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> ... but it would still be annoying to actually use ZFS in Linux for the same reason it is annoying to use it now. For those of us who are ignorant of what is

> ... but it would still be annoying to actually use ZFS in Linux for the same reason it is annoying to use it now. For those of us who are ignorant of what is annoying to use now (I raise my hand) can you elaborate? I'm fooling around with it on Debian Stretch and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and haven't yet found it annoying (except for the challenge of finding where the various command line switches are documented...) I was particularly surprised to find it was an 'apt get' away on Debian, but I do have non-free repos enabled.

rollcat 9y ago
Running ZFS (boot&root) on both Ubuntu 17.10 on my home server and Debian Jessie on my laptop. The ZFS experience between the two is heaven and hell. Ubuntu just ships the zfs.ko and basically everything works 100% of the time, zero effort. Debian OTOH has to compile the module via DKMS for every minor kernel release... You better track those apt upgrades carefully, and run `dkms status` after each one, or you might end up having to drop into a rescue shell on next reboot, or try booting older kernels until you find the one that works. Also hopefully you didn't remove the last working kernel and/or zfs.ko. ZFS module upgrades are a roulette too (although none have failed... so far). Full disk encryption (including /boot) only adds to the complexity. I set this up in January 2017, at the time it seemed like the coolest thing on Earth. In retrospect, it was foolish. I wish I went with ext4 for /boot & /, unencrypted /boot, and left ZFS for /home & maybe /var/lib.
- dmm 9y ago
  My debian install automatically builds the zfs module during each kernel upgrade.
- rhinoceraptor 9y ago
  I have a ZFS on root Arch setup, unfortunately Gnome 3 is such garbage nowadays that I hardly ever use it. It still doesn’t do display scaling correctly for 4K and it just crashes all the time.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    There is something seriously wrong with your setup.
    - rhinoceraptor 9y ago
      AFAICT, my issue isn't mine alone, Gnome 3 likes to crash when the display is disconnected. Some quick googling shows many other users with the same issue. I have my monitors hooked up to a wifi plug to turn them both off. I'm running linux-lts and the proprietary nvidia LTS driver (on a GTX 1070), along with all the LTS versions of SPL, zfs, etc. Never had a problem with system stability, just Gnome. And the display scaling issue, I have 2x28" 4k monitors which means I need fractional scaling. 1x is too small, 2x is too big. Windows can do it, macOS does it, but Gnome does not. I thought this was supposed to be fixed by Canonical for 18.04 but that seems less and less likely. There's supposed to be a way to fiddle with xrandr but with two monitors I've never been able to get it to work.
      - vetinari 9y ago
        Fedora here, never had any crash. However, my laptops are Intel GPU only which hotplug just fine, and the desktop, when it had an Nvidia card had no need to be hot plugged. Are you sure it is Gnome crashing, and not X server disappearing from under it? I also have 27" 4k. Under X11, it is not Gnome's job to do framebuffer scaling, it is display server's. Under Wayland it is, because then the Mutter compositor is the display server. So if you want macos-style framebuffer scaling under X11, use xrandr (i.e.: xrandr --display DP-2 --scale 1.15x1.15). For the above reason, the scaling coming with Gnome 3.28 is for Wayland only - and that means no Nvidia, until they sort out their API issues.
- HankB99 9y ago
  Thanks for the info. I don't recall if Stretch requires module rebuilds on kernel updates but that hasn't bothered me in the past. And I always reboot before removing old kernels just to make sure that I don't really need them. I'm using ZFS on extra storage - not on /, /boot or /home. On one box I do have a ZFS volume mounted to my ~/Documents directory. I did try to install ZFS on the boot device and after thrashing a bit I decided to wait until the installer supports it. I have a file server and remote file server for backups and I'm preparing upgrades for both that put the served filesystem on ZFS and sends incremental snapshots to the remote to keep it synced. The existing system uses `rsync` to synchronize.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  The biggest issue is actually the fact that both require a gui installer that doesn't support zfs. Regarding rebuilding zfs isn't that done automatically when you upgrade your kernel? On funtoo I simply don't upgrade my kernel automatically EVER and when I do its part of a script that rebuilds everything required. Little chance of misfire. ZFS as root is actually valuable it means you can roll the entire system back at need I have no idea why you would want to give that up.

