debian zfs spl dkms build fails

["Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@pinyon.org>]

This has been happening for over 2 weeks now:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=877694

It has such cheerful effects as:

root@knuth> zpool status
The ZFS modules are not loaded.
Try running '/sbin/modprobe zfs' as root to load them.

The symptom displays via several ways like this:

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 0.6.5.11
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Unpacking zfs-dkms (0.6.5.11-1) over (0.6.5.11-1) ...
Setting up zfs-dkms (0.6.5.11-1) ...
Loading new zfs-0.6.5.11 DKMS files...
Building for 4.13.0-1-amd64
Building initial module for 4.13.0-1-amd64
configure: error:
        *** Please make sure the kmod spl devel <kernel> package for your
        *** distribution is installed then try again.  If that fails you
        *** can specify the location of the spl objects with the
        *** '--with-spl-obj=PATH' option.
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 4.13.0-1-amd64 (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/zfs/0.6.5.11/build/make.log for more information.



So what are we supposed to do?  The system is up, network accessible,
and I'm pulling a current in time backup.  Is there a linux distro that
isn't broken for zfsonlinux distro kernel updates?  Otherwise a complete
reinstall back to the dumb world of ext4, as I need a metal 8 core box
for comparative testing.

Thanks,
Russell