Yes. There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h:
Not much but still encouraging. This could mean that Apple is playing with ZFS and may support it as an external filesystem sometime in the future.
*** Wishful thinking **** However, Apple could intentionally removed from the developer's build the updated / unfinished utils and references to ZFS. *** /Wishful thinking ****
That seems like a change that would "break something", like someone's application, and would thus need to be to developers early so they can test it. Also, it won't draw cheers at a consumer event (more likely a string of "huh?"s)
That seems like a change that would "break something", like someone's application, and would thus need to be to developers early so they can test it.
Not at all. OS X's file system support is transparent and flexible. Most applications don't care abotu the underlying file system; they access things in an agnostic manner. The biggest problem is with case-sensitiveness: some file systems are, sadly, case-sensitive (including, I believe), whereas some Mac applications, especially those building on an older foundation, expect files to be case-insensitive, and thus sometimes access the wrong file (I am, once again, looking at you, ChizenCo).
Quote:
Also, it won't draw cheers at a consumer event (more likely a string of "huh?"s)
I don't think so. I think they may be using a very slick implementation of Subversion. For those of you who do not know, Subversion is a versioning software that keeps track of who changed what, and when (very simplified explanation of a very complex product).
Time Machine reeks of Subversion: which is a very good thing.
That's interesting. I think Time Machine looks like a nice front end for rsync. A hard drive-spanning subversion repository would be pretty cool though.l
Kickaha is correct that Time Machine uses hard links, but instead of rsync it uses the same filesystem notification mechanism spotlight uses to flag files as changed. The upside is that like spotlight your system will easily know which files have been changed without having to search the whole drive. The downside is that everytime a file is changed it will have to be copied in its entirety to the backup. For small files this is no biggie, but for larger files it kinda sucks. The other downside is that Time Machine runs by default at midnight, and copies changed files for that day. Time Machine won't help you if you made several changes to a file in one day, and want to revert to an earlier state. The only choice you will have is to revert to a copy from the day before.
If you'd like to know more you can read about it over on John Siracusa's blog.
So, two big questions. 1. Would there be a "button" to "push" to make it manually back changed files up immediately? I'd expect so. 2. What if I have a laptop? I won't *always* have my firewire drive plugged in, just most of the time I'm plugged in. So, half the time, or less. So...Would it be possible for it to be smart and back up changed files to the internal, then move those to the external when that is plugged in?
I'm pretty damn excited about Time Machine. Screw ZFS. Unless it's faster or something...we don't need it now. Apple seems to be able to shoe-horn anything on now regardless of HFS+'s vintage. Maybe 10.6, who cares. Time Machine--worth the $ for me alone. Easily.
The other downside is that Time Machine runs by default at midnight, and copies changed files for that day. Time Machine won't help you if you made several changes to a file in one day, and want to revert to an earlier state. The only choice you will have is to revert to a copy from the day before.
So, two big questions. 1. Would there be a "button" to "push" to make it manually back changed files up immediately?
Yep, there is.
Quote:
I'd expect so. 2. What if I have a laptop? I won't *always* have my firewire drive plugged in, just most of the time I'm plugged in. So, half the time, or less. So...Would it be possible for it to be smart and back up changed files to the internal, then move those to the external when that is plugged in?
Kickaha is correct that Time Machine uses hard links, …
I presume that means hard links are used within a Time Machine backup volume since they're unsupported across volumes?
If files are changed dozen of times between scheduled backup runs will all the intermediate changes be saved or only the latest revision? If the former, wouldn't there need to be some kind of cache to preserve multiple revisions until the next scheduled backup (since the TM backup volume may be temporarily unavailable between runs)? [edit: the latter part of your comment discusses that] And surely some people will prefer the TM backup volume remain offline when it's unused so it's less vulnerable to damage, with automatic mount/unmount capability available directly from TM.
Yes. There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h:
I presume that means hard links are used within a Time Machine backup volume since they're unsupported across volumes?
Presumably, the first time you run Time Machine it will mirror the contents of the live disk to the backup disk. Each subsequent run will copy the files that changed to the backup disk and hard link the ones that didn't to the last changed copy on the backup disk. So you're not hard linking across volumes. They're all on the backup disk.
Right. Specific TM implementation details are still presumption to anyone but "qualified" developers, excluding any valid NDA-violating information they've shared (directly or indirectly).
Recognizing filesystem types is now a sign that a specific filesystem will be used for OS X?
Take it as as sign that mount will actually be able to mount ZFS Volumes. Nice but nothing earth shattering.
