38 ms·

ZFS lands in Debian contrib

278 points by turrini 10y ago

yc-kraln 10y ago
so... what's missing?
- nailer 10y ago
  Legal clarity.
espadrine 10y ago
Has there been updates on the legal situation since http://blog.halon.org.uk/2016/01/on-zfs-in-debian/ http://blog.halon.org.uk/2016/01/on-zfs-in-debian/? I am obviously glad that this happened, but afraid of an Oraclocalypse.
- seba_dos1 10y ago
  It's just that the thing described in this article finally happened: "TLDR: It’s going in contrib, as a source only dkms module."
- kangar00 10y ago
  Oraclepocalypse? Aren't their lawyers busy with Google?: http://fortune.com/2016/05/13/google-oracle-java-email/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/13/google-oracle-java-email/ Here's another post about GPL violations related to combining ZFS and Linux: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ Quote from that: "Is The Analysis Different With Source-Only Distribution? We cannot close discussion without considering one final unique aspect to this situation. CDDLv1 does allow for free redistribution of ZFS source code. We can also therefore consider the requirements when distributing Linux and ZFS in source code form only. Pure distribution of source with no binaries is undeniably different. When distributing source code and no binaries, requirements in those sections of GPLv2 and CDDLv1 that cover modification and/or binary (or “Executable”, as CDDLv1 calls it) distribution do not activate. Therefore, the analysis is simpler, and we find no specific clause in either license that prohibits source-only redistribution of Linux and ZFS, even on the same distribution media. Nevertheless, there may be arguments for contributory and/or indirect copyright infringement in many jurisdictions. We present no specific analysis ourselves on the efficacy of a contributory infringement claim regarding source-only distributions of ZFS and Linux. However, in our GPL litigation experience, we have noticed that judges are savvy at sniffing out attempts to circumvent legal requirements, and they are skeptical about attempts to exploit loopholes. Furthermore, we cannot predict Oracle's view — given its past willingness to enforce copyleft licenses, and Oracle's recent attempts to adjudicate the limits of copyright in Court. Downstream users should consider carefully before engaging in even source-only distribution. We note that Debian's decision to place source-only ZFS in a relegated area of their archive called contrib, is an innovative solution. Debian fortunately had a long-standing policy that contrib was specifically designed for source code that, while licensed under an acceptable license for Debian's Free Software Guidelines, also has a default use that can cause licensing problems for downstream Debian users. Therefore, Debian communicates clearly to their users that this code is problematic by keeping it out of their main archive. Furthermore, Debian does not distribute any binary form of zfs.ko. (Full disclosure: Conservancy has a services agreement with Debian in which Conservancy occasionally gives its opinions, in a non-legal capacity, to Debian on topics of Free Software licensing, and gave Debian advice on this matter under that agreement. Conservancy is not Debian's legal counsel.)"
  - espadrine 10y ago
    > Aren't their lawyers busy with Google? They would only bite a golden hand anyway. > We are also concerned that it may infringe Oracle's copyrights in ZFS. The Software Freedom Conservancy saying that is a bit scary. I am somewhat less afraid of Linux copyright holders suing.
    - jldugger 10y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised if the Canonical is taking a calculated risk here that Oracle doesn't actually care, or would be actively helpful if it meant spiting Redhat.
    - pilif 10y ago
      Of course Oracle also owns part of the copyright to the kernel. They still employ some kernel developers. And oracle could certainly sue distributors for violating their copyright (not on zfs, but on Linux)
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    "Downstream users should consider carefully before engaging in even source-only distribution." Why would Free/open-source distros have to distribute ZFS source code? Couldn't they simply provide a method for downloading the source from the already existing ZFS repos and then compile the source? Wouldn't that be enough?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - tzs 10y ago
    > Nevertheless, there may be arguments for contributory and/or indirect copyright infringement in many jurisdictions In the United States there are two kinds of indirect infringement: contributory infringement and vicarious infringement. Contributory infringement can occur when you know that someone else is or will directly infringe, and you substantially aid that by inducing, causing, or materially aiding their direct infringement. That can include providing the tools and equipment they use to infringe. Vicarious infringement can occur when someone who is a direct infringer is your agent or under your control. A very important aspect of both of these types of indirect infringement is that they make you liable for the direct infringement of someone else. If there is no someone else who is a direct infringer, then you cannot possibly be a contributory or vicarious infringer.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  > Oraclocalypse The CDDL doesn't have any problems being linked into GPL'ed code, it is the GPL that has a problem accepting CDDL code.
