So I finally managed to get FreeBSD 8.1 root on ZFS done. There is a very helpful script called 'mfsBSD" from http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/ that will do all the work for you - I know, the lazy way, but so far manual way may or may not work.
mfsBSD is a small memory/liveCD FreeBSD install that you can use to install FreeBSD root on ZFS. To install it, go right ahead and download the '8.1-RELEASE-zfsv15-amd64 special edition' ISO image and load it up on a spare computer or VirtualBox VM. Once it's loaded, run the following command:
[bash]mount_cd9660 /dev/acd0 /cdrom[/bash]
If you get any errors concerning 'ata timeouts', make sure that your CD drive is set as a secondary slave. Once the DVD mounts, run the following to install FreeBSD/ZFS:
[bash]zfsinstall -d /dev/ad0 -t /cdrom/8.1-RELEASE-amd64.tar.xz -s 4G -V 15[/bash]
Where '-s 4G' is your swap space amount. This should take few minutes and once that's done, you'll have a working FreeBSD root on ZFS install without spending countless hours to get this rolling.
Once you reboot, you might get some IRQ19 errors on VirtualBox - those can be easily squashed by changing "OS Type" in VirtualBox to "Other".
So far I have not encountered any issues with ZFS on FreeBSD, but mind you, it is not as up-to-date as the ZFS version 22 on OpenSolaris b134. You will probably run into some issues, but it is worth a try now that OpenSolaris was shut down by Oracle (Though Illumos is gaining more and more momentum now that Oracle killed OSOL). I kinda need a good, working NAS/SAN solution :\
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