If you see the above error in a fresh installation of ZFS on Ubuntu one cause may be that the package build-essentials wasn’t installed prior to installing the ubuntu-zfs package; run:
sudo apt-get purge ubuntu-zfs
then check for the remaining packages with the following:
dpkg –list | grep zfs
…and apt-get purge any remaining relevant ZFS packages.
Then:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
…then install ubuntu-zfs as you did originally:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-zfs
This time it should take properly. This isn’t the only cause of that error but on a fresh install with a new OS it’s one possibility.