8.4 KiB
| title | tags | date | author | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Root ZFS Encryption, Mirroring, and Remote Unlocking on Ubuntu |
|
2023-07-26 | Tommy |
While Unbutu supports ZFS on root filesystems with an easy snapshot and rollback mechanism called ZSYS, ZSYS is soon going to be deprecated and the installer does not offer an easy way to setup mirroring. In this guide, I will walk you through how to set up Ubuntu with root on ZFS, mirroring with both the root and EFI partitions, and remote unlocking + boot into a snapshot with ZFSBootMenu.
Enter the Shell
Enter the shell on your Ubuntu Installer:
Partitioning the Disk
Esentially, we need a 512MB ESP partition for ZFSBootMenu and a / partition for the rest of the system. If you are using a single disk, just make those 2 partitions on your disk. If you are planning to do mirroring, set up both on of these partitions on each disk.
There are a variety of tools you can use, but an easy to use one would be cfdisk.
cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1
cfdisk /dev/nvme0n2
Mirroring the ESP partition
Skip this if you are not doing mirroring
While the EFI specs do not support mdadm, we can setup mdadm with metadata v1.0, which will be put at the end of the parition and allows it to boot.
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level 1 --raid-disks --metadata 1.0 /dev/nvme0n1p1 /dev/nvme0n1p2
mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/md0
Setup the ZFS partition
This part is mostly based on the official ZFSBootMenu guide with some changes to work around some not-so-great instructions there.
Creating the zpool
Getting the Disk ID.
First, we must get the disk IDs from /dev/disk/by-id. The official guide uses the dynamically assigned drive identifier (/dev/sda, /dev/nvme0n1, etc), which is not what we want to do with zpools, since it will cause problems later on.
Installing ZFS-Utils
sudo apt install zfsutils-linux -y
Create the encryption key
echo 'SomeKeyphrase' > /etc/zfs/zroot.key
chmod 000 /etc/zfs/zroot.key
For Non-Mirrored Setups
sudo zpool create -o ashift=12 -O compression=zstd -O acltype=posixacl -O xattr=sa -O atime=off -O encryption=on -O keylocation=file:///etc/zfs/zroot.key -O keyformat=passphrase -o autotrim=on -m none zroot /dev/disk/by-id/nvme-SAMSUNG_MZQL21T9HCJR-00A07_XXXXXXX-part2
For Mirrored Setups
zpool create -o ashift=12 -O compression=zstd -O acltype=posixacl -O xattr=sa -O atime=off -O encryption=on -O keylocation=file:///etc/zfs/zroot.key -O keyformat=passphrase -o autotrim=on -m none zroot mirror /dev/disk/by-id/nvme-SAMSUNG_MZQL21T9HCJR-00A07_XXXXXXX-part2 /dev/disk/by-id/nvme-SAMSUNG_MZQL21T9HCJR-00A07_YYYYYYY-part2
Notes
We use slightly different options than the official guide. Most notably, atime is disabled as it has detrimental effect on performance and unnecessarily increases write operations. compression is changed from lz4 to zstd as it has much better compression ratio than lz4 while still maintaining good performance. We did not specify the encryption type here as aes-256-gcm is already the default with openZFS >= 0.8.4.
Creating the filesystems
zfs create -o mountpoint=none zroot/ROOT
zfs create -o mountpoint=/ -o canmount=noauto zroot/ROOT/ubuntu
zfs create -o mountpoint=/home zroot/home
zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/log zroot/ROOT/ubuntu/log
zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/spool zroot/ROOT/ubuntu/spool
zfs create -o mountpoint=/var/cache zroot/ROOT/ubuntu/cache
zpool set bootfs=zroot/ROOT/ubuntu zroot
Here, we deviate from the official guide by splitting out /var/log, /var/spool, /var/cache out into their own datasets. These are directories which are parts of Ubuntu that we do not want to be rolled back along with the system in case we need to boot into a prior snapshot.
If you plan to dual boot with a different system and have shared directory dataset, then you need to make sure that dataset is not under zroot/ROOT. zroot/home is an example of this.
Mounting the filesystem
zpool export zroot
zpool import -N -R /mnt zroot
zfs load-key -L prompt zroot
zfs mount zroot/ROOT/ubuntu
zfs mount zroot/ROOT/ubuntu/log
zfs mount zroot/ROOT/ubuntu/cache
zfs mount zroot/ROOT/ubuntu/spool
zfs mount zroot/home
Update device symlink
udevadm trigger
Install Ubuntu
We will deviate from the ZFSBootMenu's documentation here, as it only installs a minimal system with SysVinit. Instead, we can install ubuntu-server-minimal.
