Installing GhostBSD 11.1 on ZFS

Questions about the installation of FreeBSD
Post Reply
JOEGhost
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2017 9:44 am

Installing GhostBSD 11.1 on ZFS

Post by JOEGhost »

Hi i am currently installing the great looking software 11.1 beta, but there are some issues I cannot overcome yet.

1. ZFS install consumes the whole disk and gives a dawn on existing partitions. ZFS Pool resize to a smaller pool on a fraction of the disk is awful:

Can you please provide a "custom" disk layout installer entry that allows for already existing file system setup? Would help a very big deal. If you got a current workaround for this (i.e command line switch to skip the partitioning) it would be great.

2. The network setup in Mate doesn't allow for Static IP address, at least I haven't figured from the GUI.

3. Having a bunch of disks and USB keys, the Mate desktop on live DVD doesn't allow to access them in the live environment (mount doesn't do a thing)
Thanks for the great effort
JOE
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: Installing GhostBSD 11.1 on ZFS

Post by ASX »

Hi and welcome,

1) we will await for your contribution, sources are on github
2) right, see point 1 above
3) freebsd have limited support for "foreign" filesystem (basically linux ext2 and ms vfat) but many other are supported by fuse subsystem, only that the choice to setup and install these optional components is left to each user. This can be a bug or a feature, depending from your point of view, and I guess you will classify it as a "bug".

If you are looking for a replica of Linux, you will be very disappointed.
kraileth
Posts: 312
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: Installing GhostBSD 11.1 on ZFS

Post by kraileth »

Hi JOEGhost!

1. This is something that we'd also like to have. In fact we're hoping to eventually replace the installer backend somewhen after the release 11.1 happens. However somebody has to find the time to actually do it. ASX already gave you an invitation - it's all open source and should you think about about helping out, that's more than welcome (and I'm quite sure somebody will lend you a hand if you're stuck).

2. Same thing for network configuration: There's a lot of room for improvement here and we are aware of it. I've also missed this feature a couple of times.

3. If it's just accessing at all that is most likely possible. Yes, it will not mount foreign filesystems automatically. What FS are you using on said media?
Hecktor
Posts: 27
Joined: Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:43 pm

Re: Installing GhostBSD 11.1 on ZFS

Post by Hecktor »

I know this is old, but regarding this rather than putting a lot of effort into it, couldn't there be an option like on the FreeBSD install disk?

Like they have an option where you go to a shell and the person sets up the drive and mounts it on /mnt. When they exit, the rest of the install continues.

I would consider working on this but I am fairly unclear as to how to proceed. If somebody can point me to somewhere more narrow than just github. If that menu option existed I would gladly write a tutorial. I think it might be complicated to try to get it working from a menu. But to provide a shell prompt like the orginal FreeBSD install should be fairly quick.

Honestly for myself I need to install in a partition so will not really even attempt to install GhostBSD if I can't do it on ZFS in a partition. ZFS is just that good.
Post Reply