remake_initrd needs to be yes

[Rudd-O]

In the DKMS branch, the code in dkms.conf that says

REMAKE_INITRD="no"

needs to be yes. The reason it needs to be yes is because ZFS support needs to be included into the initial RAM disk after compilation. Otherwise, ZFS fails to load upon boot, rendering ZFS-on-root setups unbootable.

Same goes for spl's dkms.conf.

Thanks in advance :-)

[Rudd-O]

This is the workaround I am using ATM:

/etc/kernel/postinst.d@karen.dragonfear α:                                                                                                                                  
ls                                                                                                                                                                          
dkms  zfs_dkms_workaround                                                                                                                                                   

0 <- ls
/etc/kernel/postinst.d@karen.dragonfear α:
cat zfs_dkms_workaround 
#!/bin/bash

set -e

# We're passed the version of the kernel being installed
inst_kern=$1

/usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start $inst_kern

dracut -f /boot/initramfs-$inst_kern.img $inst_kern

[behlendorf]

Good tip, I've assigned the issue to Prakash to follow up with an updated patch when he gets the time.

[FransUrbo]

But if we're not booting from ZFS, we don't need zfs in the initrd and therefor don't need to remake the initrd... So setting this to yes globaly (for everyone), might be a bad thing...

[FransUrbo]

@behlendorf Should we close this as 'wont-fix' (considering it might be a bad thing to globally for everyone)? Or should we retag it as 'Documentation' and document it somewhere (where in such case - people don't read documentation :)?

[Rudd-O]

Turbo, Frans, @behlendorf , if you are not booting from ZFS, then the initrd won't contain ZFS, so remaking the initrd is an entirely harmless no-op. NOT remaking the initrd, on the other hand, renders the system unbootable, if you were installing these packages to a ZFS-based chroot you intend to boot from during next boot.

[FransUrbo]

I'm not sure it's kosher to remake a/the initrd if there's no need for it.

[behlendorf]

@Rudd-O I agree this should default to 'yes' assuming all the required dependencies are installed. But since the zfs-dracut package is optional we're going to need to do something slightly more complicated. If you look at the Ubuntu DKMS package @dajhorn does the following which looks like a nice clean way to handle this.

REMAKE_INITRD="$(
  if [ -e /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/zfs \
       -o -e /usr/share/dracut/modules.d/90zfs ]
  then
    echo -n yes
  else
    echo -n no
  fi
)"

If we could get a similar solution tested I have no objection to merging it.

[behlendorf]

Closing. This is an issue for the distribution packaging.

[Rudd-O]

What about the same thing in the case of ZFS DKMS on Fedora and Red Hat? In these cases, clearly this repo is the source of the packaging. Over here, whenever I upgrade the ZFS DKMS packages, I end up having to remake the initrd right after the RPM install, because the initrds will contain either no ZFS or the prior ZFS version.