Recommended setup to keep kernels compatible with zfs?

[emk2203]

On my system, I have added zfs later on to deal with a zfs-formatted external drive. Just used yay zfs for this, which worked for me at this point without issues.

With the last updates, zfs refuses to build since the kernel 6.5.3-arch1-1 is not in the approved range for OpenZFS modules. Result is that I can’t access the external drive because the kernel has no zfs module. What’s the best way to fix this?

Ideally, I would be able to boot into a different kernel with zfs compatibility to use the external drive and use the latest kernel in other cases.

[mbod]

@emk2203

What’s the best way to fix this?

The best way is to use the lts kernel which is in the 6.1 branch:

yay -S linux-lts linux-lts-headers

[emk2203]

Yes. Coupled with GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=y, GRUB_DEFAULT=saved and GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true in /etc/default/grub, I can switch the kernels now with grub-set-default easily.

I mark this as solved.

[dalto]

I use the archzfs repo. It has hard dependencies on the specific kernel versions and is regularly updated. That way you can use the mainline kernel, the LTS kernel or both and neither will ever update to a kernel that isn’t ready for ZFS.