6 ms·

Hammer has always looked cool on paper but it's a hard sell to switch away from the battle-tested options like ZFS for a v1.0 codebase. Filesystems are not re

by paulmd 9y ago

Hammer has always looked cool on paper but it's a hard sell to switch away from the battle-tested options like ZFS for a v1.0 codebase. Filesystems are not really an area of the system that is amenable to flavor-of-the-month, and the dustbins of history are littered with one-man-show filesystems that didn't make the cut. btrfs is fighting much the same battle for adoption and frankly has a much better chance of seeing success since it's not tied to a niche OS like DragonflyBSD. ZFS-on-Linux finally being available+stable was a massive milestone in terms of adoption since it finally broke away from the tight ties to the Solaris/BSD ecosystems. So yeah, regardless of how amazing Hammer is, I do have to ask whether there's really space for another filesystem out there. Kudos to Dillon for going ahead and doing it anyway though ;)

tiffanyh 9y ago
Filesystems are not really an area of the system that is amenable to flavor-of-the-month and running v1.0 of a new codebase doesn't sound appealing. Just as a counterpoint to running a v1.0 filesystem, Apple just rewrote from scratch their entire filesystem (APFS) and force updated their entire userbase of hundreds of millions of iOS devices and macOS to use a v1.0 of APFS. They haven't seem to have any problems running a v1.0 filesystem and I have to imagine way more people are now running APFS then ZFS ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System
- dmpk2k 9y ago
  Apple must have invested incredible resources on testing that internally, because that was a very risky move, and well outside the norm for filesystem development.
  - saosebastiao 9y ago
    Judging by how nightmarishly buggy the upgrade to iOS11 has been, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't test it at all. My phone actually stopped functioning as a phone upon upgrade [0]! [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=...
    - chipotle_coyote 9y ago
      While I'm sorry you had bad experiences upgrading to iOS 11, I'm fairly confident it hasn't been "nightmarishly buggy" for everyone. (Neither of my two iOS devices, nor my roommate's two devices, nor my BFF's two devices, had any issues during upgrading, although I'm consistently finding an irritating-but-not-showstopping bug in bluetooth keyboard support on the iPad.) More relevant to the parent, though: the upgrade to APFS happened in iOS 10.3, not iOS 11. So whatever bug you may have had with iOS 11 probably have nothing to do with the file system.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        If the upgrade to iOS 11 was "nightmarishly buggy," we wouldn't only be hearing about it buried in a thread about DragonflyBSD.
        saosebastiao 9y ago
        Sure, absolutely nobody but a lone disgruntled HN poster has been talking about the epic fail that iOS 11 has been. Must be my vivid imagination. http://www.techradar.com/how-to/ios-11-problems-how-to-fix-them http://www.techradar.com/how-to/ios-11-problems-how-to-fix-t... https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2017/09/24/apple-ios-11-problem-battery-problems-iphone-ipad/#154157d54fdf https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2017/09/24/apple-io... https://www.imobie.com/support/ios-11-problems-and-solutions.htm https://www.imobie.com/support/ios-11-problems-and-solutions... https://www.gottabemobile.com/ios-11-problems-fixes/ https://www.gottabemobile.com/ios-11-problems-fixes/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/ios-11-app-slowdowns-performance-issues/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/ios-11-app-slowdowns-pe... http://mashable.com/2017/09/21/apple-ios11-glitches/#Q72IbvrDySqX http://mashable.com/2017/09/21/apple-ios11-glitches/#Q72Ibvr... http://www.iphonehacks.com/2017/09/ios-11-bugs.html http://www.iphonehacks.com/2017/09/ios-11-bugs.html https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/some-ios-11-issues-show-early-adoption-pitfalls-others-are-just-growing-pains/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/some-ios-11-issues-s... https://www.tenorshare.com/ios-11/top-15-ios-11-update-problems-and-fixes.html https://www.tenorshare.com/ios-11/top-15-ios-11-update-probl... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/ios-11-problems-features-battery-life-speed-slow-apple-fix-iphone-ipad-8-x-a7961846.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ios-11-problems-3293849 http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ios-11-problems-3293849 https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/09/26/apple-ios-11-battery-and-outlook-problems-how-fix-them/703106001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/09/26/app... http://osxdaily.com/2017/09/26/troubleshooting-ios-11-problems/ http://osxdaily.com/2017/09/26/troubleshooting-ios-11-proble... https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ios-11-bugs/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ios-11-bugs/ https://appletoolbox.com/2017/09/common-ios-11-problems-how-to-fix/ https://appletoolbox.com/2017/09/common-ios-11-problems-how-... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/21/ios_11_screws_up_outlook/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/21/ios_11_screws_up_ou... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4922738/Apple-forced-issue-update-iOS-11-just-WEEK.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4922738/Apple... http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/apple-confirms-ios-bugs-issues-11243872 http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/apple-confirms-ios-bugs-issues-... Should I go on?
  - markonen 9y ago
    APFS landed in iOS 10.3. One cool thing Apple did was a planetwide dry-run of the HFS+ to APFS migration in a previous iOS update. They did the whole convert operation, except the very final bit, and presumably collected metrics about failures.
  - Tloewald 9y ago
    Apple did some pretty brilliant stuff with testing. E.g. they had it silently test install itself on random user devices, verify everything was fine, and revert for several versions prior to release (presumably they picked users with sufficient spare room). The actual rollout was stunningly issue-free. As an aside, this is one of the several unbelievably slick updates Apple has pulled off in its history, including: - the switch to 32-bit clean addresses only (which was probably the most painful switch Apple ever did!) in System 7.6 - the switch to PowerPC (which caused fewer problems than the 32-bit clean switch!) - the switch to Mac OS X - the switch to Intel - the switch to 64-bit on desktop - the switch to 64-bit on iOS Microsoft, (in most cases rightly) vaunted for backwards compatibility has had horrific snafus such as DOS 5 being the first version of DOS whose RESTORE program could read BACKUP files from the previous version of DOS. (It's also worth noting that NeXT itself managed to support four runtime architectures with "quad fat binaries".)
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - riffraff 9y ago
      > they had it silently test install itself on random user devices I suppose that meant doing a small install in some virtual disk? I can't think apple put at risk anyone's data. But then, that would not have been the same as actually testing the real hardware interface, would it?
DCKing 9y ago
One thing Hammer2 has going for it, is license. It's the first next gen filesystem release that is not marred in some way by licensing (marred from the perspective of adoption). Because it uses the BSD license, it can be adapted to work in more mainstream OSes without problems. If OpenBSD would adopt it for example, it would really help it to cover a few more use cases. I'd also expect some efforts from NetBSD, FreeBSD and Linux. Even Apple and Microsoft could adopt Hammer2 and just use the original source code, although they have no particular reason to do so.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "littered with one-man-show filesystems" ReiserFS springs to mind, but what other one-man-show filesystems have there been?
- wmf 9y ago
  Tux2/Tux3 and bcachefs come to mind.
smegel 9y ago
> Hammer has always looked cool on paper but it's a hard sell to switch away from the battle-tested options like ZFS for a v1.0 codebase It is strange. Linux users would do anything for ZFS and BSDs are moving away from it.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  Linux has ZFS, and DragonflyBSD never had ZFS. Linux users want ZFS in kernel, and everyone wants cool new filesystems that are already stable.

