-part3

Of course, you should also then open device. I liku to use disk name as the name of mapped device, but really anything goes.

Terminal  Copy
LUKSNAME=`basename $DISK`
cryptsetup luksOpen $DISK-part3 $LUKSNAME

Finally we're ready to create system ZFS pool.

Terminal  Copy
zpool create -o ashift=12 -O compression=lz4 -O normalization=formD \
    -O acltype=posixacl -O xattr=sa -O dnodesize=auto -O atime=off \
    -O canmount=off -O mountpoint=none -R /mnt/install $POOL /dev/mapper/$LUKSNAME
zfs create -o canmount=noauto -o mountpoint=/ $POOL/root
zfs mount $POOL/root

Assuming UEFI boot, two additional partitions are needed. One for EFI and one for booting. Unlike what you get with the official guide, here I don't have ZFS pool for boot partition but a plain old ext4. I find potential fixup works better that way and there is a better boot compatibility. If you are thinking about mirroring, making it bigger and ZFS might be a good idea. For a single disk, ext4 will do.

Terminal  Copy
yes | mkfs.ext4 $DISK-part2
mkdir /mnt/install/boot
mount $DISK-part2 /mnt/install/boot/

mkfs.msdos -F 32 -n EFI $DISK-part1
mkdir /mnt/install/boot/efi
mount $DISK-part1 /mnt/install/boot/efi

Bootstrapping Ubuntu on the newly created pool is next. This will take a while.

Terminal  Copy
debootstrap eoan /mnt/install/

zfs set devices=off $POOL

Our newly copied system is lacking a few files and we should make sure they exist before proceeding.

Terminal  Copy
echo $HOST > /mnt/install/etc/hostname
sed "s/ubuntu/$HOST/" /etc/hosts > /mnt/install/etc/hosts
sed '/cdrom/d' /etc/apt/sources.list > /mnt/install/etc/apt/sources.list
cp /etc/netplan/*.yaml /mnt/install/etc/netplan/

If you are installing via WiFi, you might as well copy your wireless credentials:

Terminal  Copy
mkdir -p /mnt/install/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/
cp /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/* /mnt/install/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/

Finally we're ready to "chroot" into our new system.

Terminal  Copy
mount --rbind /dev  /mnt/install/dev
mount --rbind /proc /mnt/install/proc
mount --rbind /sys  /mnt/install/sys
chroot /mnt/install \
    /usr/bin/env DISK=$DISK POOL=$POOL USER=$USER LUKSNAME=$LUKSNAME \
    bash --login

Let's not forget to setup locale and time zone.

Terminal  Copy
locale-gen --purge "en_US.UTF-8"
update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=en_US
dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive locales

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Now we're ready to onboard the latest Linux image.

Terminal  Copy
apt update
apt install --yes --no-install-recommends linux-image-generic linux-headers-generic

Followed by boot environment packages.

Terminal  Copy
apt install --yes zfs-initramfs cryptsetup keyutils grub-efi-amd64-signed shim-signed

Since we're dealing with encrypted data, we should auto mount it via crypttab. If there are multiple encrypted drives or partitions, keyscript really comes in handy to open them all with the same password. As it doesn't have negative consequences, I just add it even for a single disk setup.

Terminal  Copy
echo "$LUKSNAME UUID=$(blkid -s UUID -o value $DISK-part3) none \
    luks,discard,initramfs,keyscript=decrypt_keyctl" >> /etc/crypttab
cat /etc/crypttab

To mount EFI and boot partitions, we need to do some fstab setup too:

Terminal  Copy
echo "PARTUUID=$(blkid -s PARTUUID -o value $DISK-part2) \
    /boot ext4 noatime,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=5s 0 1" >> /etc/fstab
echo "PARTUUID=$(blkid -s PARTUUID -o value $DISK-part1) \
    /boot/efi vfat noatime,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=5s 0 1" >> /etc/fstab
cat /etc/fstab

Now we get grub started and update our boot environment. Due to Ubuntu 19.10 having some kernel version kerfuffle, we need to manually create initramfs image. As before, boot cryptsetup discovery errors during mkinitramfs and update-initramfs as OK.

Terminal  Copy
KERNEL=`ls /usr/lib/modules/ | cut -d/ -f1 | sed 's/linux-image-//'`
update-initramfs -u -k $KERNEL

Grub update is what makes EFI tick.

Terminal  Copy
update-grub
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Ubuntu \
    --recheck --no-floppy

Finally we install out GUI environment. It'll take ages.

Terminal  Copy
apt-get install --yes ubuntu-desktop samba

Short package upgrade will not hurt.

Terminal  Copy
apt dist-upgrade --yes

We can omit creation of the swap dataset but I personally find a small one handy.

Terminal  Copy
zfs create -V 4G -b $(getconf PAGESIZE) -o compression=off -o logbias=throughput \
    -o sync=always -o primarycache=metadata -o secondarycache=none $POOL/swap
mkswap -f /dev/zvol/$POOL/swap
echo "/dev/zvol/$POOL/swap none swap defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
echo RESUME=none > /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume

If one is so inclined, /home directory can get a separate dataset too.

Terminal  Copy
rmdir /home
zfs create -o mountpoint=/home $POOL/home

And now we create the user.

Terminal  Copy
adduser $USER

The only remaining task before restart is to assign extra groups to user and make sure its home has correct owner.

Terminal  Copy
usermod -a -G adm,cdrom,dip,lpadmin,plugdev,sambashare,sudo $USER
chown -R $USER:$USER /home/$USER

As install is ready, we can exit our chroot environment.

Terminal  Copy
exit

And cleanup our mount points.

Terminal  Copy
umount /mnt/install/boot/efi
umount /mnt/install/boot
mount | grep -v zfs | tac | awk '/\/mnt/ {print $3}' | xargs -i{} umount -lf {}
zpool export -a

After the reboot you should be able to enjoy your installation.

Terminal  Copy
reboot

---

PS: There are versions of this guide using the native ZFS encryption for other Ubuntu versions: 21.10 and 20.04

PPS: For LUKS-based ZFS setup, check the following posts: 20.04, 19.04, and 18.10.