Installing ZFS on Amazon Linux

Now that zfs on linux is considered stable, it would make a great alternative to xfs or ext3/ext4 file systems. zfs is a volume manager and file system rolled into one. There are many excellent sites related to zfs, some of which you must peruse before you start:-

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/zfs-term.html
https://pthree.org/2012/04/17/install-zfs-on-debian-gnulinux/
https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/35-zfs-on-linux-part-1-of-2
https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/37-zfs-on-linux-part-2-of-2

Once you have a good understanding of the benefits zfs offers, you can proceed with the installation. The below steps are relevant to Amazon linux:-

• sudo yum update -y

After you run update on pkg manager, make sure your kernel and kernel headers are of the same version

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$ sudo rpm -qa |grep kernel

kernel-3.14.33-26.47.amzn1.x86_64

kernel-tools-3.14.33-26.47.amzn1.x86_64

kernel-headers-3.14.33-26.47.amzn1.x86_64

kernel-devel-3.14.33-26.47.amzn1.x86_64

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• sudo yum remove -y <kernel-3.14.27-25.47.amzn1.x86_64 | old kernel>
• sudo yum repolist enabled
• sudo yum install -y gcc
• sudo yum install kernel-devel zlib-devel libuuid-devel
• download spl-0.6.3(http://archive.zfsonlinux.org/downloads/zfsonlinux/spl/spl-0.6.3.tar.gz)
• download zfs-0.6.3(http://archive.zfsonlinux.org/downloads/zfsonlinux/zfs/zfs-0.6.3.tar.gz)
• cd spl;./configure;sudo make && sudo make install
• cd zfs;./configure --with-spl=/usr/local/src/spl-0.6.3; sudo make && sudo make install
• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib
• edit /etc/sudoers and add /usr/local/sbin to Defaults secure_path variable
• sudo modprobe zfs
• $lsmod |grep zfs

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zfs                  1170768  0

zunicode              323435  1 zfs

zavl                    6874  1 zfs

zcommon                45353  1 zfs

znvpair                81478  2 zfs,zcommon

spl                   165402  5 zfs,zavl,zunicode,zcommon,znvpair

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• now you can run zpool command to see if it works

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$sudo zpool status

no pools available

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