• Contact: tech-kern
• Mentors: tech-kern
• Duration estimate: 1-2 months

IMPORTANT: This project was completed by Simon Burge. You may still contact the people above for details, but please do not submit an application for this project.

This project consists of two parts: getting the bootloader code ("libsa") to read ZFS filesystems, and enabling mounting ZFS as a root filesystem.

For ZFS bootloader support, fortunately code already exists in the FreeBSD variant of libsa, so it's a matter of adapting it.

Milestones:

ZFS bootloader:

• Setup test environment for testing bootloader changes, experiment with debug printing in libsa
• Identify & import ZFS libsa code in FreeBSD
• Read a kernel from a ZFS filesystem, while booting into a non-ZFS root.

ZFS as root filesystem:

• Understanding what root mount functions must do
• ???
• Write one for ZFS on NetBSD

Stretch goal:

• Pass a parameter for which ZFS snapshot to boot to, using the bootloader.