by paulmd 9y ago

tiffanyh 9y ago

Filesystems are not really an area of the system that is amenable to flavor-of-the-month and running v1.0 of a new codebase doesn't sound appealing. Just as a counterpoint to running a v1.0 filesystem, Apple just rewrote from scratch their entire filesystem (APFS) and force updated their entire userbase of hundreds of millions of iOS devices and macOS to use a v1.0 of APFS. They haven't seem to have any problems running a v1.0 filesystem and I have to imagine way more people are now running APFS then ZFS ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System

dmpk2k 9y ago
Apple must have invested incredible resources on testing that internally, because that was a very risky move, and well outside the norm for filesystem development.
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  Judging by how nightmarishly buggy the upgrade to iOS11 has been, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't test it at all. My phone actually stopped functioning as a phone upon upgrade [0]! [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8073670?start=0&tstart=...
  - chipotle_coyote 9y ago
    While I'm sorry you had bad experiences upgrading to iOS 11, I'm fairly confident it hasn't been "nightmarishly buggy" for everyone. (Neither of my two iOS devices, nor my roommate's two devices, nor my BFF's two devices, had any issues during upgrading, although I'm consistently finding an irritating-but-not-showstopping bug in bluetooth keyboard support on the iPad.) More relevant to the parent, though: the upgrade to APFS happened in iOS 10.3, not iOS 11. So whatever bug you may have had with iOS 11 probably have nothing to do with the file system.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      If the upgrade to iOS 11 was "nightmarishly buggy," we wouldn't only be hearing about it buried in a thread about DragonflyBSD.
      - saosebastiao 9y ago
        Sure, absolutely nobody but a lone disgruntled HN poster has been talking about the epic fail that iOS 11 has been. Must be my vivid imagination. http://www.techradar.com/how-to/ios-11-problems-how-to-fix-them http://www.techradar.com/how-to/ios-11-problems-how-to-fix-t... https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2017/09/24/apple-ios-11-problem-battery-problems-iphone-ipad/#154157d54fdf https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2017/09/24/apple-io... https://www.imobie.com/support/ios-11-problems-and-solutions.htm https://www.imobie.com/support/ios-11-problems-and-solutions... https://www.gottabemobile.com/ios-11-problems-fixes/ https://www.gottabemobile.com/ios-11-problems-fixes/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/ios-11-app-slowdowns-performance-issues/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/ios-11-app-slowdowns-pe... http://mashable.com/2017/09/21/apple-ios11-glitches/#Q72IbvrDySqX http://mashable.com/2017/09/21/apple-ios11-glitches/#Q72Ibvr... http://www.iphonehacks.com/2017/09/ios-11-bugs.html http://www.iphonehacks.com/2017/09/ios-11-bugs.html https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/some-ios-11-issues-show-early-adoption-pitfalls-others-are-just-growing-pains/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/some-ios-11-issues-s... https://www.tenorshare.com/ios-11/top-15-ios-11-update-problems-and-fixes.html https://www.tenorshare.com/ios-11/top-15-ios-11-update-probl... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/ios-11-problems-features-battery-life-speed-slow-apple-fix-iphone-ipad-8-x-a7961846.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ios-11-problems-3293849 http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ios-11-problems-3293849 https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/09/26/apple-ios-11-battery-and-outlook-problems-how-fix-them/703106001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/09/26/app... http://osxdaily.com/2017/09/26/troubleshooting-ios-11-problems/ http://osxdaily.com/2017/09/26/troubleshooting-ios-11-proble... https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ios-11-bugs/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ios-11-bugs/ https://appletoolbox.com/2017/09/common-ios-11-problems-how-to-fix/ https://appletoolbox.com/2017/09/common-ios-11-problems-how-... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/21/ios_11_screws_up_outlook/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/21/ios_11_screws_up_ou... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4922738/Apple-forced-issue-update-iOS-11-just-WEEK.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4922738/Apple... http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/apple-confirms-ios-bugs-issues-11243872 http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/apple-confirms-ios-bugs-issues-... Should I go on?
- markonen 9y ago
  APFS landed in iOS 10.3. One cool thing Apple did was a planetwide dry-run of the HFS+ to APFS migration in a previous iOS update. They did the whole convert operation, except the very final bit, and presumably collected metrics about failures.
- Tloewald 9y ago
  Apple did some pretty brilliant stuff with testing. E.g. they had it silently test install itself on random user devices, verify everything was fine, and revert for several versions prior to release (presumably they picked users with sufficient spare room). The actual rollout was stunningly issue-free. As an aside, this is one of the several unbelievably slick updates Apple has pulled off in its history, including: - the switch to 32-bit clean addresses only (which was probably the most painful switch Apple ever did!) in System 7.6 - the switch to PowerPC (which caused fewer problems than the 32-bit clean switch!) - the switch to Mac OS X - the switch to Intel - the switch to 64-bit on desktop - the switch to 64-bit on iOS Microsoft, (in most cases rightly) vaunted for backwards compatibility has had horrific snafus such as DOS 5 being the first version of DOS whose RESTORE program could read BACKUP files from the previous version of DOS. (It's also worth noting that NeXT itself managed to support four runtime architectures with "quad fat binaries".)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - riffraff 9y ago
    > they had it silently test install itself on random user devices I suppose that meant doing a small install in some virtual disk? I can't think apple put at risk anyone's data. But then, that would not have been the same as actually testing the real hardware interface, would it?

DCKing 9y ago

One thing Hammer2 has going for it, is license. It's the first next gen filesystem release that is not marred in some way by licensing (marred from the perspective of adoption). Because it uses the BSD license, it can be adapted to work in more mainstream OSes without problems. If OpenBSD would adopt it for example, it would really help it to cover a few more use cases. I'd also expect some efforts from NetBSD, FreeBSD and Linux. Even Apple and Microsoft could adopt Hammer2 and just use the original source code, although they have no particular reason to do so.

ZenoArrow 9y ago

> "littered with one-man-show filesystems" ReiserFS springs to mind, but what other one-man-show filesystems have there been?

wmf 9y ago
Tux2/Tux3 and bcachefs come to mind.

smegel 9y ago

> Hammer has always looked cool on paper but it's a hard sell to switch away from the battle-tested options like ZFS for a v1.0 codebase It is strange. Linux users would do anything for ZFS and BSDs are moving away from it.

boomboomsubban 9y ago
Linux has ZFS, and DragonflyBSD never had ZFS. Linux users want ZFS in kernel, and everyone wants cool new filesystems that are already stable.