Bootstrapping
zgenhostid -f 0x00bab10c
apt install -y debootstrap
debootstrap jammy /mnt
Copy files into the new install
cp /etc/hostid /mnt/etc/hostid
cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/
mkdir /mnt/etc/zfs
cp /etc/zfs/zroot.key /mnt/etc/zfs
Chroot into the new OS
mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/sys
mount -B /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t devpts pts /mnt/dev/pts
chroot /mnt /bin/bash
Setup the repositories
cat <<EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list
# Uncomment the deb-src entries if you need source packages
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ jammy partner
EOF
Install the necessary packages
apt update
apt install --no-install-recommends linux-generic ubuntu-server-minimal
ZFS Configuration
Install required packages
apt install dosfstools zfs-initramfs zfsutils-linux
Enable systemd ZFS services
systemctl enable zfs.target
systemctl enable zfs-import-cache
systemctl enable zfs-mount
systemctl enable zfs-import.target
Configure initramfs-tools
echo "UMASK=0077" > /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/umask.conf
Rebuild the initramfs
update-initramfs -c -k all
Install and configure ZFSBootMenu
Setup the EFI partition
zfs set org.zfsbootmenu:commandline="quiet loglevel=4" zroot/ROOT
zfs set org.zfsbootmenu:keysource="zroot/ROOT/ubuntu" zroot
cat << EOF >> /etc/fstab
$( blkid | grep /dev/md0 | cut -d ' ' -f 2 ) /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 0
EOF
mkdir -p /boot/efi
mount /boot/efi
Install ZFSBootMenu
To use it without remote unlocking, just follow the official guide:
apt install curl -y
mkdir -p /boot/efi/EFI/ZBM
curl -o /boot/efi/EFI/ZBM/VMLINUZ.EFI -L https://get.zfsbootmenu.org/efi
cp /boot/efi/EFI/ZBM/VMLINUZ.EFI /boot/efi/EFI/ZBM/VMLINUZ-BACKUP.EFI
To use it with remote unlocking, you have to compile the package:
git clone https://github.com/dracut-crypt-ssh/dracut-crypt-ssh
apt install -y blah blah blah dependency here I forgot
some build command here
echo 'omit_dracutmodules+=" crypt-ssh "' >> /etc/dracut-config-location-idk
mkdir -p /etc/dropbear
ssh-keygen -t rsa -m PEM -f /etc/dropbear/ssh_host_rsa_key
ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -m PEM -f /etc/dropbear/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
mkdir -p /etc/cmdline.d
echo "ip=dhcp rd.neednet=1" > /etc/cmdline.d/dracut-network.conf
cat <<EOF > /etc/zfsbootmenu/dracut.conf.d/dropbear.conf
# Enable dropbear ssh server and pull in network configuration args
add_dracutmodules+=" crypt-ssh "
install_optional_items+=" /etc/cmdline.d/dracut-network.conf "
# Copy system keys for consistent access
dropbear_rsa_key=/etc/dropbear/ssh_host_rsa_key
dropbear_ecdsa_key=/etc/dropbear/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
# User zbmuser is the authorized unlocker here
dropbear_acl=/home/zbmuser/.ssh/authorized_keys
EOF
Configure EFI boot entries
apt install efibootmgr -y
efibootmgr -c -d "/dev/nvme0n1" -p 1 \
-L "ZFSBootMenu" \
-l \\EFI\\ZBM\\VMLINUZ.EFI
efibootmgr -c -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1 \
-L "ZFSBootMenu (Backup)" \
-l \\EFI\\ZBM\\VMLINUZ-BACKUP.EFI
### Skip this section if you are not doing mirroring
efibootmgr -c -d "/dev/nvme0n2" -p 1 \
-L "ZFSBootMenu 2" \
-l \\EFI\\ZBM\\VMLINUZ.EFI
efibootmgr -c -d /dev/nvme0n2 -p 1 \
-L "ZFSBootMenu 2 (Backup)" \
-l \\EFI\\ZBM\\VMLINUZ-BACKUP.EFI
Exit the environment
exit
umount -n -R /mnt
zpool export zroot
reboot