Building ZFS on Raspberry Pi 3 running Rasbpian

Instructions.md

Introduction

This is a tutorial for building and installing the latest release version (0.7.3 as of writing) of "ZFS on Linux" on a Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian Stretch. Specifically, we'll be building the dkms version of ZoL, which saves you the hassle of re-compiling the kernel modules after every kernel update. Even though ZoL added support for building dkms packages for debian in version 0.7.3, the build process on a Raspberry Pi 3 is not quite straight-forward. Hopefully, these instructions will make it easier.

Steps

1. Install the build dependencies.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool gawk alien fakeroot
$ sudo apt-get install dkms zlib1g-dev uuid-dev libattr1-dev libblkid-dev libselinux-dev libudev-dev libssl-dev parted lsscsi wget ksh

You'll also need the kernel headers. Running apt-get upgrade will take care of both installation and upgradation.

$ sudo apt-get upgrade raspberrypi-kernel raspberrypi-kernel-headers

2. Download the source.

Download the latest release tarballs for zfs and spl from this page and extract them.

$ wget https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/releases/download/zfs-0.7.3/spl-0.7.3.tar.gz && tar -xzf spl-0.7.3.tar.gz
$ wget https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/releases/download/zfs-0.7.3/zfs-0.7.3.tar.gz && tar -xzf zfs-0.7.3.tar.gz

3. Compile and install spl.

$ cd spl-0.7.3/
$ autoreconf --install --force
$ ./configure

You need to make a small edit to the Makefile generated by configure before you proceed.

$ sed -E 's/(^RPMBUILD = rpmbuild.*)/\1 --target=armhf/' -i Makefile
$ make pkg-utils deb-dkms
$ for deb in *.deb; do sudo dpkg -i "$deb"; done

The final step will take some time as dkms builds spl modules for each kernel version installed in your system.

4. Compile and install zfs.

The build process for zfs is the same as spl, albeit with an extra option --with-config=srpm in ./configure

$ cd ../zfs-0.7.3/
$ autoreconf --install --force
$ ./configure --with-config=srpm
$ sed -E 's/(^RPMBUILD = rpmbuild.*)/\1 --target=armhf/' -i Makefile
$ make pkg-utils deb-dkms
$ for deb in *.deb; do sudo dpkg -i "$deb"; done

The zfs source is much bigger than spl's and hence the build time will also be much longer.

5. Reboot and Enjoy. :)

Sources

• The ZoL Wiki
• rpdom on this thread

zfs-0.8.2 failed to build on
Linux laser-gw 4.19.66-v7+ #1253 SMP Thu Aug 15 11:49:46 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

  CC       strlcpy.lo
  CC       timestamp.lo
  CC       zone.lo
  CPPAS    atomic.lo
  CCLD     libspl.la
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
Making all in libtpool
  CC       thread_pool.lo
  CCLD     libtpool.la
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
Making all in libzutil
  CC       zutil_device_path.lo
  CC       zutil_import.lo
  CC       zutil_nicenum.lo
  CC       zutil_pool.lo
  CCLD     libzutil.la
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
Making all in libunicode
  CC       u8_textprep.lo
  CC       uconv.lo
  CCLD     libunicode.la
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
Making all in libuutil
  CC       uu_avl.lo
  CC       uu_alloc.lo
  CC       uu_dprintf.lo
  CC       uu_ident.lo
  CC       uu_misc.lo
  CC       uu_list.lo
  CC       uu_open.lo
  CC       uu_pname.lo
  CC       uu_string.lo
  CCLD     libuutil.la
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
Making all in libnvpair
  CC       libnvpair.lo
  CC       libnvpair_json.lo
  CC       nvpair_alloc_system.lo
  CC       nvpair_alloc_fixed.lo
  CC       nvpair.lo
  CC       fnvpair.lo
  CCLD     libnvpair.la
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
Making all in libzpool
  CC       kernel.lo
  CC       taskq.lo
make[3]: *** No rule to make target '../../module/zfs/zfeature_common.c', needed by 'zfeature_common.lo'.  Stop.
make[3]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
  CC       util.lo
Makefile:653: recipe for target 'all-recursive' failed
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
Makefile:840: recipe for target 'all-recursive' failed
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
Makefile:709: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

pi@laser-gw:~/dev/zfs$ uname -a
Linux laser-gw 4.19.66-v7+ #1253 SMP Thu Aug 15 11:49:46 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

At the same time, the "zfs-0.7.13" built successfully:

make[2]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.19.66-v7+'
kmoddir=/lib/modules/4.19.66-v7+; \
if [ -n "" ]; then \
        find $kmoddir -name 'modules.*' | xargs rm -f; \
fi
sysmap=/boot/System.map-4.19.66-v7+; \
if [ -f $sysmap ]; then \
        depmod -ae -F $sysmap 4.19.66-v7+; \
fi
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/dev/zfs/module'
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/pi/dev/zfs'
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/pi/dev/zfs'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-exec-am'.
 /bin/mkdir -p '/usr/local/src/zfs-0.7.13'
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 zfs.release.in zfs_config.h.in '/usr/local/src/zfs-0.7.13'
 /bin/mkdir -p '/usr/local/src/zfs-0.7.13/4.19.66-v7+'
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 zfs.release zfs_config.h module/Module.symvers '/usr/local/src/zfs-0.7.13/4.19.66-v7+'
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/dev/zfs'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/dev/zfs'
+ sudo ldconfig
+ sudo depmod -a
+ sudo modprobe zfs
+ sudo zpool import -a

If someone has a solution, pls share!

I just fixed in this gist:
https://gist.github.com/Alexey-Tsarev/d5809e353e756c5ce2d49363ed63df35

I just fixed in this gist:
https://gist.github.com/AlexeySofree/d5809e353e756c5ce2d49363ed63df35

thanks!

I just fixed in this gist:
https://gist.github.com/AlexeySofree/d5809e353e756c5ce2d49363ed63df35

Now appears to be moved to https://gist.github.com/Alexey-Tsarev/d5809e353e756c5ce2d49363ed63df35

@stefanhinker @colettace
The problem can be fixed with the following to build zfs 0.8.3 on a Raspberry Pi 4:

./autogen.sh
./configure --disable-pyzfs
# https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/9504
sed -E 's/(^RPMBUILD = rpmbuild.*)/\1 --target=armv7hnl-linux-gnueabihf/' -i Makefile

make deb-dkms deb-utils

see openzfs/zfs#9504 for more information

There is no need to use sed to modify the Makefile. rpmbuild errrors are caused by the rpmbuild package on raspbian not storing the architecture files in an appropriately named directory. You can fix this permanently by running the following:

cd /usr/lib/rpm/platform; sudo ln -s armv7hnl-linux-gnueabihf armv7hnl-linux