Is there an easy way to install the rc version and test it?

[crzp]

First of all,
thank you all for your work. Great job.

I was wondering if there is an easier way of testing the rc candidate, instead of building it from source?
For example a beta/testing repo that one could use?

Specifically we wanted to test zfs-2.4.0-rc1 on proxmox backup server.
We tried following the guide here: https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/Developer%20Resources/Custom%20Packages.html#debian-and-ubuntu

but there are a number of issues while building, and after we finished the how-to, zfs --version output is:

zfs --version
zfs-2.4.0-rc1
zfs-kmod-2.3.3-pve1

so, not sure how to fix that.

what we did:

apt install build-essential autoconf automake libtool gawk alien fakeroot dkms libblkid-dev uuid-dev libudev-dev libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libaio-dev libattr1-dev libelf-dev linux-headers-generic python3 python3-dev python3-setuptools python3-cffi libffi-dev python3-packaging debhelper-compat dh-python po-debconf python3-all-dev python3-sphinx libpam0g-dev
wget https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/download/zfs-2.4.0-rc1/zfs-2.4.0-rc1.tar.gz
tar -xzf zfs-2.4.0-rc1.tar.gz
cd zfs-2.4.0-rc1
apt-get install dh-dkms
./configure
make native-deb-utils
rm ../openzfs-zfs-dracut_*.deb
apt-get install --fix-missing ../*.deb

And that didn't work.

As we understood it, we can start from "Starting from openzfs-2.2 release, native deb-based DKMS and user packages can be built as follows:" in the documentation. Is this assumption correct?

Sure, i have no experience building stuff from source, so i don't know if it's a me issue, an outdated how-to in the docs, or a Proxmox related issue, or something completely different.
If anyone has insights in what might help, i'd appreciate that greatly.

Thank you for your time,
chris

[tonyhutter]

I would try:

./autogen.sh && ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-pyzfs --enable-debuginfo && make native-deb-kmod native-deb-utils

That is the way we build the deb packages for the CI testing. For reference:
https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/blob/master/.github/workflows/scripts/qemu-4-build-vm.sh#L288

[crzp]

@tonyhutter thank you for your help :)

unfortunately this didnt work for the proxmox backup server. i guess because of their own pve kernel?

but, we were able to get it running with a fresh debian13 VM.
For everyone who may land here, this is what we did:

# Install dependencies
apt install build-essential autoconf automake libtool gawk alien fakeroot dkms libblkid-dev uuid-dev libudev-dev libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libaio-dev libattr1-dev libelf-dev linux-headers-generic python3 python3-dev python3-setuptools python3-cffi libffi-dev python3-packaging debhelper-compat dh-python po-debconf python3-all-dev python3-sphinx libpam0g-dev libtirpc-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev dh-dkms

# download & extract the source
wget https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/download/zfs-2.4.0-rc1/zfs-2.4.0-rc1.tar.gz
tar -xzf zfs-2.4.0-rc1.tar.gz

# cd into the dir and run suggested build commands
cd zfs-2.4.0-rc1
./autogen.sh && ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-pyzfs --enable-debuginfo && make native-deb-kmod native-deb-utils

# install packages
apt-get -y install $(find ../ | grep -E '\.deb$' | grep -Ev 'dkms|dracut')

# without this, the zfs module would not load after reboot
echo "zfs" | tee /etc/modules-load.d/zfs.conf

For the documentation:
These packages were missing, which we discovered in several build tests:
libtirpc-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev dh-dkms
After installing them it worked great.

After that we added the PBS repository and installed PBS on top of debian:

# add PBS repo
echo -e "Types: deb\nURIs: http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pbs\nSuites: trixie\nComponents: pbs-no-subscription\nSigned-By: /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/proxmox.sources

# get proxmox keyring
wget https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-archive-keyring-trixie.gpg -O /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg

# only install the minimal version of PBS without their own kernel
apt update && apt install proxmox-backup-server

In the end zfs 2.4-rc1 was build and ready to be tested :)