7 ms·

It is amazing how stubborn Linux people are. They constantly refuse and reject superior engineering that was done outside of their realm. (yeah I was pointing a

It is amazing how stubborn Linux people are. They constantly refuse and reject superior engineering that was done outside of their realm. (yeah I was pointing at ZFS, but that would be just one of many)

lomnakkus 10y ago
The lack of ZFS is due to licensing.
- pantalaimon 10y ago
  Ubuntu has it
  - LukeShu 10y ago
    In violation of the license; probably.
    - cm3 10y ago
      AFAIK it's DKMS'ed just like Nvidia's kernel driver, so it's a user decision, just like media codec installation. Also, OpenZFS doesn't reuse kernel interfaces it's not allowed to, and that's why they carry their own crypto code now.
      - lathiat 10y ago
        It's actually not DKMS in 16.04 - crypto problem still applies though.
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      How is the license being violated?
    - lomnakkus 10y ago
      Not necessarily. It's a run-time loaded module (as e.g. NVIDIA's graphics driver is) and 'taints' the kernel with CDDL, but since you -- the user -- aren't redistributing anything you are not breaking any copyright laws. EDIT: ... and neither are Ubuntu since what they're doing is "mere aggregation" (see the GPL).
      - Grishnakh 10y ago
        If it's a run-time loaded module with an incompatible license, that means it isn't really something you want as your primary filesystem. For a storage volume, sure, but not your root filesystem. Honestly, this whole debacle could have been avoided if ZFS had been relicensed under some kind of compatible license like one of the BSD licenses.
        lomnakkus 10y ago
        I agree completely[1]. I'm not sure Ubuntu Server actually even offers ZFS during the install on any volume, nevermind on the root FS. EDIT: [1] Well, now that I think about it... I don't agree that the skepticism should be based on licensing. I just think that ZFS-on-Linux is perhaps not mature enough quite yet and we do have off-site backups anyway, so we might as well try it if we're not doing anything absolutely 24/365-critical.
        rleigh 10y ago
        It's not supported by the installer (for 16.04), but you can do it by hand. It's poorly documented--there are several guides with contradictory advice--and it took me several attempts, but all the bits are there from GRUB to the initramfs and the main init. I got my workstation EFI booting with GRUB direct to root on ZFS a few weeks back; I can now "zfs send" whole system snapshots directly to my NAS. Once this is a single option in the installer like it is for LVM, it will become properly usable. Right now, it's for masochists who want to experiment only (for the rootfs). Regarding maturity, it's certainly not as well tested as on e.g. FreeBSD or Solaris, but it's been around for a good while at this point and I know a few people who have been running it for several years trouble free. I would certainly place it above Btrfs in the reliability stakes. The main limitations I've seen are cosmetic or Linux-specific; the zfs command is setuid root, which prevents delegating dataset admin to users (snapshot/send/recv your data, create your own subsidiary datasets etc.), Linux doesn't do NFSv4 ACLs in its VFS, and you can't transparently create NFS exports via zfs properties. None of these affect data integrity though. Not holding my breath waiting for NFSv4 ACLs, though it would certainly be a massively beneficial feature.
    - FireBeyond 10y ago
      Like Ubuntu or not, they went on record saying that they had consulted with legal counsel who was heavily involved with open source and that they signed off. I'll take their word for it in good faith.
Thaxll 10y ago
The thing that need 8/16GB of ram to run. Creating a solid FS takes time, ZFS is good because it has been around for 10years.
- williamstein 10y ago
  Btrfs entered the Linux kernel over 7 years ago. (I've used both btrfs and ZFS a lot in production and would never touch btrfs again. I really like ZFS though.)
  - Thaxll 10y ago
    "The development of Btrfs began in 2007, and by August 2014, the file system's on-disk format has been marked as stable."
    - rleigh 10y ago
      The on-disk format is the least of the problems with Btrfs. The quality of the implementation of the filesystem which uses that format is the bigger issue. It's still awful, and I've been using it since the start. Two years ago, I migrated everything to ZFS and haven't looked back. It works. It hasn't lost any data, and it's easy to set up and administer. I can't give it any higher praise than that. It does its stuff with no fuss or drama.
