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ZFS committed to FreeBSD base

post #1 of 14
4/7/07 at 2:39am
Thread Starter 
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...il/070544.html

Hi.

I'm happy to inform that the ZFS file system is now part of the FreeBSD
operating system. ZFS is available in the HEAD branch and will be
available in FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE as an experimental feature.

Commit log:

Please welcome ZFS - The last word in file systems.

ZFS file system was ported from OpenSolaris operating system. The code
in under CDDL license.

I'd like to thank all SUN developers that created this great piece of
software.

Supported bytWheel LTD (http://www.wheel.pl/)
Supported bytThe FreeBSD Foundation (http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/)
Supported bytSentex (http://www.sentex.net/)

Limitations.

Currently ZFS is only compiled as kernel module and is only available
for i386 architecture. Amd64 should be available very soon, the other
archs will come later, as we implement needed atomic operations.

Missing functionality.

- We don't have iSCSI target daemon in the tree, so sharing ZVOLs via
iSCSI is also not supported at this point. This should be fixed in
the future, we may also add support for sharing ZVOLs over ggate.
- There is no support for ACLs and extended attributes.
- There is no support for booting off of ZFS file system.

Other than that, ZFS should be fully-functional.

Enjoy!

We already know of Apple's burgeoning support for ZFS. Having the FreeBSD community hacking away at it benefits Apple and vice versa
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post #2 of 14
4/7/07 at 3:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post

We already know of Apple's burgeoning support for ZFS. Having the FreeBSD community hacking away at it benefits Apple and vice versa

Could it be one of the reasons Leopard seems to be pushed to the limits of its release time frame?
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post #3 of 14
4/11/07 at 7:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post

- There is no support for ACLs and extended attributes.
- There is no support for booting off of ZFS file system.

I'm afraid this effectively puts ZFS out of the question for now. Since Time Machine is currently implemented on top of HFS+, there is really no point in betting the whole OS on ZFS other than bragging rights among crazed geeks. We'll have to wait until ZFS support in Mac OS X is complete and tested. Nobody is going to offer users a buggy file system - it's not the type of component which only leaves crash reports on your disk.
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post #4 of 14
4/11/07 at 8:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by costique View Post

I'm afraid this effectively puts ZFS out of the question for now. Since Time Machine is currently implemented on top of HFS+, there is really no point in betting the whole OS on ZFS other than bragging rights among crazed geeks. We'll have to wait until ZFS support in Mac OS X is complete and tested. Nobody is going to offer users a buggy file system - it's not the type of component which only leaves crash reports on your disk.

Um, not being bootable doesn't mean that it's untested.

ZFS will be used for external hard drives, Xserves, things of that nature.

This has nothing to do with geek cred. ZFS is an amazing technology, and is easily one of the top features on my "want it" list.
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post #5 of 14
4/11/07 at 9:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by PB View Post

Could it be one of the reasons Leopard seems to be pushed to the limits of its release time frame?

Hopefully, this would allow huge hard drives in our computers, which we will need.
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post #6 of 14
4/12/07 at 12:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregmightdothat View Post

Um, not being bootable doesn't mean that it's untested.

I did not say ZFS is untested because it's not bootable. I said that last time I checked, ZFS on Mac OS X is barely usable, so it just cannot be tested enough, period. To be honest, I didn't bother to try ACLs on ZFS for Mac OS X, it's quite possible that Apple is ahead of FreeBSD there, but ACLs don't matter much until Apple gets everything else (like mount/unmount/etc.) done.
Quote:
ZFS will be used for external hard drives, Xserves, things of that nature.

Xserves? Yeah, if you back up the data first.
Quote:
This has nothing to do with geek cred. ZFS is an amazing technology, and is easily one of the top features on my "want it" list.

Yes, it is, and I want to start using it too. However, I'm not in a hurry to move all my files to ZFS until Apple's port proves to work reliably.
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post #7 of 14
4/12/07 at 5:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by costique View Post

I did not say ZFS is untested because it's not bootable. I said that last time I checked, ZFS on Mac OS X is barely usable, so it just cannot be tested enough, period. To be honest, I didn't bother to try ACLs on ZFS for Mac OS X, it's quite possible that Apple is ahead of FreeBSD there, but ACLs don't matter much until Apple gets everything else (like mount/unmount/etc.) done.
Xserves? Yeah, if you back up the data first.
Yes, it is, and I want to start using it too. However, I'm not in a hurry to move all my files to ZFS until Apple's port proves to work reliably.

Hmm...while I've registered as a dev I've never bothered to upgrade to Select to get the Leopard Early Start Kit...since really I just use OSX as a Linux replacement for LAMP development on the rare times I need to do web work. So I've never tried ZFS on OSX myself.

But given that Apple has the resources to get Sun support if desired I would expect that the ZFS implementation in Leopard will be fully featured (ie full EFI/GPT labeling, ACLs, etc) by release and later seeds will allow folks to get in some user testing on top of Apple's QA. Persumably Apple would also get whatever fs regression tests from Sun they thought appropriate and ported them to OSX.

Booting is questionable since Solaris' ZFS booting is alpha and hackish...or more accurately, OpenSolaris' ZFS booting is alpha and hackish. Dunno what's in Nevada.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that if Apple wants ZFS in OSX for real they have more than just Chris Emura to throw at it. And I'd be somewhat surprised if TimeMachine is so tightly coupled to HFS+ that it couldn't also support ZFS.

Vinea
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post #8 of 14
4/12/07 at 5:38am
Oh...and doesn't everyone back up their XServes?
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post #9 of 14
4/12/07 at 9:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by costique View Post

Xserves? Yeah, if you back up the data first.

Well, duh, but that's for any file system.

But if you're implying that ZFS isn't industrial-strength, you're crazy. It's way more reliable than HFS+ or NTFS.
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post #10 of 14
4/12/07 at 12:18pm
Thread Starter 
I doubt Apple will have ZFS "blessed" by Leopards launch but hopefully after a couple of larger udpates it'll be ready to go. I don't necessarily need it for my boot drive but I'd love to be able to pool more storage for my media storage.

I think it's great that ZFS is being worked on in so many areas. It should be a force to be reckoned with in a couple of years with the attendant maturation.

I'm still gobsmacked over how easy it is to setup a pool with terminal commands. Now that is a step in the right direction.
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post #11 of 14
4/13/07 at 5:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregmightdothat View Post

But if you're implying that ZFS isn't industrial-strength, you're crazy. It's way more reliable than HFS+ or NTFS.

All I'm saying is that ZFS for Mac OS X is like a late alpha/early beta. Of course, they have time till October now.
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post #12 of 14
4/13/07 at 12:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by costique View Post

All I'm saying is that ZFS for Mac OS X is like a late alpha/early beta. Of course, they have time till October now.

What is alpha/beta about it? Is it missing tags or other features? Or does the menu simply not format a disk into ZFS?

Vinea
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post #13 of 14
4/13/07 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post

I doubt Apple will have ZFS "blessed" by Leopards launch but hopefully after a couple of larger udpates it'll be ready to go.

Did you write that comment before or after the bad news yesterday?
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post #14 of 14
4/13/07 at 6:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post

Did you write that comment before or after the bad news yesterday?

Before

However maybe one of the side benefits of the delay is that more time can be devoted to making items like ZFS and OpenGL more complete if needed.

I know that OpenGL has another extension that is probably out very soon that I'd love to see folded into the initial OS X Leopard launch. It's called "Longs Peak" and ads a new Object Model yadda yadda yadda.

Do you think that Leopard is already feature complete?
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