Arch Linux User Repository

@eschwartz: I've uninstalled all 3 packages: spl-dkms, zfs-dkms and zfs-utils and then reinstalled zfs-dkms. It looks fine now.

That would do it, I guess.

The manpage for dkms install observes regarding dependencies that "Note that this directive is only advisory; missing or broken dependencies cause non-fatal warnings."

The pacman hook implements its own sort ordering by checking dkms status for dependencies, and will fail if dependencies are missing, which is unlike the default dkms behavior.

Thank you kindly for the advice Eli, it resolved my issue! I had an old version of spl-dkms kicking around for some reason, after I manually removed it with

dkms remove spl/0.7.9 --all

then the pacman install worked perfectly as usual! I have no idea how that went wrong, it looks like dkms gets confused when there are multiple versions as you suspected. Thanks again!

ps. I also have no idea why that specific version of spl was left behind? Perhaps a failed upgrade earlier. I will leave this comment in case somebody else encounters an issue that they should check what dkms modules are available.

@karcher,

AUR helpers are notoriously unreliable when it comes to handling versioned dependencies. You will not be able to partially update the zfs packages; you need to build them without installing them, then install the whole set together... (EDIT: Or alternatively, uninstall zfs-dkms in order to allow its dependencies to be updated, then reinstall the new version of zfs-dkms.)

@vanja_z,

It is impossible for the zfs module to build if the spl module is not built, but if the spl module is built, then the pacman hook will work. I do know that it works for me... without being able to troubleshoot the internal state of dkms, I cannot say more.

However, it definitely has nothing to do with dkms-sorted.

So as far as I can tell, what you're saying is happening is... not impossible, but nearly so. I don't know why the pacman hook would not work, but dkms might work if it is incorrectly and dangerously building against an old built version of spl, as the zfs-dkms build system might be fooled into thinking that the old version is sufficient.

In general, reinstalling both spl-dkms and zfs-dkms will cause the hooks to trigger again, thereby doing a dkms install for first spl, then zfs -- which should work, as you're setting it up to rebuild from scratch.

Not sure what else to say.

Hi all,

I'm getting an error during the latest update:

...
:: 3 Packages to upgrade.
3  aur/spl-dkms   0.7.12-1 -> 0.7.13-1
2  aur/zfs-dkms   0.7.12-2 -> 0.7.13-1
1  aur/zfs-utils  0.7.12-1 -> 0.7.13-1

...
loading packages...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: installing spl-dkms (0.7.13-1) breaks dependency 'spl-dkms=0.7.12' required by zfs-dkms

Any ideas what's wrong?

I do understand that this is how the process is meant to work however it is not working on my system. My system is up to date and I have the matching version of spl-dkms (0.7.13). ZFS works fine after I manually dkms install the module. Does anybody have any ideas what could be going wrong or how to trouble shoot? Does this have something to do with the dkms-sorted package that used to exist?

That means that when dkms executed, the spl module, which is a dependency, did not yet exist for the desired kernel. This is usually impossible, as the pacman hook is supposed to respect dependency ordering to ensure spl is built first during a single transaction, and this package depends on a strictly versioned spl-dkms package.

I have been running zfs-dkms for many versions and something new has gone wrong. Installation fails with the following output:

(1/2) Install DKMS modules

==> Unable to install module zfs/0.7.13 for kernel 5.0.0-arch1-1-ARCH: Missing dependency.

If I manually install the dkms module it works,

dkms install zfs/0.7.13

...

DKMS: install completed.

Any ideas? I would like to avoid having to manually run dkms install for every kernel update.

Hey there, right now it is required to apply this patch to get it to compile 0.7.12 under kernel 4.20: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8227.diff

Here is a one-liner to apply the patch:

curl -sSL https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/8227.diff | sudo patch -p1 -d /usr/src/zfs-0.7.12 && sudo dkms autoinstall

@eschwartz: "Are you using some alternative packages that do not come from the AUR?" No.

I reinstalled spl-dkms, zfs-dkms and zfs-utils and then I could remove spl-utils. Thanks again!