First, make sure your system is up-to-date and restarted. This prevents compilation issues later on.

Then, add the contrib section to your apt sources configuration. It should look similar to this:

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 12.5.0 _Bookworm_ - Official amd64 DVD Binary-1 with firmware 20240210-11:28]/ bookworm contrib main non-free-firmware

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware contrib
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main non-free-firmware contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main non-free-firmware contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main non-free-firmware contrib

# bookworm-updates, to get updates before a point release is made;
# see https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html#_updates_and_backports
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware contrib
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware contrib

Then, add the backports repo, update apt and install the required packages. As root:

codename=$(lsb_release -cs);echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian $codename-backports main contrib non-free" | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
apt update
apt install linux-headers-amd64
apt install -t stable-backports zfsutils-linux

To figure out what physical devices are available, you can use the lsblk command.

Creating a pool that simply appends all disks, without redundancy:

zpool create tank /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

If a filesystem is already detected on the disks, use the -f parameter to force creation.

To easily identify devices later on, instead of adding them as /dev/sdX, add them with their serial number identifier instead, e.g. /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD40EFRX-68MYMN1_WD-WX11D6572HSCP. This will help identify the disk in e.g. zpool status. If you didn't do this, you can still identify disks by using:

lsblk -o name,model,serial

zpool list

zpool status -v

zfs destroy tank/storage

zpool destroy tank

zfs list -t snapshot 

zfs snapshot tank/data@snapshotname

Ideally, do this in a screen or tmux session to avoid unexpected interruptions, as this might take a while.

You can transfer a snapshot via SSH:

zfs send tank/data@initial | ssh remotehost zfs recv -F tanker/data

Or via nc:

# On the sending server:
zfs send storage-master/storage@backup-2024-04-12 | nc server5.nexus.home.arpa 7777
# On the receiving server:
nc -l -p 7777 | zfs recv -F tank/storage

Apparently, when using nc, the pipe may not close automatically when the sending process is done. When there is no longer any throughput, kill the sending and receiving nc processes.

If you have pv installed, it's ideal for showing progress:

# On the sending server:
zfs send storage-master/storage@backup-2024-04-12 | pv | nc server5.nexus.home.arpa 7777
# On the receiving server:
nc -l -p 7777 | pv | zfs recv -F tank/storage

If the source dataset is encrypted, you might want to send it in its encrypted form using the raw parameter:

zfs send --raw storage-master/storage@backup-2024-04-12 | pv | nc server5.nexus.home.arpa 7777

If you want to send the difference between two snapshots, you can do so as follows:

zfs send -i tank/storage@snap1 tank/storage@snap2 | zfs recv tank/storage

This also works with the –raw option if needed.

• https://wiki.debian.org/ZFS
• https://www.reddit.com/r/zfs/comments/rw20dc/encrypted_remote_backups/
• https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18752_01/html/819-5461/docinfo.html