Run Omarchy on a ZFS root.
A native Arch package that makes Omarchy (Quattro, 4.x or later) ZFS-safe: snapshots before every update, rollback from the boot menu with ZFSBootMenu, whole-pool native encryption — no LVM.
Fresh machine
Download the ISO (beta)The official Omarchy Quattro installer plus a root-on-ZFS path. Boots and installs fully offline.
Already on Omarchy with a ZFS root
yay -S omarchy-zfsFor manual root-on-ZFS installs: one package, and the pacman hooks take over from there. Requires Omarchy Quattro (4.x) or later. AUR page.
Why ZFS?
Omarchy is opinionated, and that's exactly why it's good — btrfs with snapper is a solid default that serves most people well. But a few of us have a storage world that already runs on ZFS: a TrueNAS box in the closet, ZFS backup targets, encrypted replicas offsite. For that (admittedly niche) crowd, the laptop is the odd one out — this project brings it into the fold.
Native encryption
Encryption is a dataset property, not a LUKS layer underneath the filesystem.
The whole pool is protected — /etc, /var, logs, credentials,
machine-id — and ZFSBootMenu prompts for the key at boot.
Backups that stay encrypted
zfs send --raw replicates snapshots without ever decrypting them.
Send to a TrueNAS box, S3, or a friend's server — the key never leaves your
machine, so where the backup lives stops mattering.
One toolset, laptop to NAS
The same snapshots, the same send | receive, the same scrubs on the
desktop as on TrueNAS. No translation layer between your workstation and the
rest of your storage.
Self-healing data
Every block is checksummed end to end. Corruption is caught on read and repaired
from redundancy — and the package ships a monthly zpool scrub timer, so
bitrot is found before you go looking for the file.
One pool, many disks
Start on a single NVMe, grow into mirrors or raidz when you outgrow it — the installer handles multi-disk topologies out of the box, with none of btrfs's RAID5/6 write-hole caveats.
Boot any snapshot
ZFSBootMenu shows snapshots and boot environments at boot. A bad update is a reboot away from undone — no live USB, no chroot.
What the package does
Stock Omarchy assumes btrfs: updates rewrite the initramfs config without the
zfs hook, snapper aborts on non-btrfs roots, and Limine can push itself ahead of
ZFSBootMenu in the EFI boot order. Each one ends in a system that won't boot or won't update.
omarchy-zfs fixes all three with pacman hooks that run on every transaction — everything is a
package-owned file, so omarchy update can't strip it.
| Capability | How |
|---|---|
| Snapshot before every update | PreTransaction hook with retention (omarchy-zfs-autosnap) |
| Boot-safe updates | PostTransaction hook re-asserts the zfs initramfs hook, regenerates initramfs + ZBM |
| Kernel-skew protection | Blocks kernel upgrades the installed ZFS module can't build against |
| EFI boot-order guard | Keeps ZFSBootMenu first; never deletes other entries |
| Snapper cleanup | Removes btrfs-only snapper configs that abort omarchy update on ZFS |
| Pool health | Monthly zpool scrub timer |
| Hibernation | Suspend-to-disk on a zvol swap |
| Fresh installs & recovery | omarchy-bootstrap-zfs: pool, datasets, encryption, ZBM — from the ISO or any live environment |
FAQ
Is this a fork of Omarchy?
No. It's a package that depends on stock Omarchy (Quattro+). You keep normal
omarchy update; this package keeps it ZFS-safe.
Which Omarchy versions are supported?
Omarchy Quattro (4.x) and later — the releases served entirely from Arch packages, which is what makes a clean support layer possible. Earlier Omarchy versions used a different install model and aren't supported.
Which ZFS packages does it work with?
Any provider of zfs/zfs-utils: zfs-dkms,
zfs-dkms-git, zfs-linux, or zfs-linux-lts. The kernel
guard stops upgrades your ZFS module can't follow.
What happens to snapper and Limine?
They stay installed (Omarchy depends on them) but inert: stale snapper configs are cleaned, related timers are masked, and the boot-order guard keeps ZFSBootMenu first. A real btrfs pool on a second disk keeps working snapper coverage.
How do I roll back a bad update?
Reboot, pick the pre-upgrade snapshot in ZFSBootMenu, boot it. Promote it with
omarchy-zfs-snapshot restore.
Heads up: the AUR "omarchy" package
The AUR package named omarchy is an unrelated third-party placeholder.
The real dependency is the official package from pkgs.omarchy.org, already on
every Omarchy system. Don't build the placeholder.