  - belorn 10y ago
    If we could ignore the CDDL conditions, then the problems would go away. A license incompatibility happens when two licenses has each some conditions which are incompatible with each other, and the authors of software under those licenses do not give additional permissions. The problem would go away if you convinced oracle to change the license or give explicit permission to link ZFS with the linux kernel under the GPL conditions. Or: Convinced the linux kernel team to change their license or give explicit permission to link the linux kernel with ZFS under the CDDL conditions. Or you can blame "GPL", because it obviously was created after CDDL...
    - andreasvc 10y ago
      > Or you can blame "GPL", because it obviously was created after CDDL... It's the other way around.
      - snuxoll 10y ago
        Sarcasm was implied.
        SolarNet 10y ago
        Wait, there is sarcasm on the internet? What's the markdown for that?
        ZenoArrow 10y ago
        > "What's the markdown for that?" /s
        10y ago
- thrownaway2424 10y ago
  +1 to this. I wouldn't touch ZFS or DTrace or anything else from Sun/Oracle with a 30-million-foot pole.
- ryao 10y ago
  DKMS seems sufficient to make even the handful of guys with extreme legal positions happy. So far, none of them have come up with a way of saying it is not okay in their statements to the rest of us that think binaries are fine.
- gnufx 10y ago
  If you're afraid of Oracle suing Debian for doing less than Oracle themselves do for profit (with linux+dtrace), you could get the distribution from zfsonlinux.org. Then the risk is transferred to .gov, who are also significant end users for enormous high-performance parallel filesystems. They have also been distributing binaries for RHEL-ish kernels for a while.
l1ambda 10y ago
Great news. So this means Ubuntu, Debian and the new Redox OS now have ZFS. I would love to see it officially supported in Fedora too.
- rwmj 10y ago
  There is a DKMS package similar to the Debian one which requires just a single command to install: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Fedora https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Fedora However it is unlikely that Fedora will ship ZFS unless the license changes or is clarified by Oracle. Unlike Canonical, Red Hat is a US company making serious amounts of money ($2bn revenue last financial year).
  - meddlepal 10y ago
    I imagine it ends up in EPEL? Or is EPEL Red Hat controlled?
Nursie 10y ago
Excellent, have been running with some ubuntu ppa stuff for a while now, and that's great but things occasionally break. Looks like soon I can ditch it for pure debian again.
- krondor 10y ago
  ZFS is in Ubuntu 16.04 without a PPA, by the way.
  - kdeldycke 10y ago
    For the lazy: $ sudo apt install zfs-dkms zfsutils-linux
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      Does anyone know if I can switch my previously-used ZFS-on-Linux with this and it will just see my pool and work as before?
      - ryao 10y ago
        You can.
dmm 10y ago
It appears that the kernel-level code is shipped as source to be built, automatically by dkms, by the end user. Check out the list of binaries on the bottom left of that page. This means that no binary kernel modules are shipped, just the cli tools.
- creshal 10y ago
  Which is roughly the same way as closed-source drivers are handled.
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    Not really. Closed source drivers don't come with source code and aren't compiled by dkms.
    - GauntletWizard 10y ago
      The Nvidia driver does require DKMS, but it's still a binary blob - It ships with source for a wrapper, compiles that, and that loads the blob.
  - ryao 10y ago
    DKMS is for out of tree drivers. Closed source drivers being out of tree can of course use it too.
- derefr 10y ago
  Reminds me of the open-vm-tools package that hooks up Ubuntu guests to VMware. VMware ships with its own copies that it can mount as ISOs, but having the alternate FOSS version be managed and versioned and regression-tested by the distro maintainers makes everything a lot smoother (and means you don't have to wait for a VMware update to ship before you can update your kernel.)
grigio 10y ago
So is btrfs dead?
- eatonphil 10y ago
  btrfs is immature.
  - krondor 10y ago
    btrfs is stable as of kernel 3.14 or so. The features in btrfs that are unstable at this point are raid56 (write hole on power failure risk), autodefrag (and mainly just with high transaction files like vm images and databases), and ext34/in place filesystem conversion. We've been running btrfs in production since Ubuntu 14.04 with excellent results. The feature set vastly outweighs the few risks that remain.
    - DominoTree 10y ago
      "stable" != "mature"
      - krondor 10y ago
        That's a fair point. I guess we can debate what 'mature' means. In development since 2007, stable since 2014. ZFS, in development since 2001 (correction I erroneously listed 2005 earlier), stable since 2006 (or at least Solaris included since then). Do you consider the Solaris years or just the Linux years and then do you consider the Linux Debian/Ubuntu sanctioned years or the ZoL years? I'm fine with mature since included in the default installer on Ubuntu/Redhat/Oracle/SUSE/etc... for my definition of btrfs maturity.
