Another thing to pay attention to are the zfs feature flags for your
pool. They may not be compatible between the two platforms. You may find
the following useful:
man zpool-features
zpool upgrade -v
zpool get all <pool name>| grep feature
-Matt
On 8/26/2025 2:11 PM, Paul Heinlein wrote:
On Tue, 26 Aug 2025, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
I would appreciate suggestions for mounting a freeBSD zfs
drive on my up-to-date Debian 12 Bookworm machine, updated
to Debian 6.1.147-1 (2025-08-02). I want to edit a few
/etc files, then reboot it on the original machine.
Background:
I bought three pfSense/freeBSD firewall small computers
(PCengines APU2) which use 16GB mSATA card solid state drives.
Not full desktops, and exposed to raw internet; I would rather
tinker with the ZFS mSATA drives mounted on a Linux machine.
So far, I've been unable to mount them. Installing ZFS
on a Debian desktop machine spews a blinking legal warning:
Licenses for Open ZFS and Linux are incompatible.
("Dogs and cats sleeping together" in frantic Bill Murray voice)
I got past that, jumped through many more hoops, and have
something zfs-like installed:
root@khlmachine:~# zfs version
zfs-2.1.11-1+deb12u1
zfs-kmod-2.1.11-1+deb12u1
... but the Debian desktop still won't mount the drives.
Have any of you configured a Linux system to read/write
ZFS partitions? What worked for you?
If my experience is any guide, you'll need to
* ensure the zfs kernel module and its dependencies are loaded
(probably using "modprobe zfs")
* import the zpool(s) (probably using "zpool import -a")
If the second step goes well, "zpool status" should show the
underlying disk(s) and status and "zfs list" should show filesystem
information, including any mountpoints.
If the zpool import doesn't work, there's a decent chance they weren't
exported cleanly from the original machine. You'll need more of an
export than me to figure out your next step.
--
Matt Kowalczyk
