Debian hell :-)

[William Muriithi]

> > except, the whole reason to do this was to get ZFS, and
> > http://zfsonlinux.org/debian.html has a simple couple steps to do, and
> > everything would be fine... except, it works on amd64, not x86 and
> > this system was previously an Atom, so I had it as x86.

Is ZFS on Linux kernel based or is it something like ntfs3g?

If its the later, wouldn't it be better to use freeBSD? I think freeBSD is
more friendly to ZFS and hence unlikely to have it broken by updates.

William
>
> Careful with the SSD & ZFS (and Linux). You definitely don't want swap
> on it, and minimizing the number of writes is something to work toward.
> If you get your SSD into your zpools without noticing, you can wear out
> the drive unless you use it intentionally.
>
> > It took me a long time to figure this out.
> >           apt-get install debian-zfs
> > politely says:
> >     Package debian-zfs is not available, but is referred to by another
package.
> >     This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
> >     is only available from another source
> >
> >     E: Package 'debian-zfs' has no installation candidate
> >
> > Eventually, I figured out that this meant that it is not available FOR
> > THIS ARCH!  In the meantime, I wondered if I'd set up the sources.list
> > wrong, or had a corrupt apt database, etc.
> >
> > So now I need to move to amd64.  I found a convient page:
> > http://wiki.debian.org/Migrate32To64Bit but the first step is to
> > download a 64-bit kernel, so I try:
> >         apt-get install linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64
> > with similar results to before.  So I try
> > http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/linux-image-amd64 to download, but
> > the file it points to is 5Kb long.
>
> Here's the package that you wanted: the link above is a meta-package
> that always ensures the latest version of the kernel is installed.
>
> http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64
>
> > Sigh... I like debian, I really do, but there's sometimes too much
> > magic going on for those of us who only actually poke at it every few
> > months.
> >
> > Thanks for any guidance.  I'd really like to get this running.  (And
> > I'd like to install parted, but I get the same message there as
> > before).
>
> You'd have this issue with any distro trying to upgrade from 32 to 64bit
> in place. Here's my suggestion in general steps (do a backup, and plan
> each step first!):
>
> dpkg --get-selections > /media/USB-STICK
>
> Now you have two options: since you have a backup, boot a Debian
> installer and do a clean install, or; boot up a livecd, rm everything
> except /etc /home /opt /var (any other locations that you use, leave in
> place.
>
> Boot the Debian installer. If you are going to restore from your backup,
> wipe your target disk. If you are installing in place, DO NOT FORMAT THE
> EXISTING DISK (but you have a backup anyways).
>
> I'm guessing you want to install to the SSD, in which case point the
> installer there. Don't partition it with swap unless you plan to limit
> your system's use thereof somehow. Put your swap on a spinning disk
> unless you know what you're doing.
>
> Important in the installer is that you choose the default for packages
> (don't select any). You can leave your TB disks alone for ZFS since
> you'll use zpool to handle those.
>
> Boot up the new install, update all the packages using apt-get/aptitude.
> Then the magic:
>
> dpkg --set-selections < /media/USB-STICK
> apt-get -u dselect-upgrade
>
> The last part will take the list of packages from your old 32bit
> version, and then run apt-get to install packages until the new system
> matches those packages specified.
>
> Search around a bit for strategies on using dpkg --get and
> --set-selections.
>
> I think you'll find a clean install to the SSD and then a quick restore
> from your backup of any data is easiest. After all you have a SATA2/3
> motherboard, it won't take long, and you are guaranteed with a nice
> clean new 64bit system for ZFS ;)
>
> (Question: how much ram do you have for this system? If you use
> deduplication you're looking at 6-8GB  per TB of data depending on your
> read/write ratio. Something to keep in mind. Stick with compression
> first, get a handle on that and see if it fits your needs, then if
> you're interested and have a use case, try dedup)
>
> More good reading here:
> http://pthree.org/2012/12/04/zfs-administration-part-i-vdevs/
>
> And here http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=983
>
> Jamon
>
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