        eatonphil 10y ago
        I think you've confused your dates. ZFS has been in development since 2001. It was first introduced in 2005.
Eun 10y ago
finally, hopefully it makes its way to the installer (unlike the ubuntu installer...)
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  Don't get your hopes up.
4ad 10y ago
Unfortunately, it's a dkms, which means it gets compiled on the user machine on update. From an operational perspective, this is insane, I need reliability. Of course in my organisation I could create a binary package and use that, but that's more work and then the new Debian package doesn't help me anyway. When I need linux I just run ZFS on a better supported system and either virtualise Linux or expose an iSCSI target from ZFS for Linux.
- krondor 10y ago
  I believe on Ubuntu 16.04 ZFS is not using dkms. You'd want to check, because I'm not currently running it, but that's what I have been told.
- Annatar 10y ago
  > Of course in my organisation I could create a binary package and use that, but that's more work and then the new Debian package doesn't help me anyway. Yes, and that is called system engineering. It is the job of a system engineering department (3rd level support) to deliver such components and stable operating system builds to the 2nd level support (operations, system administrators / database administrators).
- ashitlerferad 10y ago
  It isn't legal to distribute the binary of zfs.ko https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/
  - krondor 10y ago
    Canonical is doing so anyway and it seems they have a legal disagreement on the interpretation of the law with the Software Freedom Conservancy. IANAL so I have no clue what is technically correct, but the fact is that Ubuntu is distributing zfs.ko in 16.04.
gjvc 10y ago
massive opportunity now for Oracle to generate some goodwill
- bingobob 10y ago
  Oracle isn't Goodwill
- Annatar 10y ago
  Oracle has nothing whatsoever to do with OpenZFS. As in zero, nada, zilch. And because of CDDL, Oracle cannot take back the source code from illumos (which contains OpenZFS code) without open sourcing the code to Solaris again: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2732 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2732
sobkas 10y ago
But it didn't land in Debian. It only landed in contrib. Title of this link is wrong, so maybe someone should fix it? https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-contrib https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-c...
- dang 10y ago
  We added 'contrib'. Will that do?
dakami 10y ago
So I just started experimenting with ZFS, because it seemed required for container snapshots. Then I found out it fragments badly, and nobody can figure out how to write a defragmenter. So, uh, keep the FS below 60-80% full apparently. Yeah.
- gcr 10y ago
  Have you tried btrfs? It also has support for super-cheap copy-on-write operations which should make container images and the like a snap. Not sure if your container tool supports btrfs snapshots of course, but it's conceptually simple, right?
  - aorth 10y ago
    For development containers, systemd-nspawn has had support for btrfs snapshots since 2014 or 2015. Simple to get going if you're on a Linux box with systemd, no other daemons or tools required.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    I think the main issue here is Btrfs is still developing. Its kernel doc file still says it's for benchmarking and review. [1] CoreOS devs decided to switch from Btrfs to overlay(fs) about 17 months ago. That's a long, long time in Btrfs development "years" that's how much development happens on Btrfs. But I can't say if CoreOS would, had today's Btrfs been what they were using in 2014, would have changed their decision. RH/Fedora are very dm/LVM thinp snapshots with XFS centric for backing their containers. I think what you're seeing is distros are doing something different with their container backing approach in order to differentiate from other distros. Maybe it's a stab in the dark or spaghetti on the wall approach but in the end all of these storage backends are going to mature a lot in the interim, so ultimately it'll be good for everyone. [1] https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/Documentation/filesystems/btrfs.txt?id=refs/tags/v4.5.4 https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st...
  - takeda 10y ago
    Isn't this issue inherent to all COW systems (ZFS, WAFL, btrfs)?
jordigh 10y ago
contrib is a funny place for it. Normally contrib means free software that depends on non-free software. In this case, it seems to have acquired the meaning of free software has a license incompatibility with other free software. I wonder if we have heard the last of CDDL vs GPL. Technical solutions to legal problems don't work, just like GPL wrappers don't work (at least, that's what some lawyers say). If Oracle decides to make a stink about this, they still can. edit: Huh, apparently last year Debian actually got advice from SFLC about this: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00...
- gnufx 10y ago
  Yes, zfs in contrib appears inconsistent with openafs in main. Has that been explained somewhere?
mrmondo 10y ago
This is interesting to see at a time when so many key packages are missing or badly outdated in Debian core.

