How to use ZFS on Ubuntu 16.04?

Question

It seem that Ubuntu 16.04 LTS supports the ZFS filesystem. But how do I use it? I'm sorry, I don't know very much about ZFS, but it sounds good. I want it.

Answer 1

First off, use ZFS only if you really want it. See the Use Cases to know if you really need ZFS.

ZFS is supported only in 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04 installs. To install it run:

sudo apt-get install zfsutils-linux

To learn more, you can see the reference on Ubuntu or this excellent documentation.

A good introduction can also be found here

Answer 2

As root in an Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS this works:

apt update
apt install -y zfs

You are then done. You can check it is there by doing:

zfs list

you can then create a pool by doing:

zpool create -f zxavi /dev/sdb

or whatever disk you want to use; and after that:

zpool status

Boom, done!

Answer 3

Since I only have 1 reputation, I can neither upvote nor comment on Xavi's answer, which is the correct one. Things not to do include:

• Do not waste your time with mountall, all of that Wiki page is obsolete as far as Xenial is concerned;
• Do not install a package named ubuntu-zfs, or use the so-called "stable" ZFS PPA.