freebsd-update-probe VS zfsbootmenu

https://github.com/tux2bsd/freebsd-update-probe

freebsd-update is broken, it does internal spaghetti which prevents it from doing the most logical thing first: "check upstream for updates"

I created a work around, it works well.

I don't use FreeBSD, but it's good for a hobby OS. Has a few cool ways to do things (seperation of OS vs external software & /etc/rc.conf). The project is coasting on ZFS success.

They HATE me at the FreeBSD Forums. I don't think a single one of them truly understood what freebsd-update-probe actually achieved.

I'm not a programmer.

FreeBSD related shameless plug: https://github.com/tux2bsd/freebsd-update-probe

It makes the update process efficient like it should have been (when there are no updates).

I gave FreeBSD a try:

I provided a workaround for a problem with freebsd-update, summary and tool can found here: https://github.com/tux2bsd/freebsd-update-probe

FreeBSD separation of OS vs other applications is great.

FreeBSD pioneered ZFS integration but are coasting on that success.

The FreeBSD forums, linked from the FreeBSD website are insular. FreeBSD zealots LARPing as the true "true" BSD / Unix enthusiasts.

If you want to try FreeBSD just use the Handbook. The FreeBSD community is childish and won't list that FreeBSD can run on KVM (the mere fact it can, I'm not talking in depth instructions).

I loathe nearly all man pages, they are written in a manner that is as over the top and an absolute chore to digest. I believe it is a form on programmer one-upmanship, it is largely unnecessary and stalls common usage massively.

I made this recently and tried very hard to make it so that the vast majority of people that could use the command line could grasp what it did, usage is trivial:

https://github.com/tux2bsd/freebsd-update-probe

I guess what I'm saying is I like documentation written for humans (which you do).

We use a couple nice home-grown functions in ZFSBootMenu to help debug things. We have a zdebug logging function that's peppered liberally throughout the code base - https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu/blob/master/zfsbootme...

Hitting ctrl-t on our main menu will, when booting with debug logging enabled, show a screen like this: https://imgur.com/Ge75zkP

We also have a flamegraph profiling mechanism that can be enabled with https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu/blob/master/zfsbootme... . That will dump data to a serial port, which when re-assembled, can be used to produce a graph like https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu/master...

Bash is suprisingly flexible.

A lot of what's in the Pure Bash Bible is horrifically slow. Many of those things are substantially faster, even when paying the cost of starting a new process, when you use an external and commonly available tool. I wrote a bash performance profiler that outputs data in a format that flamegraph.pl recognizes - it really helped identify where we could improve the performance of ZFSBootMenu.

https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu/releases/tag/v1.12.0

Don't fall in the trap of thinking things have to be written entirely in bash; it's okay to use other tools to help fill in the gaps.

If instead of "opensuse" you're asking for bootloader as grub can't boot from zfs, then, like i metnioned, i don't use grub2, i uninstalled it, instead i'm using https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu

I thought the following was supposed to fix this issue: https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu/commit/84da18e64ebcc0c483e7b2c7d3972f7d91784e63

All release assets, including EFI executables and kernel/initramfs pairs, are signed with signify, which provides a simple method for verifying that the contents of the file are as this project intended. Once you've installed signify (that's left as an exercise, although Void Linux provides the signify package for this purpose), just download the desired assets from the ZFSBootMenu release page, download the file sha256.sig alongside it, and run:

I think the consensus is that you probably shouldn't be installing a ZFS on root using the native installer anymore. They aren't really maintaining the packages that make that work. Instead the suggestion is to go the zfsbootmenu route of installing.

Glad to hear that everything is working for you! I've opened a PR that adds a warning about this condition - it should likely make it into 2.2.0.

You can install following instructions at https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/Debian/Debian%20Bullseye%20Root%20on%20ZFS.html which I've automated with https://github.com/HankB/Linux_ZFS_Root/tree/master/Debian. For scripting, you should also look at https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu. I'd probably go that way if I were starting from scratch.

ZBM provides an amazingly useful script in it's wiki here. This runs when a new kernel is updated by xbps and it snapshots your system before the kernel is installed. This creates a boot environment, and via the magic of ZFS boot environments, allows you to rollback any kernel update to a known, working configuration.

* https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E86824_01/html/E54764/beadm-1m.ht...

> A ZFS boot environment is a bootable clone of the datasets needed to boot the operating system. Creating a BE before performing an upgrade provides a low-cost safeguard: if there is a problem with the update, the system can be rebooted back to the point in time before the upgrade.

* https://klarasystems.com/articles/managing-boot-environments...

Or perhaps:

> In essence, ZFSBootMenu is a small, self-contained Linux system that knows how to find other Linux kernels and initramfs images within ZFS filesystems. When a suitable kernel and initramfs are identified (either through an automatic process or direct user selection), ZFSBootMenu launches that kernel using the kexec command.

* https://github.com/zbm-dev/zfsbootmenu