278 points by turrini 10y ago

yc-kraln 10y ago

so... what's missing?

nailer 10y ago
Legal clarity.

espadrine 10y ago

Has there been updates on the legal situation since http://blog.halon.org.uk/2016/01/on-zfs-in-debian/ http://blog.halon.org.uk/2016/01/on-zfs-in-debian/? I am obviously glad that this happened, but afraid of an Oraclocalypse.

seba_dos1 10y ago
It's just that the thing described in this article finally happened: "TLDR: It’s going in contrib, as a source only dkms module."
kangar00 10y ago
Oraclepocalypse? Aren't their lawyers busy with Google?: http://fortune.com/2016/05/13/google-oracle-java-email/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/13/google-oracle-java-email/ Here's another post about GPL violations related to combining ZFS and Linux: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ Quote from that: "Is The Analysis Different With Source-Only Distribution? We cannot close discussion without considering one final unique aspect to this situation. CDDLv1 does allow for free redistribution of ZFS source code. We can also therefore consider the requirements when distributing Linux and ZFS in source code form only. Pure distribution of source with no binaries is undeniably different. When distributing source code and no binaries, requirements in those sections of GPLv2 and CDDLv1 that cover modification and/or binary (or “Executable”, as CDDLv1 calls it) distribution do not activate. Therefore, the analysis is simpler, and we find no specific clause in either license that prohibits source-only redistribution of Linux and ZFS, even on the same distribution media. Nevertheless, there may be arguments for contributory and/or indirect copyright infringement in many jurisdictions. We present no specific analysis ourselves on the efficacy of a contributory infringement claim regarding source-only distributions of ZFS and Linux. However, in our GPL litigation experience, we have noticed that judges are savvy at sniffing out attempts to circumvent legal requirements, and they are skeptical about attempts to exploit loopholes. Furthermore, we cannot predict Oracle's view — given its past willingness to enforce copyleft licenses, and Oracle's recent attempts to adjudicate the limits of copyright in Court. Downstream users should consider carefully before engaging in even source-only distribution. We note that Debian's decision to place source-only ZFS in a relegated area of their archive called contrib, is an innovative solution. Debian fortunately had a long-standing policy that contrib was specifically designed for source code that, while licensed under an acceptable license for Debian's Free Software Guidelines, also has a default use that can cause licensing problems for downstream Debian users. Therefore, Debian communicates clearly to their users that this code is problematic by keeping it out of their main archive. Furthermore, Debian does not distribute any binary form of zfs.ko. (Full disclosure: Conservancy has a services agreement with Debian in which Conservancy occasionally gives its opinions, in a non-legal capacity, to Debian on topics of Free Software licensing, and gave Debian advice on this matter under that agreement. Conservancy is not Debian's legal counsel.)"
- espadrine 10y ago
  > Aren't their lawyers busy with Google? They would only bite a golden hand anyway. > We are also concerned that it may infringe Oracle's copyrights in ZFS. The Software Freedom Conservancy saying that is a bit scary. I am somewhat less afraid of Linux copyright holders suing.
