[greenhouse_gas]

There is (at least on Debian) - enable contrib and use apt.

The problem is that neither your install or recover CD won't have it enabled by default, so if you have a problem, your hard-drive won't mount.

[exikyut]

So extend the script to build you a recovery ISO or USB image too, and then insist that you reboot and test the recovery image.

[e12e]

For those interested, it appears the current generation of "running system to live image" is:

https://github.com/Tomas-M/linux-live

While the current generation of "make me a magic shiny debian image" is:

https://github.com/larswirzenius/vmdb2/

(I went looking for some tool I've used in the past, which may, or may not, have been "live-build").

In general though, just pulling down a dkms zfs module into any working recovery image via apt should work.

But not if you don't have net access [ed: or a lan apt mirror..].

[boomboomsubban]

Or install ZFS from your live recovery instance and load the mod. Not a big problem.