[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.