  - jldugger 10y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if the Canonical is taking a calculated risk here that Oracle doesn't actually care, or would be actively helpful if it meant spiting Redhat.
  - pilif 10y ago
    Of course Oracle also owns part of the copyright to the kernel. They still employ some kernel developers. And oracle could certainly sue distributors for violating their copyright (not on zfs, but on Linux)
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  "Downstream users should consider carefully before engaging in even source-only distribution." Why would Free/open-source distros have to distribute ZFS source code? Couldn't they simply provide a method for downloading the source from the already existing ZFS repos and then compile the source? Wouldn't that be enough?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- tzs 10y ago
  > Nevertheless, there may be arguments for contributory and/or indirect copyright infringement in many jurisdictions In the United States there are two kinds of indirect infringement: contributory infringement and vicarious infringement. Contributory infringement can occur when you know that someone else is or will directly infringe, and you substantially aid that by inducing, causing, or materially aiding their direct infringement. That can include providing the tools and equipment they use to infringe. Vicarious infringement can occur when someone who is a direct infringer is your agent or under your control. A very important aspect of both of these types of indirect infringement is that they make you liable for the direct infringement of someone else. If there is no someone else who is a direct infringer, then you cannot possibly be a contributory or vicarious infringer.
snuxoll 10y ago
> Oraclocalypse The CDDL doesn't have any problems being linked into GPL'ed code, it is the GPL that has a problem accepting CDDL code.
- belorn 10y ago
  If we could ignore the CDDL conditions, then the problems would go away. A license incompatibility happens when two licenses has each some conditions which are incompatible with each other, and the authors of software under those licenses do not give additional permissions. The problem would go away if you convinced oracle to change the license or give explicit permission to link ZFS with the linux kernel under the GPL conditions. Or: Convinced the linux kernel team to change their license or give explicit permission to link the linux kernel with ZFS under the CDDL conditions. Or you can blame "GPL", because it obviously was created after CDDL...
  - andreasvc 10y ago
    > Or you can blame "GPL", because it obviously was created after CDDL... It's the other way around.
    - snuxoll 10y ago
      Sarcasm was implied.
      - SolarNet 10y ago
        Wait, there is sarcasm on the internet? What's the markdown for that?
        ZenoArrow 10y ago
        > "What's the markdown for that?" /s
        10y ago
thrownaway2424 10y ago
+1 to this. I wouldn't touch ZFS or DTrace or anything else from Sun/Oracle with a 30-million-foot pole.
ryao 10y ago
DKMS seems sufficient to make even the handful of guys with extreme legal positions happy. So far, none of them have come up with a way of saying it is not okay in their statements to the rest of us that think binaries are fine.
gnufx 10y ago
If you're afraid of Oracle suing Debian for doing less than Oracle themselves do for profit (with linux+dtrace), you could get the distribution from zfsonlinux.org. Then the risk is transferred to .gov, who are also significant end users for enormous high-performance parallel filesystems. They have also been distributing binaries for RHEL-ish kernels for a while.