- cm3 10y ago
  Isn't that just for the default dedup implementation where it's suggested to have 2-5GB per TB? HAMMER fs can dedup with little RAM, but the ZFS devs aren't ignorant or uninformed, so I would expect them to have a plan to remedy the inefficiency of OpenZFS's dedup implementation. I know there are commercially avaialbe alternaitve dedup versions, but I don't have any experience with those.
- olavgg 10y ago
  ZFS runs fine with just 1GB of ram. Even several terrabytes of storage. When it comes to knowledge about ZFS, avoid about anything that comes from the FreeNAS community. It is quackery at its best.
X86BSD 10y ago
This is Linux's legacy. Rejecting already solved problems only to try reinvent the wheel their way and often their wheel is broken and horribly engineered if engineered at all. See btrfs v zfs, kqueue vs their current poll of the month method, dtrace vs system tap, the list goes on a mile long. It's so frustrating to watch this. To see all these projects being developed on Linux where it's easier for others to simply reimplement the idea from scratch than try and remove all the Linux only code from them. The Linux world only thinks about itself. In a spectacularly selfish way.
- technofiend 10y ago
  This is why you need to update the phrase "GNU's not UNIX" to "Linux is not UNIX." I use systemd and it works fine but it's a great example of a complete departure from the idea of small single-task tools.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    >..."Linux is not UNIX." I use systemd and it works fine but it's a great example of a complete departure from the idea of small single-task tools. And how does this approach compare to other UNIXes? And I don't mean UNIXes from the 1970s, I mean ones which are currently in use: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, MacOSX. Last I heard, they all had roughly equivalent init systems to systemd.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Solaris and MacOS perhaps, if we are talking strict init. but both of the BSDs use BSD init. There is a push by Jordan Hubbard to get FreeBSD to adopt Launchd (the MacOS init) but so far he has been rebuffed and has instead set out to fork FreeBSD into NextBSD. Frankly this is what should have happened with the likes of Debian regarding systemd as well. A parallel release offering systemd as the default, alongside sysv. Then it would be up to the admins to pick, rather than have to apply contortions during or right after install to switch from systemd to sysv. Instead Debian adopted systemd, and we got Devuan as a sysv fork...
    - 10y ago
snuxoll 10y ago
I think HAMMER might be a good candidate for use with Linux, it's not as mature as ZFS and still lacks features that I actually use ZFS for (namely the self-healing and data integrity features), but HAMMER2 is well on its way and should soon be a viable alternative (read: not replacement) for many use-cases where ZFS is of benefit.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  The problem with HAMMER is that it reminds me of Stark Industries' inept competition in Iron Man 2.
Kadin 10y ago
ZFS is more stable, but the architecture it forces you into is IMO far from ideal in many cases. I've played with BTRFS (in RAID-1 mode) instead of ZFS because of the latter's limitations about adding drives. With BTRFS, you can drop in a new drive at any time and rebalance. This is how things ought to work. ZFS's concept of VDEVs might make sense for huge corporate storage arrays, but they're just a pain if you're running a small server or NAS, where growing the array drive-by-drive is a very common scenario. Due to the complexity of dealing with VDEVs, I've personally never seen much use for ZFS on Linux vs. just biting the bullet and dealing with LVM over mdadm. BTRFS is the closest thing to a compelling argument to moving away from that setup I've seen on Linux.
- alyandon 10y ago
  That and being able to trivially resize/reshape BTRFS storage volumes after adding/removing devices makes it more suitable for my personal home use.
justin66 10y ago
> I was pointing at ZFS, but that would be just one of many Taking close to two decades to make xfs an equal citizen would be another example.
abrookewood 10y ago
To be fair, if there weren't licensing issues around ZFS, I'm pretty sure it would have been adopted without much resistance. As it is, there are STILL concerns about the licensing and Canonical went ahead and added it anyway! I don't see how you can classify that as Not Invented here syndrome.

lomnakkus 10y ago

The lack of ZFS is due to licensing.

pantalaimon 10y ago
Ubuntu has it
- LukeShu 10y ago
  In violation of the license; probably.
  - cm3 10y ago
    AFAIK it's DKMS'ed just like Nvidia's kernel driver, so it's a user decision, just like media codec installation. Also, OpenZFS doesn't reuse kernel interfaces it's not allowed to, and that's why they carry their own crypto code now.
    - lathiat 10y ago
      It's actually not DKMS in 16.04 - crypto problem still applies though.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    How is the license being violated?
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    Not necessarily. It's a run-time loaded module (as e.g. NVIDIA's graphics driver is) and 'taints' the kernel with CDDL, but since you -- the user -- aren't redistributing anything you are not breaking any copyright laws. EDIT: ... and neither are Ubuntu since what they're doing is "mere aggregation" (see the GPL).
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      If it's a run-time loaded module with an incompatible license, that means it isn't really something you want as your primary filesystem. For a storage volume, sure, but not your root filesystem. Honestly, this whole debacle could have been avoided if ZFS had been relicensed under some kind of compatible license like one of the BSD licenses.
      - lomnakkus 10y ago
        I agree completely[1]. I'm not sure Ubuntu Server actually even offers ZFS during the install on any volume, nevermind on the root FS. EDIT: [1] Well, now that I think about it... I don't agree that the skepticism should be based on licensing. I just think that ZFS-on-Linux is perhaps not mature enough quite yet and we do have off-site backups anyway, so we might as well try it if we're not doing anything absolutely 24/365-critical.
        rleigh 10y ago
        It's not supported by the installer (for 16.04), but you can do it by hand. It's poorly documented--there are several guides with contradictory advice--and it took me several attempts, but all the bits are there from GRUB to the initramfs and the main init. I got my workstation EFI booting with GRUB direct to root on ZFS a few weeks back; I can now "zfs send" whole system snapshots directly to my NAS. Once this is a single option in the installer like it is for LVM, it will become properly usable. Right now, it's for masochists who want to experiment only (for the rootfs). Regarding maturity, it's certainly not as well tested as on e.g. FreeBSD or Solaris, but it's been around for a good while at this point and I know a few people who have been running it for several years trouble free. I would certainly place it above Btrfs in the reliability stakes. The main limitations I've seen are cosmetic or Linux-specific; the zfs command is setuid root, which prevents delegating dataset admin to users (snapshot/send/recv your data, create your own subsidiary datasets etc.), Linux doesn't do NFSv4 ACLs in its VFS, and you can't transparently create NFS exports via zfs properties. None of these affect data integrity though. Not holding my breath waiting for NFSv4 ACLs, though it would certainly be a massively beneficial feature.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    Like Ubuntu or not, they went on record saying that they had consulted with legal counsel who was heavily involved with open source and that they signed off. I'll take their word for it in good faith.

Thaxll 10y ago

The thing that need 8/16GB of ram to run. Creating a solid FS takes time, ZFS is good because it has been around for 10years.

williamstein 10y ago
Btrfs entered the Linux kernel over 7 years ago. (I've used both btrfs and ZFS a lot in production and would never touch btrfs again. I really like ZFS though.)
- Thaxll 10y ago
  "The development of Btrfs began in 2007, and by August 2014, the file system's on-disk format has been marked as stable."
  - rleigh 10y ago
    The on-disk format is the least of the problems with Btrfs. The quality of the implementation of the filesystem which uses that format is the bigger issue. It's still awful, and I've been using it since the start. Two years ago, I migrated everything to ZFS and haven't looked back. It works. It hasn't lost any data, and it's easy to set up and administer. I can't give it any higher praise than that. It does its stuff with no fuss or drama.
cm3 10y ago
Isn't that just for the default dedup implementation where it's suggested to have 2-5GB per TB? HAMMER fs can dedup with little RAM, but the ZFS devs aren't ignorant or uninformed, so I would expect them to have a plan to remedy the inefficiency of OpenZFS's dedup implementation. I know there are commercially avaialbe alternaitve dedup versions, but I don't have any experience with those.
olavgg 10y ago
ZFS runs fine with just 1GB of ram. Even several terrabytes of storage. When it comes to knowledge about ZFS, avoid about anything that comes from the FreeNAS community. It is quackery at its best.

X86BSD 10y ago

This is Linux's legacy. Rejecting already solved problems only to try reinvent the wheel their way and often their wheel is broken and horribly engineered if engineered at all. See btrfs v zfs, kqueue vs their current poll of the month method, dtrace vs system tap, the list goes on a mile long. It's so frustrating to watch this. To see all these projects being developed on Linux where it's easier for others to simply reimplement the idea from scratch than try and remove all the Linux only code from them. The Linux world only thinks about itself. In a spectacularly selfish way.

technofiend 10y ago
This is why you need to update the phrase "GNU's not UNIX" to "Linux is not UNIX." I use systemd and it works fine but it's a great example of a complete departure from the idea of small single-task tools.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >..."Linux is not UNIX." I use systemd and it works fine but it's a great example of a complete departure from the idea of small single-task tools. And how does this approach compare to other UNIXes? And I don't mean UNIXes from the 1970s, I mean ones which are currently in use: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, MacOSX. Last I heard, they all had roughly equivalent init systems to systemd.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Solaris and MacOS perhaps, if we are talking strict init. but both of the BSDs use BSD init. There is a push by Jordan Hubbard to get FreeBSD to adopt Launchd (the MacOS init) but so far he has been rebuffed and has instead set out to fork FreeBSD into NextBSD. Frankly this is what should have happened with the likes of Debian regarding systemd as well. A parallel release offering systemd as the default, alongside sysv. Then it would be up to the admins to pick, rather than have to apply contortions during or right after install to switch from systemd to sysv. Instead Debian adopted systemd, and we got Devuan as a sysv fork...
  - 10y ago

snuxoll 10y ago

I think HAMMER might be a good candidate for use with Linux, it's not as mature as ZFS and still lacks features that I actually use ZFS for (namely the self-healing and data integrity features), but HAMMER2 is well on its way and should soon be a viable alternative (read: not replacement) for many use-cases where ZFS is of benefit.

Grishnakh 10y ago
The problem with HAMMER is that it reminds me of Stark Industries' inept competition in Iron Man 2.

Kadin 10y ago

ZFS is more stable, but the architecture it forces you into is IMO far from ideal in many cases. I've played with BTRFS (in RAID-1 mode) instead of ZFS because of the latter's limitations about adding drives. With BTRFS, you can drop in a new drive at any time and rebalance. This is how things ought to work. ZFS's concept of VDEVs might make sense for huge corporate storage arrays, but they're just a pain if you're running a small server or NAS, where growing the array drive-by-drive is a very common scenario. Due to the complexity of dealing with VDEVs, I've personally never seen much use for ZFS on Linux vs. just biting the bullet and dealing with LVM over mdadm. BTRFS is the closest thing to a compelling argument to moving away from that setup I've seen on Linux.

alyandon 10y ago
That and being able to trivially resize/reshape BTRFS storage volumes after adding/removing devices makes it more suitable for my personal home use.

justin66 10y ago

> I was pointing at ZFS, but that would be just one of many Taking close to two decades to make xfs an equal citizen would be another example.

abrookewood 10y ago

To be fair, if there weren't licensing issues around ZFS, I'm pretty sure it would have been adopted without much resistance. As it is, there are STILL concerns about the licensing and Canonical went ahead and added it anyway! I don't see how you can classify that as Not Invented here syndrome.