Install Debian

non graphical, SSH and basic tools only

apt-get install nano sudo nfs samba-common

usermod -aG sudo [your-username]

switch to username all commands thereafter use sudo when needed

add contrib sources (why?)

sudo sed -r -i'.BAK' 's/^deb(.*)$/deb\1 contrib/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

update to all backports - crazy or what! (this was to get kernel 6.8)

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -t bookworm-backports

install latest ZFS (this is how openzfs docs say to do it)

add

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib

to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bookworm-backports.list

add

Package: src:zfs-linux
Pin: release n=bookworm-backports
Pin-Priority: 990

to /etc/apt/preferences.d/90_zfs

apt update
apt install dpkg-dev linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic
apt install zfs-dkms zfsutils-linux

Install cockpit.

apt install -t bookwork-backports cockpit

Install poolsman (only way to try poolsman is to pay $50 - not sure if it is worth it)

copy poolsman folder to /usr/share/cockpit/

Install 45 drives

install debs, but if they favor ubuntu maybe one should do ubuntu LTS as it has kernel 6.8?

i stopped here as while the debs install one needs to use -t bookworm-backports to satisfy dependencies assumed to be there because of ubutu - plus for ui installed elements there is no way to do this - may need to switch to ubuntu 24.04 server.... but thats unsupported by 45 drives - yay normal effing OSS mess