nixos-config/modules

Setting up ZFS

1. Create three partitions:

   • Boot
   • Swap
   • ZFS

   For example:

   sgdisk -n 0:0:+512MiB -t 0:EF00 -c 0:boot $DISK
   sgdisk -n 0:0:+32GiB -t 0:8200 -c 0:swap $DISK
   sgdisk -n 0:0:0 -t 0:BF01 -c 0:ZFS $DISK
   

2. Configure swap and boot as usual.

3. Create ZPool:

   zpool create -O mountpoint=none -O encryption=aes-256-gcm -O keyformat=passphrase rpool $ZFS_PART
   

   Leave out -O encryption=aes-256-gcm -O keyformat=passphrase if you don't want to fully encrypt the ZFS partition.

4. Create datasets:

   zfs create -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/local/root
   zfs snapshot rpool/local/root@blank
   zfs create -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/local/nix
   zfs set compression=lz4 rpool/local/nix
   zfs create -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/local/cache
   zfs set compression=lz4 rpool/local/cache
   zfs create -o mountpoint=legacy rpool/safe/data
   zfs set compression=lz4 rpool/local/data
   

5. Mount datasets:

   mount -t zfs rpool/local/root /mnt
   mkdir /mnt/nix
   mount -t zfs rpool/local/nix /mnt/nix
   mkdir /mnt/boot
   mount $BOOT_PART /mnt/boot
   mkdir /mnt/cache
   mount -t zfs rpool/local/cache /mnt/cache
   mkdir /mnt/data
   mount -t zfs rpool/safe/data /mnt/data
   

6. Configure Host ID

   Set networking.hostid in the nixos config to head -c 8 /etc/machine-id.