l1ambda 10y ago

Great news. So this means Ubuntu, Debian and the new Redox OS now have ZFS. I would love to see it officially supported in Fedora too.

rwmj 10y ago
There is a DKMS package similar to the Debian one which requires just a single command to install: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Fedora https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Fedora However it is unlikely that Fedora will ship ZFS unless the license changes or is clarified by Oracle. Unlike Canonical, Red Hat is a US company making serious amounts of money ($2bn revenue last financial year).
- meddlepal 10y ago
  I imagine it ends up in EPEL? Or is EPEL Red Hat controlled?

Nursie 10y ago

Excellent, have been running with some ubuntu ppa stuff for a while now, and that's great but things occasionally break. Looks like soon I can ditch it for pure debian again.

krondor 10y ago
ZFS is in Ubuntu 16.04 without a PPA, by the way.
- kdeldycke 10y ago
  For the lazy: $ sudo apt install zfs-dkms zfsutils-linux
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Does anyone know if I can switch my previously-used ZFS-on-Linux with this and it will just see my pool and work as before?
    - ryao 10y ago
      You can.

dmm 10y ago

It appears that the kernel-level code is shipped as source to be built, automatically by dkms, by the end user. Check out the list of binaries on the bottom left of that page. This means that no binary kernel modules are shipped, just the cli tools.

creshal 10y ago
Which is roughly the same way as closed-source drivers are handled.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  Not really. Closed source drivers don't come with source code and aren't compiled by dkms.
  - GauntletWizard 10y ago
    The Nvidia driver does require DKMS, but it's still a binary blob - It ships with source for a wrapper, compiles that, and that loads the blob.
- ryao 10y ago
  DKMS is for out of tree drivers. Closed source drivers being out of tree can of course use it too.
derefr 10y ago
Reminds me of the open-vm-tools package that hooks up Ubuntu guests to VMware. VMware ships with its own copies that it can mount as ISOs, but having the alternate FOSS version be managed and versioned and regression-tested by the distro maintainers makes everything a lot smoother (and means you don't have to wait for a VMware update to ship before you can update your kernel.)

grigio 10y ago

So is btrfs dead?

eatonphil 10y ago
btrfs is immature.
- krondor 10y ago
  btrfs is stable as of kernel 3.14 or so. The features in btrfs that are unstable at this point are raid56 (write hole on power failure risk), autodefrag (and mainly just with high transaction files like vm images and databases), and ext34/in place filesystem conversion. We've been running btrfs in production since Ubuntu 14.04 with excellent results. The feature set vastly outweighs the few risks that remain.
  - DominoTree 10y ago
    "stable" != "mature"
    - krondor 10y ago
      That's a fair point. I guess we can debate what 'mature' means. In development since 2007, stable since 2014. ZFS, in development since 2001 (correction I erroneously listed 2005 earlier), stable since 2006 (or at least Solaris included since then). Do you consider the Solaris years or just the Linux years and then do you consider the Linux Debian/Ubuntu sanctioned years or the ZoL years? I'm fine with mature since included in the default installer on Ubuntu/Redhat/Oracle/SUSE/etc... for my definition of btrfs maturity.
      - eatonphil 10y ago
        I think you've confused your dates. ZFS has been in development since 2001. It was first introduced in 2005.

Eun 10y ago

finally, hopefully it makes its way to the installer (unlike the ubuntu installer...)

jlgaddis 10y ago
Don't get your hopes up.

