Help & Links

Community

• Discord Chat with other kldload users and contributors. Ask questions, share builds, report bugs.
• GitHub Source code, issue tracker, pull requests, and release downloads.
• Website Documentation, tutorials, masterclasses, and the download page.

Documentation

• PDF Documentation 3,273 pages The complete kldload reference in a single downloadable PDF. Covers installation, all CLI tools, ZFS, WireGuard, eBPF, networking, security, and every profile.
• Masterclass Collection Deep-dive guides on ZFS, WireGuard, eBPF, Cilium, nftables, BGP, TLS/PKI, FIPS, Packer, Kubernetes, and more.
• First-Class Infrastructure The manifesto. Why ZFS, WireGuard, and eBPF form the foundation of a modern platform, and how kldload ties them together.
• Construction Kit How to compose kldload's building blocks into custom infrastructure: profiles, postinstallers, golden images, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Glossary 150+ definitions covering every term used across the site — ZFS, WireGuard, eBPF, networking, storage, security, and operations.

Upstream Projects

• OpenZFS The open-source ZFS implementation for Linux and FreeBSD. Copy-on-write filesystem with built-in snapshots, compression, encryption, and RAID.
• WireGuard A modern, minimal VPN protocol built into the Linux kernel. Fast, simple, and cryptographically sound.
• eBPF A technology for running sandboxed programs in the Linux kernel. Powers networking, observability, and security without kernel modules.
• Cilium eBPF-based networking, observability, and security for Kubernetes and other container platforms.
• Linux Kernel The kernel that runs everything. kldload supports kernel 5.14+ (CentOS 9) through 6.x (Fedora, Arch).
• Prometheus An open-source monitoring system with a dimensional data model, PromQL query language, and alerting.
• Grafana The standard open-source platform for monitoring dashboards and data visualization.
• HAProxy A high-performance TCP/HTTP load balancer used for Layer 4 and Layer 7 traffic distribution.
• Vault HashiCorp's secrets management tool for storing, accessing, and distributing secrets, encryption keys, and certificates.
• FRRouting A free routing suite supporting BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, and more. Alternative to BIRD for complex routing deployments.
• BIRD An open-source routing daemon for BGP and OSPF. Used by kldload for dynamic routing over WireGuard meshes.
• Ollama Run large language models locally. Powers the kai AI assistant and Bob AI appliance in kldload.
• Podman A daemonless, rootless container runtime. Docker-compatible CLI with better security defaults.
• containerd An industry-standard container runtime used by Kubernetes, Docker, and other orchestrators.
• step-ca An open-source online Certificate Authority for automated, short-lived TLS certificate issuance.
• Packer HashiCorp's tool for building machine images from a single source configuration across multiple platforms.
• Terraform HashiCorp's Infrastructure as Code tool for provisioning and managing cloud and on-premise infrastructure.

Linux Distributions

Distributions supported by kldload for ZFS-on-root installation. All except Arch and Alpine install fully offline using baked-in darksites.

• CentOS Stream 9 The live ISO environment and default target. Continuously delivered ahead of RHEL. Kernel 5.14+.
• Debian 13 (Trixie) The universal operating system. Stable, community-driven, with the largest package archive. Installed via debootstrap.
• Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat) Long-term support release with 5 years of updates. Installed via debootstrap with universe enabled for ZFS packages.
• Fedora 41 The leading-edge RPM distribution. Ships the latest kernel, GNOME, and userland. Installed via dnf.
• RHEL 9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The enterprise standard with 10-year support. Requires a subscription for package access.
• Rocky Linux 9 A community-driven, bug-for-bug compatible rebuild of RHEL. Drop-in replacement for CentOS Linux.
• Arch Linux A rolling-release distribution. Requires internet (no darksite possible). Installed via pacstrap.
• Alpine Linux WIP A security-oriented, lightweight distribution using musl libc and busybox. Work in progress for kldload support.
• FreeBSD new in 1.0.3 A Unix operating system with native ZFS support. Added in kldload 1.0.3 with bhyve hypervisor and jail support.

Books & Reading

• Site Reliability Engineering (Google SRE Book) free online The foundational text on SRE practices: error budgets, SLOs, toil reduction, incident response, and automation at scale.
• The Site Reliability Workbook free online Practical companion to the SRE book. Worked examples of SLO implementation, alerting, and on-call practices.
• OpenZFS Documentation Official OpenZFS docs covering administration, man pages, module parameters, and developer resources.
• FreeBSD Handbook — ZFS Chapter Comprehensive ZFS guide from the FreeBSD project. Excellent even for Linux ZFS users — the concepts are identical.
• Michael W. Lucas — FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS The best printed book on ZFS. Covers pool design, snapshots, replication, performance tuning, and troubleshooting in clear, practical language.

Conferences & Meetings

• OpenZFS Developer Summit Annual conference for ZFS developers and power users. Talks on new features, performance work, and production war stories.
• OpenZFS Call for Testing Community testing campaigns for upcoming OpenZFS releases. Help validate new features before they ship.
• OpenZFS Production Meetings Biweekly meetings where operators share production ZFS experiences, issues, and solutions.
• BSDCan The premier BSD conference held annually in Ottawa. Covers FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, ZFS, and systems programming.
• FOSDEM The largest free and open-source software conference in Europe, held annually in Brussels. Devrooms for storage, networking, virtualization, and more.