Ubuntu
zfs-linux package

Is Canonical still commited to ZFS?

Asked by mai ling

Ubuntu is always slow to sync with upstream release version numbers.

For example right now Ubuntu Lunar ships 2.1.9 while upstream there have been 2.1.10 on Apr 14, 2.1.11 on Apr 20 and 2.1.12 on Jun 7.
Last updates to 2.1.5 Kinetic and Jammy were on 04 Oct 2022, missing a lot of stability patches and including only minor upstream cherry-picks.

Do they really care anymore for OpenZFS? I've jumped into Ubuntu because of ZFS, and left it recently because of always lagging behind.

The passing of Jonathon Fernyhough in early 2023 - a passionate dedicated individual who kept ZFS up to date for many LTS versions in his PPA archive - made it difficult to keep ZFS up to date on Ubuntu machines.

What was the straw that broke the camel’s back, a power loss incident with write cache enabled sent my LVM thin pool into unactivable state. After recovering thanks to help from thin-pool developers, I had already gave up plans on double LTS to LTS upgrade of 18.04 and installed an RHEL clone on it, which gives me easy acess to up to date ZFS.

Goodbye Canonical.

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Bernard Stafford (bernard010) said (last edit ): 		#1

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/future-of-zfs-on-ubuntu-desktop/33001
https://github.com/Sithuk/ubuntu-server-zfsbootmenu

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Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#2

Ubuntu is not a rolling-release distribution. This means that package versions are usually not updated to higher versions than the ones initially provided with a certain Ubuntu release.
Newer package versions are provided only with newer Ubuntu releases.
There are exceptions to this rule, e.g. a limited list of packages like kernel, timezone information, Firefox, and in cases where severe weaknesses and/or bugs in a package justify an upgrade.

In addition you have to be aware that Ubuntu is copying packages from Debian (to avoid double packaging work).

If you take Lunar as an example:
Feature freeze date and Debian import freeze were on February 23, 2023.
If there is a new version of zfs in April 2023, then this is simply too late for Ubuntu Lunar.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

You will rarely get the latest version of a package. Just because it's not bang up to date doesn't mean Ubuntu is not committed to zfs? Are you experiencing issues with 2.1.9? If so, please log a bug. If the bug you are experiencing is known to be fixed in the later version then please add this information to the bug report. This will help get the package updated sooner rather than later. A new version being released will not go into Ubuntu if there are no issues with the currently packaged version.

What is in the newer version that you need so very very badly?

The "goodbye Canonical" isn't useful or clever and doesn't make any body want to reply any more or less.

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Bernard Stafford (bernard010) said (last edit ): 		#4

Calamares installer does not work with ZFS.
Ubuntu is trying to solve this problem.
This is Ubuntu's new installer.
ZFS option will not be included on Manitc's installer Ubuntu's next release.
ZFS would have to be installed after the initial install of Ubuntu.

How to install zfs on your system.
https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Getting%20Started/Ubuntu/index.html

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trackwitz (trackwitz) said (last edit ): 		#5

I think the recent events give you very clear answer to your question:
Canonical doesn't care at all about their ZFS support otherwise it wouldn't take them many months (!) to release a (one-line) fix for a critical data corruption bug.

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask mai ling for more information if necessary.

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