Abstract
On Alpine Linux, to allow Incus/Lxc to create VM’s when using ZFS storage make sure to add the followiong packages:
apk add udev zfs-udev
I prefer Alpine Linux, particularly for containers.
Installation of most packages is straightforward, including ZFS, simply follow the installation guide.
When using ZFS that guide fails to mention that Alpine Linux install does not include udev.
And what that means in practice is that Incus (or Lxc) VM’s cannot be created, attempts to do so will result in this error:
$ incus init images:alpine/3.20 c1 --storage incus --vm
Error: Failed instance creation: Failed creating instance from image: Failed to activate volume: Failed to locate zvol for "pool/incus/images/b03a945c38882d84b73dc12609422e70eda27c4e2e1afe783827da6014590274.block": context deadline exceeded
# the error from lxc
$ lxc init images:alpine/3.20 c1 --storage lxd --vm
Creating c1
Error: Failed instance creation: Failed creating instance from image: exec: "zvol_id": executable file not found in $PATHIn both cases the error points to missing zvol information.
From Stephane Graber:
Normally Incus relies on udev to automatically create the needed /dev/zvol entries. When that doesn’t happen, it can also use zvol_id as a fallback mechanism to try to figure out the right device.
Installing udev and zfs-udev solves this particlar problem.
$ sudo apk add zfs-udev udevReboot to enable the change - incus (and lxc) VM create should now be working.