I was responding to a specific question. I never made any claim on whether I believe Leopard will feature ZFS, let alone be able to boot from ZFS, or even have ZFS become the default file system, nor did I claim "earth-shatteringness". As of the developer preview, none of the three apply. There are no ZFS-related utilities whatsoever as far as I can see; the only entry is the quoted vnode.h, in which the vtagtype enum changed:
Since that change involves the move to ZFS, I do believe it is notable, and I do believe, more specifically, that it answered the question that was posed.
The best I would hope for with Leopard is that it be an option like UFS so it can be tested with external devices. Are there any changes to Disk Utility or fsck to suggest that in the Leopard preview? Maybe there's a hidden man page somewhere.
I was responding to a specific question. I never made any claim on whether I believe Leopard will feature ZFS, let alone be able to boot from ZFS, or even have ZFS become the default file system, nor did I claim "earth-shatteringness". As of the developer preview, none of the three apply. There are no ZFS-related utilities whatsoever as far as I can see; the only entry is the quoted vnode.h, in which the vtagtype enum changed:
Since that change involves the move to ZFS, I do believe it is notable, and I do believe, more specifically, that it answered the question that was posed.
[QUOTE=Chucker]Yes. There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h:
/QUOTE]
There is no "newfs" or "fsck", because there is no such thing for ZFS.
Everything related to ZFS is handled with only two commands: "zpool" (the top level
command, used for "pool" management) and "zfs" (used for non default filesystems and
options in a ZFS pool).
So, if you want to look for ZFS tools in Leopard search for programs named "zpool"
Comments
Yes. There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h:
enum vtagtype{
VT_NON, VT_UFS, VT_NFS, VT_MFS, VT_MSDOSFS, VT_LFS, VT_LOFS, VT_FDESC,
VT_PORTAL, VT_NULL, VT_UMAP, VT_KERNFS, VT_PROCFS, VT_AFS, VT_ISOFS,
VT_UNION, VT_HFS, VT_ZFS, VT_DEVFS, VT_WEBDAV, VT_UDF, VT_AFP,
VT_CDDA, VT_CIFS,VT_OTHER};
Not much but still encouraging. This could mean that Apple is playing with ZFS and may support it as an external filesystem sometime in the future.
*** Wishful thinking **** However, Apple could intentionally removed from the developer's build the updated / unfinished utils and references to ZFS. *** /Wishful thinking ****
That seems like a change that would "break something", like someone's application, and would thus need to be to developers early so they can test it.
Not at all. OS X's file system support is transparent and flexible. Most applications don't care abotu the underlying file system; they access things in an agnostic manner. The biggest problem is with case-sensitiveness: some file systems are, sadly, case-sensitive (including, I believe), whereas some Mac applications, especially those building on an older foundation, expect files to be case-insensitive, and thus sometimes access the wrong file (I am, once again, looking at you, ChizenCo).
Also, it won't draw cheers at a consumer event (more likely a string of "huh?"s)
Yes.
HFS to HFS+ to HFS+ journaling..ZFS isn't quite so close-kin related.
It is quite painful and even then ZFS is still a long way to go to support apple technologies...and carbon...(and classic but it's nearly dead now).
I don't think so. I think they may be using a very slick implementation of Subversion. For those of you who do not know, Subversion is a versioning software that keeps track of who changed what, and when (very simplified explanation of a very complex product).
Time Machine reeks of Subversion: which is a very good thing.
That's interesting. I think Time Machine looks like a nice front end for rsync. A hard drive-spanning subversion repository would be pretty cool though.l
If you'd like to know more you can read about it over on John Siracusa's blog.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/8/15/4995
I'm pretty damn excited about Time Machine. Screw ZFS. Unless it's faster or something...we don't need it now. Apple seems to be able to shoe-horn anything on now regardless of HFS+'s vintage. Maybe 10.6, who cares. Time Machine--worth the $ for me alone. Easily.
The other downside is that Time Machine runs by default at midnight, and copies changed files for that day. Time Machine won't help you if you made several changes to a file in one day, and want to revert to an earlier state. The only choice you will have is to revert to a copy from the day before.
Not true. There's a setting for hourly backups.
So, two big questions. 1. Would there be a "button" to "push" to make it manually back changed files up immediately?
Yep, there is.
I'd expect so. 2. What if I have a laptop? I won't *always* have my firewire drive plugged in, just most of the time I'm plugged in. So, half the time, or less. So...Would it be possible for it to be smart and back up changed files to the internal, then move those to the external when that is plugged in?
Not at this point, anyway.
Note the "Backup Now" button.
Note the "Automatically" option. This means "hourly".
Not true. There's a setting for hourly backups.
Excellent! Good to see the options are there.