rollcat 9y ago

Running ZFS (boot&root) on both Ubuntu 17.10 on my home server and Debian Jessie on my laptop. The ZFS experience between the two is heaven and hell. Ubuntu just ships the zfs.ko and basically everything works 100% of the time, zero effort. Debian OTOH has to compile the module via DKMS for every minor kernel release... You better track those apt upgrades carefully, and run `dkms status` after each one, or you might end up having to drop into a rescue shell on next reboot, or try booting older kernels until you find the one that works. Also hopefully you didn't remove the last working kernel and/or zfs.ko. ZFS module upgrades are a roulette too (although none have failed... so far). Full disk encryption (including /boot) only adds to the complexity. I set this up in January 2017, at the time it seemed like the coolest thing on Earth. In retrospect, it was foolish. I wish I went with ext4 for /boot & /, unencrypted /boot, and left ZFS for /home & maybe /var/lib.

dmm 9y ago
My debian install automatically builds the zfs module during each kernel upgrade.
rhinoceraptor 9y ago
I have a ZFS on root Arch setup, unfortunately Gnome 3 is such garbage nowadays that I hardly ever use it. It still doesn’t do display scaling correctly for 4K and it just crashes all the time.
- vetinari 9y ago
  There is something seriously wrong with your setup.
  - rhinoceraptor 9y ago
    AFAICT, my issue isn't mine alone, Gnome 3 likes to crash when the display is disconnected. Some quick googling shows many other users with the same issue. I have my monitors hooked up to a wifi plug to turn them both off. I'm running linux-lts and the proprietary nvidia LTS driver (on a GTX 1070), along with all the LTS versions of SPL, zfs, etc. Never had a problem with system stability, just Gnome. And the display scaling issue, I have 2x28" 4k monitors which means I need fractional scaling. 1x is too small, 2x is too big. Windows can do it, macOS does it, but Gnome does not. I thought this was supposed to be fixed by Canonical for 18.04 but that seems less and less likely. There's supposed to be a way to fiddle with xrandr but with two monitors I've never been able to get it to work.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      Fedora here, never had any crash. However, my laptops are Intel GPU only which hotplug just fine, and the desktop, when it had an Nvidia card had no need to be hot plugged. Are you sure it is Gnome crashing, and not X server disappearing from under it? I also have 27" 4k. Under X11, it is not Gnome's job to do framebuffer scaling, it is display server's. Under Wayland it is, because then the Mutter compositor is the display server. So if you want macos-style framebuffer scaling under X11, use xrandr (i.e.: xrandr --display DP-2 --scale 1.15x1.15). For the above reason, the scaling coming with Gnome 3.28 is for Wayland only - and that means no Nvidia, until they sort out their API issues.
HankB99 9y ago
Thanks for the info. I don't recall if Stretch requires module rebuilds on kernel updates but that hasn't bothered me in the past. And I always reboot before removing old kernels just to make sure that I don't really need them. I'm using ZFS on extra storage - not on /, /boot or /home. On one box I do have a ZFS volume mounted to my ~/Documents directory. I did try to install ZFS on the boot device and after thrashing a bit I decided to wait until the installer supports it. I have a file server and remote file server for backups and I'm preparing upgrades for both that put the served filesystem on ZFS and sends incremental snapshots to the remote to keep it synced. The existing system uses `rsync` to synchronize.
michaelmrose 9y ago
The biggest issue is actually the fact that both require a gui installer that doesn't support zfs. Regarding rebuilding zfs isn't that done automatically when you upgrade your kernel? On funtoo I simply don't upgrade my kernel automatically EVER and when I do its part of a script that rebuilds everything required. Little chance of misfire. ZFS as root is actually valuable it means you can roll the entire system back at need I have no idea why you would want to give that up.