OpenZFS has released version 2.4.1, a maintenance update two months after the 2.4 version. The new release adds compatibility for Linux kernel 6.19 and improves support for FreeBSD. It includes numerous fixes for stability, builds, and performance across platforms.
OpenZFS, an open-source file system and volume manager known for features like snapshots, checksums, and replication, announced version 2.4.1 on February 25, 2026. This marks the first maintenance release in the 2.4 series, following the initial 2.4 version by two months.
The update extends support to Linux kernels ranging from 4.18 to 6.19. It addresses compatibility issues with Linux 6.19, including fixes for in-tree builds, duplicate GCM assembly functions, inode state handling, and stricter --werror configurations. Builds on Linux 6.18 for PowerPC and RISC-V kernels have also been ensured to succeed.
Key stability improvements include corrections to available space accounting for special and dedup vdevs, raw send permission handling for the zfs send -w -I command, large block feature activation during receive operations, and issues with activating large_microzap. History logging for zpool create -t has been fixed as well.
Performance enhancements feature increased ARC eviction batching to boost parallelism, improved dbuf prefetch caching, reduced minimal scrub and resilver times, and better async destroy processing timing. Deduplication table handling benefits from multiple locking and interface improvements, such as the addition of _by_dnode() ZAP interfaces and fixes for compressed entry buffer sizing. Logging searches have been relocated outside of locks to lessen contention.
Tooling updates introduce a new -O option for zdb's -r command to specify an object ID, allow zfs clone to accept -u for unmounted datasets, and add an idle subcommand and -G option for debug buffer dumping in zhack. The ZFS Test Suite has seen updates to regressions and test cases.
FreeBSD-specific changes fix thread-unsafe debug code causing double-free panics, remove obsolete DEBUG_VFS_LOCKS references, restore i386 compilation, and correct --enable-invariants builds. Linux refinements include memory allocation flags in kmem and SPL cleanups removing obsolete code paths. Shell scripts have undergone cleanups for bashism removal, shellcheck compliance, safer variable scoping, and documentation updates on initrd configuration and filesystem mounting.
The release was covered by Bobby Borisov, editor-in-chief at Linuxiac.