Kickaha is correct that Time Machine uses hard links, …
I presume that means hard links are used within a Time Machine backup volume since they're unsupported across volumes?
If files are changed dozen of times between scheduled backup runs will all the intermediate changes be saved or only the latest revision? If the former, wouldn't there need to be some kind of cache to preserve multiple revisions until the next scheduled backup (since the TM backup volume may be temporarily unavailable between runs)? [edit: the latter part of your comment discusses that] And surely some people will prefer the TM backup volume remain offline when it's unused so it's less vulnerable to damage, with automatic mount/unmount capability available directly from TM.
Yes. There is no file system bundle for it, nor is there a mount utility or any other one (no fsck, now newfs, etc.). There is, however, a changed vnode.h:
enum vtagtype{
VT_NON, VT_UFS, VT_NFS, VT_MFS, VT_MSDOSFS, VT_LFS, VT_LOFS, VT_FDESC,
VT_PORTAL, VT_NULL, VT_UMAP, VT_KERNFS, VT_PROCFS, VT_AFS, VT_ISOFS,
VT_UNION, VT_HFS, VT_ZFS, VT_DEVFS, VT_WEBDAV, VT_UDF, VT_AFP,
VT_CDDA, VT_CIFS,VT_OTHER};
Recognizing filesystem types is now a sign that a specific filesystem will be used for OS X?
Take it as as sign that mount will actually be able to mount ZFS Volumes. Nice but nothing earth shattering.
I presume that means hard links are used within a Time Machine backup volume since they're unsupported across volumes?
Presumably, the first time you run Time Machine it will mirror the contents of the live disk to the backup disk. Each subsequent run will copy the files that changed to the backup disk and hard link the ones that didn't to the last changed copy on the backup disk. So you're not hard linking across volumes. They're all on the backup disk.
Presumably, ?
Right. Specific TM implementation details are still presumption to anyone but "qualified" developers, excluding any valid NDA-violating information they've shared (directly or indirectly).
Recognizing filesystem types is now a sign that a specific filesystem will be used for OS X?
Take it as as sign that mount will actually be able to mount ZFS Volumes. Nice but nothing earth shattering.
I was responding to a specific question. I never made any claim on whether I believe Leopard will feature ZFS, let alone be able to boot from ZFS, or even have ZFS become the default file system, nor did I claim "earth-shatteringness". As of the developer preview, none of the three apply. There are no ZFS-related utilities whatsoever as far as I can see; the only entry is the quoted vnode.h, in which the vtagtype enum changed:
- VT_UNION, VT_HFS, VT_VOLFS, VT_DEVFS, VT_WEBDAV, VT_UDF, VT_AFP,
+ VT_UNION, VT_HFS, VT_ZFS, VT_DEVFS, VT_WEBDAV, VT_UDF, VT_AFP,
Since that change involves the move to ZFS, I do believe it is notable, and I do believe, more specifically, that it answered the question that was posed.
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/8/15/4995
http://storagemojo.com/?p=213
The best I would hope for with Leopard is that it be an option like UFS so it can be tested with external devices. Are there any changes to Disk Utility or fsck to suggest that in the Leopard preview? Maybe there's a hidden man page somewhere.
I was responding to a specific question. I never made any claim on whether I believe Leopard will feature ZFS, let alone be able to boot from ZFS, or even have ZFS become the default file system, nor did I claim "earth-shatteringness". As of the developer preview, none of the three apply. There are no ZFS-related utilities whatsoever as far as I can see; the only entry is the quoted vnode.h, in which the vtagtype enum changed:
- VT_UNION, VT_HFS, VT_VOLFS, VT_DEVFS, VT_WEBDAV, VT_UDF, VT_AFP,
+ VT_UNION, VT_HFS, VT_ZFS, VT_DEVFS, VT_WEBDAV, VT_UDF, VT_AFP,
Since that change involves the move to ZFS, I do believe it is notable, and I do believe, more specifically, that it answered the question that was posed.
Okay, so what was the VT_VOLFS that was removed?
Okay, so what was the VT_VOLFS that was removed?
http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1113.html
Presumably, this is being phased out, although mount_volfs still exists, whereas mount_synthfs is now gone.
(Did I mention mount_union is added?
/QUOTE]
There is no "newfs" or "fsck", because there is no such thing for ZFS.
Everything related to ZFS is handled with only two commands: "zpool" (the top level
command, used for "pool" management) and "zfs" (used for non default filesystems and
options in a ZFS pool).
So, if you want to look for ZFS tools in Leopard search for programs named "zpool"
and "zfs".
If you want more details about ZFS, just look at the documentation: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5461.
Qwlm.