• zfs-fuse is in ubuntu repositories
  • zfs and zpool are to be run as sudo
  • NO partitioning
  • disks tool &/ other partition managers might show the disk as Free/unused.

Create Pool

sudo zpool create -f -m /mnt/mountpoint zfspoolnamehere /dev/disk/by-id/carefully_choose_the_correct_disk

Options

  • can be set during zpool create with -o option=value for each option, or sudo zfs set option=value zfspoolnamehere

copies=2 to keep 2 copies of each file in the disk. (Single Disk. No RAID setup) dedup=on deduplication

Maintenance

  • Scrub to run a check

sudo zpool scrub name-of-zfs-pool

  • Check will run in background. Check the status of scrubbing

sudo zpool status name-of-zfs-pool

  • For general status info, this is better. Shows attributes, used and free space.

sudo zpool get all name-of-zfs-pool

  • Is copying to deduped zfs drive is too slow? turn off duplicate checking if needed sudo zfs set dedup=off name-of-zfs-pool

Disconnecting and Reconnecting zfs hard drives

The pool has to be exported before the hard drive can be removed from the system.

sudo zpool export name-of-the-pool

CAUTION: Don’t use -f option; forcefully removes a drive. May cause data loss.

After export and removal, the hard drive can be connected to the same or different computer later.

sudo zpool import – lists the details of available pools
sudo zpool import name-of-the-pool – to import the pool.

Snapshots

sudo zfs set listsnapshots=on name-of-zfs-pool

Now, sudo zfs list will show snapshots too.

more: Displaying and Accessing Snapshots

Resources

  • https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ZFS
  • man zfs (example scenarios at the bottom)