Is it possible to build a ZFS Raspberry Pi 3B/3B+/4 image? with other questions.

[Bernd Walter]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 08:10:43AM -0700, John Kennedy wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 07:58:37PM +0900, ro Ze wrote:
> > Hi everyone, it is my first FreeBSD post. I am using FreeBSD 12.1-RC2 RPI3
> > image in my Raspberry Pi 3B+. ...
> > 
> > I have a few experience on FreeNAS and I know the two system are not the
> > same. On FreeNAS, there is a tool named iocage which is a FreeBSD Jail
> > manager. Using the iocage, I am allowed to pass a dedicated network
> > interface to the Jail via the vnet feature which is default supported in
> > FreeBSD 12.0. With that feature, I have a idea of using FreeBSD Jail in my
> > Raspberry Pi and I start to do this.
> 
>   FYI, the only jails I use on my RPI is for poudriere.  It's a very memory
> constrained platform, obviously.
> 
> > Before flashing the image to SD card, I had downloaded x86 DVD and
> > installed as a VM to learn the basic command in FreeBSD. Since the
> > installation process allowed me to use ZFS as the root file system, I only
> > had few trouble in installing the iocage and using the Jail with vnet.
> > However, I found that the root file system of FreeBSD RPI3 image is UFS,
> > which is not supported by iocage. This means that I will have to use
> > another storage device to create a new zpool for iocage.
> > 
> > Since Raspberry Pi doesn't have native SATA port and all it's USB ports are
> > come from USB Hub, I believe that using iocage inside the USB will have a
> > huge performance drop. However, to try the feature, I adopt this situation,
> > create a USB zpool for iocage. I have build a zpool for Jail storage in
> > another USB stick in my FreeNAS and I am now import the pool to my
> > Raspberry Pi, and mount to the Jail.
> 
>   I've het to find a good enough SD card that I thought it IO-overpowered my
> USB-attached drive, probably made worse by throwing ZFS on top of it with
> my workloads (I'm specifically thinking about available RAM for disk cache).

SanDisk extreme cards work perfect for me.
I use them for ZFS root in a mirrored setup, one card in slot and if the
board has no second uSD slot, then I use an SD reader.
1GB RAM works fine for that.
Compiling llvm is my RAM issue these days, even on 2GB boards a buildworld
is problematic.
I really like to have a system with more memory, just to compile.
I've just ordered some RockPro64-4GB for that reason.
Unfortunately AFAIK we don't support the RPI4 yet.
I'm open for other suggestions on affordable boards with 4-8GB RAM.
So far I have an iMX6 system with 4GB, but havn't tried FreeBSD on it yet
and it is 32bit.

-- 
B.Walter <bernd at bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de
Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.