The checks below were collected on disposable DigitalOcean infrastructure on 2026-09-07 UTC. Native ARM64 and subsequent amd64 acceptance runs are listed in the validation index.
| Test | Configuration | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Unattended preservation | Ubuntu 22.04 amd64, BIOS, 512 MiB / 10 GiB Droplet | Passed conversion, ZFSBootMenu boot, all fixtures, and another reboot |
| Fresh install with priority restore | Ubuntu 22.04 amd64, BIOS, 512 MiB / 10 GiB Droplet, 55% used | Passed unattended --erase, accounts/SSH/configuration and bounded complete-file restore, then another reboot |
| Unattended preservation | Ubuntu 24.04 amd64, BIOS, 1 GiB / 25 GiB Droplet | Passed complete recorded conversion, RAM SSH access, preserved hashes, ZFS boot, and initial snapshot |
| Root archive backup and restore | Ubuntu 24.04, 1 GiB, 61% used; separate DigitalOcean SFTP server | Passed recorded interactive rclone configuration, offline upload, full read-back verification, restore, ZFS boot, hashes and hard links |
| UEFI root preservation | Ubuntu 24.04, 1 GiB / 20 GiB KVM guest hosted on a DigitalOcean Droplet, OVMF | Completed preservation and booted from its ZFSBootMenu EFI entry; / and /boot on ZFS, ESP mounted at /boot/efi |
| Boot-disk resize | Converted Ubuntu 24.04 Droplet, 25 → 50 GiB | Next boot expanded partition and rpool automatically; no guest growth command; fixture hashes passed |
| Data-volume preservation | Whole-device ext4, 2 GiB DigitalOcean Volume | Converted in place; hashes, hard links, sparse allocation, ACLs and xattrs passed |
| Data-volume resize | Converted data volume, 2 → 3 GiB | Boot service expanded partition/pool; files passed |
| Data-volume rclone backup | More than half-full 1 GiB ext4 Volume; rclone SFTP transport | Backup read-back, ZFS conversion, restore, hashes, ACLs and xattrs passed |
| Empty data-volume initialization | Blank 1 GiB DigitalOcean Volume | Explicit --erase created an empty ZFS filesystem with automatic growth configured |
| Snapshot recovery | Deliberately removed original /sbin/init; booted a clone of a prior snapshot |
ZFSBootMenu booted the recovery clone, files passed; repaired and returned to original environment |
| Snapshot retention | Created 16 APT snapshots plus a manual snapshot | Kept 14 automatic snapshots, preserved manual snapshot; daily timer enabled |
| APT snapshot hook | Reinstalled the Ubuntu hostname package |
Actual APT/dpkg operation automatically created a new root snapshot |
The clean 512 MiB preservation run used installer SHA-256
4b69c86355d5afc3081c80edb0c4e64ef572bad85660185d4200555ec8fc0bd2.
Each run records its own installer checksum; coverage applies to the identified
configuration and scenario.
The clean 512 MiB erase run used installer SHA-256
d485da9968b0db2237211c371cabdaf73db19cbf195af7eebf10b757fb394c81.
Root resize evidence records the actual kernel-visible disk size changing to 53,687,091,200 bytes and the pool growing to 52,613,349,376 bytes. The firmware partition is 512 MiB. ZFS owns the remaining partition, with its normal overhead.
The recovery test used the actual ZFSBootMenu boot path, with the recovery clone selected through the pool’s bootfs property before reboot. It proved that an older environment with its own init, kernel and modules can boot independently of the damaged default environment. DigitalOcean’s actual browser Recovery Console was also used to open the boot-environment and snapshot menus; see the console screenshots. Those captures do not establish a complete interactive clone-and-boot recovery run.
The SFTP archive test used rclone’s SFTP server on the same DigitalOcean test host, with the destination on a separate Volume and a localhost-only endpoint. It exercises rclone’s transport, configuration, streaming, read-back and restore, not S3-specific permissions or every rclone backend.
The rescue environment uses compressed SquashFS in RAM. On 512 MiB systems it bounds ARC and dirty writes and reclaims clean caches under memory pressure. A fresh-install copy reads the immutable image so SSH/PAM activity cannot change its source. GRUB removal runs noninteractively and restricts package removal to the boot stack. UEFI chroot cleanup recursively unmounts EFI-variable submounts.
The UEFI run used installer SHA-256
7a7a193846b57658cc88f354c28f877ebbfc52f92b25f1de1c26b6ef44e40fc6.
This is a nested VM on DigitalOcean infrastructure, not a provider-native UEFI
Droplet or evidence for another cloud provider. Cloud-init scheduling and the
advanced multi-disk helpers have not been separately validated end to end.
Machine-specific rescue images, backup archives, SSH private keys, rclone credentials, and unreviewed logs are not publication artifacts.