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I have been having problems with KVM crashing, and the kernel crash dumps seem to point to a NIC problem, possibly a driver issue. However, before reporting, it has been recommended that I try using the latest mainline kernel as described here How to update kernel to the latest mainline version without any Distro-upgrade? :

I tried this, but of course it broke ZFS, so I had to reboot back into my old kernel. I can think of a few ways I might do this, but I don't know what the recommended way would be.

  1. Install zfs-dkms, reboot, then install the new kernel. I'm worried that switching to DKMS in my main kernel might leave me in an even more inconvenient postion.
  2. Use a testing version of zfsutils that works with the most recent kernel possible. I'm not sure who to ask. Trial and error seems like a lot of work.
  3. Make an alternative install that is as similar to my current install as possible: Install Ubuntu onto a bootable USB, build zfsutils from source in that environment, then install libvirt, NFS, and other packages I need to reproduce the crash. This seems like a fair amount of work for something that isn't an exact replication of my problem situation.
Stonecraft
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  • Suggest using the most recent Ubuntu versions of development kernels. There are [5.7 versions](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-5.7/), but it seems they have yet to have a successful build for a [5.8 version](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-5.8/). – Doug Smythies Jul 14 '20 at 21:04
  • But which version of ZFS should I use with 5.7 kernels? – Stonecraft Jul 14 '20 at 22:19
  • I don't know. My point was that I think you have to use Ubuntu kernels, because mainline doesn't know about ZFS. – Doug Smythies Jul 14 '20 at 22:48

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Using zfs-dkms should be fine. As the maintainer of ZFS I can't see why this should be a problem. Ensure zfs-dkms is removed if you revert back to an official Ubuntu supported kernel just so that you don't need to rebuild ZFS on kernel updates.

Colin Ian King
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