Re: ramdisk-zfsroot: pool detection and configurable boot fs

On 17/08/2026 08:12, [email protected] wrote:
> I just tried installing NetBSD 11.0 with Root on ZFS using the guide on 
> the wiki[1].  It worked like a charm.  I diverted a little bit from the 
> guide, which didn't seem a problem, specifically I used a different disk 
> for ZFS.
> 
> A problem I ran into though, was that the zfsroot.rc script has not been 
> updated for a while, and it requires hardcoded values for the ZFS pool 
> and the rootfs (rpool/ROOT).  I made some changes to this script, so 
> that it will probe for ZFS pools and check if they have a rootfs 
> property set.  I kept it backwards compatible with the current script, 
> by always attempting if a ROOT filesystem is available.
> 
> Unfortunately, I was unable to build the ramdisk myself.  The guide [1] 
> speaks of a program called nbmake-amd64, which I wasn't able to find any 
> reference to online.  When trying my best with normal make it stopped 
> right away on missing ../../compat/exec.mk, I didn't pursue a fix here.
> 
> Instead, I downloaded the current ramdisk, mounted it using vndconfig 
> and replaced the etc/rc script in it and *renamed* altroot to zfsroot. 
> After that, I was able to reboot into my differently-named ZFS pool, 
> setting the filesystem marked as bootfs as the root filesystem.
> 
> I've attached the updated rc script, as well as a proposed patch, even 
> though I was not able to test the patch due to not being able to build 
> the ramdisk.
> 
> [1] https://wiki.netbsd.org/root_on_zfs/
My apologies, I did not set my name correctly in my mail client, causing 
the mail-index to list me as "NetBSD" where it should have shown 
"jornane".  I hope I have resolved this now.

I forgot to mention in the previous mail, if the rc script will be 
updated, the Wiki page [1] should also be updated to reflect that it's 
recommended to set bootfs using `zpool set bootfs=… $pool`

--
Jørn Åne