[pve-devel] Use of ZFS 2.3.x in PVE 8.4

[pve-devel] Use of ZFS 2.3.x in PVE 8.4

[Krzysztof Hajdamowicz]

Hello,

A few months ago, I decided to experiment with bcachefs on my PVE 8.x home
server.
So far, the experience has been positive, although it requires building the
latest kernel from Linus's source tree, which can be a bit on the edge.

With some external assistance, I've managed to build the latest kernel
versions as a pve-kernel package [1], using the vanilla Linus repository
(latest git tag) with the latest bcachefs patches, and OpenZFS sources
directly from the upstream repository.
This setup means that the compatibility with OpenZFS 2.2.7 dictates the
pace at which I can compile new kernels.
Proxmox uses ZFS 2.2.7 in its kernel, which necessitates backporting
patches from the 2.3 branch [2].

My question is: To simplify my kernel flavor, which is focused on bcachefs,
can I migrate to the ZFS 2.3 branch, or does PVE rely on 2.2.7, making 2.3
potentially problematic?

For reference:

1: https://github.com/KrzysztofHajdamowicz/pve-kernel
2: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/17229#issuecomment-2857379669

Sincerely,
-- 
Krzysztof Hajdamowicz
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Re: [pve-devel] Use of ZFS 2.3.x in PVE 8.4

[Thomas Lamprecht]

Hello,

Am 07.05.25 um 17:27 schrieb Krzysztof Hajdamowicz:
> A few months ago, I decided to experiment with bcachefs on my PVE 8.x home
> server.
> So far, the experience has been positive, although it requires building the
> latest kernel from Linus's source tree, which can be a bit on the edge.

Thanks for sharing your experience; bcachefs _is_ sounding interesting, but
due to it still being marked as experimental and some on-disk format changes
still being planned we did not bother in checking it out closer. Once it
stabilizes we definitively will evaluate it though.

> With some external assistance, I've managed to build the latest kernel
> versions as a pve-kernel package [1], using the vanilla Linus repository
> (latest git tag) with the latest bcachefs patches, and OpenZFS sources
> directly from the upstream repository.
> This setup means that the compatibility with OpenZFS 2.2.7 dictates the
> pace at which I can compile new kernels.
> Proxmox uses ZFS 2.2.7 in its kernel, which necessitates backporting
> patches from the 2.3 branch [2].
> 
> My question is: To simplify my kernel flavor, which is focused on bcachefs,
> can I migrate to the ZFS 2.3 branch, or does PVE rely on 2.2.7, making 2.3
> potentially problematic?

FWIW, you could also stop compiling ZFS completely if you do not use it
anyway, then you won't be limited by it's compatibility with upstream
Linux.


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