4ad 10y ago

Unfortunately, it's a dkms, which means it gets compiled on the user machine on update. From an operational perspective, this is insane, I need reliability. Of course in my organisation I could create a binary package and use that, but that's more work and then the new Debian package doesn't help me anyway. When I need linux I just run ZFS on a better supported system and either virtualise Linux or expose an iSCSI target from ZFS for Linux.

krondor 10y ago
I believe on Ubuntu 16.04 ZFS is not using dkms. You'd want to check, because I'm not currently running it, but that's what I have been told.
Annatar 10y ago
> Of course in my organisation I could create a binary package and use that, but that's more work and then the new Debian package doesn't help me anyway. Yes, and that is called system engineering. It is the job of a system engineering department (3rd level support) to deliver such components and stable operating system builds to the 2nd level support (operations, system administrators / database administrators).
ashitlerferad 10y ago
It isn't legal to distribute the binary of zfs.ko https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/
- krondor 10y ago
  Canonical is doing so anyway and it seems they have a legal disagreement on the interpretation of the law with the Software Freedom Conservancy. IANAL so I have no clue what is technically correct, but the fact is that Ubuntu is distributing zfs.ko in 16.04.

gjvc 10y ago

massive opportunity now for Oracle to generate some goodwill

bingobob 10y ago
Oracle isn't Goodwill
Annatar 10y ago
Oracle has nothing whatsoever to do with OpenZFS. As in zero, nada, zilch. And because of CDDL, Oracle cannot take back the source code from illumos (which contains OpenZFS code) without open sourcing the code to Solaris again: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2732 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2732

sobkas 10y ago

But it didn't land in Debian. It only landed in contrib. Title of this link is wrong, so maybe someone should fix it? https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-contrib https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-c...

dang 10y ago
We added 'contrib'. Will that do?

dakami 10y ago

So I just started experimenting with ZFS, because it seemed required for container snapshots. Then I found out it fragments badly, and nobody can figure out how to write a defragmenter. So, uh, keep the FS below 60-80% full apparently. Yeah.

gcr 10y ago
Have you tried btrfs? It also has support for super-cheap copy-on-write operations which should make container images and the like a snap. Not sure if your container tool supports btrfs snapshots of course, but it's conceptually simple, right?
- aorth 10y ago
  For development containers, systemd-nspawn has had support for btrfs snapshots since 2014 or 2015. Simple to get going if you're on a Linux box with systemd, no other daemons or tools required.
- cmurf 10y ago
  I think the main issue here is Btrfs is still developing. Its kernel doc file still says it's for benchmarking and review. [1] CoreOS devs decided to switch from Btrfs to overlay(fs) about 17 months ago. That's a long, long time in Btrfs development "years" that's how much development happens on Btrfs. But I can't say if CoreOS would, had today's Btrfs been what they were using in 2014, would have changed their decision. RH/Fedora are very dm/LVM thinp snapshots with XFS centric for backing their containers. I think what you're seeing is distros are doing something different with their container backing approach in order to differentiate from other distros. Maybe it's a stab in the dark or spaghetti on the wall approach but in the end all of these storage backends are going to mature a lot in the interim, so ultimately it'll be good for everyone. [1] https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/Documentation/filesystems/btrfs.txt?id=refs/tags/v4.5.4 https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st...
- takeda 10y ago
  Isn't this issue inherent to all COW systems (ZFS, WAFL, btrfs)?

jordigh 10y ago

contrib is a funny place for it. Normally contrib means free software that depends on non-free software. In this case, it seems to have acquired the meaning of free software has a license incompatibility with other free software. I wonder if we have heard the last of CDDL vs GPL. Technical solutions to legal problems don't work, just like GPL wrappers don't work (at least, that's what some lawyers say). If Oracle decides to make a stink about this, they still can. edit: Huh, apparently last year Debian actually got advice from SFLC about this: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00...

gnufx 10y ago
Yes, zfs in contrib appears inconsistent with openafs in main. Has that been explained somewhere?

mrmondo 10y ago

This is interesting to see at a time when so many key packages are missing or badly outdated in Debian core.