Simple ZFS mirror on Qubes 4.3

[Euwiiwueir]

Answering my questions:

• Presumably Qubes will still be using LVM; in a sensible storage configuration, how do ZFS and LVM work together?

LVM not needed unless you choose to use it. ZFS can do its own volume management. Perhaps you use LVM to hold (1) your dom0 root, (2) your swap, (3) your ZFS pool holding your VM pool. Or perhaps you don’t use LVM, and your ZFS pool has three datasets: (1) your dom0 root, (2) your swap, (3) your VM pool.

• LUKS is still involved and should be handling encryption rather than using ZFS encryption, right?

ZFS encryption is no longer promoted by ZFS evangelists. It’s easy to create a LUKS partition around a ZFS pool.

• Do I need to give special consideration to booting, under coreboot + Heads?

Not for coreboot + Heads specifically, but yes special consideration to booting if you migrate dom0 root to ZFS. I needed to install @Rudd-O’s grub-zfs-fixer package for grub2-mkconfig to succeed during migration.

• Do I need to shell-out to a virtual terminal at some point during Qubes installation for zfs/zpool intervention? Or is the new Qubes 4.3 installer ‘ZFS aware’?

All of the ZFS setup happens post-installation, as you need to qubes-dom0-update package zfs (includes zfs-dkms), and also zfs-dracut if you migrate dom0 root to ZFS.

I more-or-less followed the process in the guides above. Maybe I’ll post again with a summary of my notes.