This time, the goal is more ambitious: build a proper four-disk NAS where both the operating system and user data live on a single ZFS RAIDZ2 pool, while still being able to boot the machine after losing one or even two physical disks.

I also wanted to avoid a dedicated boot SSD.

Keeping Samba and its management interface in the same system container gives Cockpit direct access to the Unix users, groups, Samba password database, and service it manages. It avoids synchronizing /etc/passwd, smb.conf, or passdb.tdb between application containers.

• TCP 80 and 443 for HTTPS and Let’s Encrypt;
• UDP 51820 for WireGuard;
• WireGuard UI and the Traefik dashboard are available only over HTTPS.

This setup does not require a separate router or port forwarding. The virtual machine must have a public IP address, and its cloud firewall must allow incoming TCP 80, TCP 443, and UDP 51820 traffic.

Sometimes you need to verify an ext4 filesystem, but the filesystem is mounted and cannot safely be repaired online. This is especially common when the filesystem is the root filesystem, such as /dev/md0 mounted as /.

Running fsck directly on a mounted filesystem is not a safe way to repair it:

sudo fsck -n -f /dev/md0

The -n option makes it read-only, so it will not fix anything. Also, because the filesystem is mounted, the result may be noisy or misleading. For a real repair check, fsck must run before the filesystem is mounted, usually during boot.

uname -m
x86_64

Let’s try run image with arm64. We’ve got an error

docker run --rm -t arm64v8/ubuntu uname -m
WARNING: The requested image's platform (linux/arm64/v8) does not match the detected host platform (linux/amd64/v3) and no specific platform was requested 
exec /usr/bin/uname: exec format error

Install the qemu packages

Tested on: Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute), x86_64, UEFI

This guide installs a minimal Ubuntu system directly on ZFS. It supports three root-pool layouts:

The installation flow is the same for every layout. Only the zpool create command changes.

The procedure follows the official ZFSBootMenu Ubuntu UEFI guide, adapted for redundant pools and an EFI System Partition (ESP) on every disk.

It doesn’t work on Wayland, only on Xorg

Install devilspie2 an create test config for Mozilla Firefox

sudo apt install devilspie2
mkdir -pv ~/.config/devilspie2

cat <<EOF > /home/goto/.config/devilspie2/firefox.lua
if (string.match(get_window_name(), "Mozilla Firefox")) then
    stick_window();
--  maximize();
end
EOF

devilspie2 --debug

Mozilla Firefox should open in maximize and be visible on all workspaces

All of users’ systemd have to place in directory ~/.config/systemd/user/

If you want start user systemd unit when user login, run:

systemctl --user enable <service>

List of available types of systemd units:

systemctl -t help
Available unit types:
service
mount
swap
socket
target
device
automount
timer
path
slice
scope

Create user systemd file to make ssh connection:

Ubuntu 22.04 on all nodes

• Ceph on single host
• Ceph on isolated environment

Let’s prepare our network environment to deploy Ceph without the Internet

We need to create 6 nodes:

• 3 for ceph installation (ceph1, ceph2, ceph3)
• 1 for apt repository (aptly)
• 1 for docker registry (harbor)
• 1 for dns server (infra)

Also we need set up 3 networks:

• Ceph Internal to connect only ceph nodes to each other
• Internal to connect ceph, aptly and harbor nodes
• vLan to connect aptly and harbor nodes to the internet

And we need a dns server to resolve names connected with ip pools:

Tested on: Ubuntu 22.04

Install Aptly

Official instruction here:

echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/aptly.asc] http://repo.aptly.info/ squeeze main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/aptly.list
sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings; sudo chmod 755 /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/keyrings/aptly.asc https://www.aptly.info/pubkey.txt
sudo apt update && sudo apt install aptly

Create aptly config:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/aptly.conf
{
  "rootDir": "/opt/aptly",
  "downloadConcurrency": 4,
  "downloadSpeedLimit": 0,
  "architectures": ["amd64"],
  "dependencyFollowSuggests": false,
  "dependencyFollowRecommends": false,
  "dependencyFollowAllVariants": false,
  "dependencyFollowSource": false,
  "dependencyVerboseResolve": false,
  "gpgDisableSign": false,
  "gpgDisableVerify": false,
  "gpgProvider": "gpg",
  "downloadSourcePackages": true,
  "skipLegacyPool": true,
  "ppaDistributorID": "ubuntu",
  "ppaCodename": "",
  "FileSystemPublishEndpoints": {
    "on-premises-repos": {
      "rootDir": "/var/www/aptly",
      "linkMethod": "symlink",
      "verifyMethod": "md5"
    }
  },
  "enableMetricsEndpoint": false
}
EOF

Prepare repos

Create 3 repos: k8s, ceph and shared for ubuntu jammy: