4 ms·

I agree with you. But I think you're being generous when saying some of the subsystems and architecture are shockingly bad. Some of them are not even designed.

by X86BSD 9y ago

I agree with you. But I think you're being generous when saying some of the subsystems and architecture are shockingly bad. Some of them are not even designed. If you look at them it's like "This isn't even useable!" The problem with namespaces and all the "container" tooling built on top of it is, as you noted, security. They were never designed to be secure from the start. It was not meant to be. And it was always puzzling to me why someone would use them to build containers on. Knowing it wasn't secure. As you also note Solaris got it right with zones, FreeBSD got it right with jails, there was plenty of options to use and build on. But as is the typical Linux story they had to do things there own way, and poorly. I still have no idea what Linux land is going to do for a filesystem. Since it's pretty clear ZFS is kept at arms length. Btrfs seems like the horse they are hitching to? Filesystems are hard. Which is why they can't seem to write a solid, reliable one and keep starting over. I think it's a big issue for them and is only going to get worse as data continues to explode exponentially. I wish zfs had been BSD licensed. And I wish Linux had simply adopted it as well. But those ships have sailed. Where to now?

lomnakkus 9y ago
Agreed, I probably was being a bit too generous, but I usually try to be as "diplomatic" as possible :). I don't know much about the BSDs, but my impression was that jails don't really offer nearly enough to rival Zones. Zones is really "containers done right"[1]. Definitely agree on ZFS. I'm currently using ZoL on my Ubuntu servers, but I'm not going to try using it on anything else. (FWIW, it's working marvellously so far.) Personally, my current best hope for a good Linux FS at the moment is Bcachefs[2]. It's based on the proven Bcache. It's mostly done by a single very talented programmer/designer who knows when he's out of his depth[3]. [1] Not "virtualization" per se, but as close to it as makes no difference, if that makes sense? [2] https://www.patreon.com/bcachefs https://www.patreon.com/bcachefs [3] https://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/Encryption/ https://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/Encryption/ (the initial paragraph; AFAIR there's a lot more out there about the process, but I didn't stash any links and that's all I could find in 30 seconds :).
- X86BSD 9y ago
  Zones was the logical conclusion to FreeBSD jail work. They added the full features jails now has finished. Each zone getting its own IP stack for instance. Jails didn't have that in the beginning. It was written by one guy to simply offer a basic but secure container for running multiple web servers in isolation from the host. Had he had the resources of sun Microsystems I'm sure he would have had all the features zones had from the start. But one man can only do so much with finite resources. And the main design goal was security and isolation. Which was accomplished. Separate network stacks was added later. I'm glad to hear your using it. I really can't imagine using anything else. Open source or commercial. Nothing is as compelling or reliable and easy to use. Me personally, i am forever grateful for Sun open sourcing it. I remember pre zfs days, with volume managers, and how hard it was to grow a ufs/ffs anything, just an absolute nightmare. And backups? Ugh. Tapes. Hoping every bit was copied, but never really knowing for sure. Just ugh. The pain. I've heard bcachefs talked about to. And as you originally stated I think these folks writing btrfs and bcachefs are talented and are doing the best they can but again FS's are hard. Look at all the garbage we've been stuck with from all the major commercial vendors until ZFS. Everything Microsoft puked up, or Apple, even the major UNIX vendors sucked at making file systems and volume management. Veritas? I'd rather stab my eyes with soldering irons than use any of that stuff ever again. Seriously ZFS compared to all of them is night and day. I'll never be able to thank the developers enough for helping me out of the pit of filesystem and volume management hell. I'll be interested to see how bcachefs ends up. But mostly I think everyone will be trying to play catch up to ZFS and more than likely doing it poorly. But I applaud their efforts to try! Thanks for the links btw, I always enjoy reading up on various tech.
  - lomnakkus 9y ago
    FWIW, I think there's a huge difference in approach (and humility[1]) between the Btrfs and Bcachefs developers. I'm sponsoring the latter. [1] I tried to make this point, perhaps badly.
mixmastamyk 9y ago
Security is often not a concern for single tenant workloads, a few years ago would have been running on the same server.

by X86BSD 9y ago

lomnakkus 9y ago

Agreed, I probably was being a bit too generous, but I usually try to be as "diplomatic" as possible :). I don't know much about the BSDs, but my impression was that jails don't really offer nearly enough to rival Zones. Zones is really "containers done right"[1]. Definitely agree on ZFS. I'm currently using ZoL on my Ubuntu servers, but I'm not going to try using it on anything else. (FWIW, it's working marvellously so far.) Personally, my current best hope for a good Linux FS at the moment is Bcachefs[2]. It's based on the proven Bcache. It's mostly done by a single very talented programmer/designer who knows when he's out of his depth[3]. [1] Not "virtualization" per se, but as close to it as makes no difference, if that makes sense? [2] https://www.patreon.com/bcachefs https://www.patreon.com/bcachefs [3] https://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/Encryption/ https://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/Encryption/ (the initial paragraph; AFAIR there's a lot more out there about the process, but I didn't stash any links and that's all I could find in 30 seconds :).

X86BSD 9y ago
Zones was the logical conclusion to FreeBSD jail work. They added the full features jails now has finished. Each zone getting its own IP stack for instance. Jails didn't have that in the beginning. It was written by one guy to simply offer a basic but secure container for running multiple web servers in isolation from the host. Had he had the resources of sun Microsystems I'm sure he would have had all the features zones had from the start. But one man can only do so much with finite resources. And the main design goal was security and isolation. Which was accomplished. Separate network stacks was added later. I'm glad to hear your using it. I really can't imagine using anything else. Open source or commercial. Nothing is as compelling or reliable and easy to use. Me personally, i am forever grateful for Sun open sourcing it. I remember pre zfs days, with volume managers, and how hard it was to grow a ufs/ffs anything, just an absolute nightmare. And backups? Ugh. Tapes. Hoping every bit was copied, but never really knowing for sure. Just ugh. The pain. I've heard bcachefs talked about to. And as you originally stated I think these folks writing btrfs and bcachefs are talented and are doing the best they can but again FS's are hard. Look at all the garbage we've been stuck with from all the major commercial vendors until ZFS. Everything Microsoft puked up, or Apple, even the major UNIX vendors sucked at making file systems and volume management. Veritas? I'd rather stab my eyes with soldering irons than use any of that stuff ever again. Seriously ZFS compared to all of them is night and day. I'll never be able to thank the developers enough for helping me out of the pit of filesystem and volume management hell. I'll be interested to see how bcachefs ends up. But mostly I think everyone will be trying to play catch up to ZFS and more than likely doing it poorly. But I applaud their efforts to try! Thanks for the links btw, I always enjoy reading up on various tech.
- lomnakkus 9y ago
  FWIW, I think there's a huge difference in approach (and humility[1]) between the Btrfs and Bcachefs developers. I'm sponsoring the latter. [1] I tried to make this point, perhaps badly.

mixmastamyk 9y ago

Security is often not a concern for single tenant workloads, a few years ago would have been running on the same server.