4 ms·

One thing I'm really missing from Debian is zfs.ko. It was always a big one for me, I ran with ZFS root for 2+ years and every kernel/zfs update was a bit of a

One thing I'm really missing from Debian is zfs.ko. It was always a big one for me, I ran with ZFS root for 2+ years and every kernel/zfs update was a bit of a Russian roulette (I did have to perform elaborate recovery once or twice). Even if it was 100% guaranteed to compile and work, there was 1. a very scary window during which if the system hung, you're semi-bricked; 2. the long build. Running a desktop/laptop without a time-traveling file system is quite simply not an option (especially once you get used to it).

barrkel 7y ago
Root zfs isn't worth it IMO.
- rollcat 7y ago
  It's a integration / packaging / polishing problem (caused by a licensing problem), technically it's 100% viable and desirable.
- mitchty 7y ago
  As a FreeBSD user that has had root zfs for a while, and used zfs on solaris before that doing the same thing. Explain how it isn't worth it? Made backing out of patches easy mode, snapshot, patch, reboot, if its effed up, go back to the snapshot with a reboot. The only thing I've seen that comes close is NixOS, but it takes a completely different take on those kinda things. Better in some ways. But zfs root is great, means you can just set compression on for log dirs and don't need to worry about compressing logs. Fs takes care of that for ya, now grep works fine, no zgrep etc... needed. I honestly can't see why you wouldn't want to boot off it. Hell I just upgraded my FreeBSD nas box at home, took a snapshot of the entire pool before I did just in case things went south. It may not be as performant as some filesystems, but to be honest, with nvme ssd's, its a non issue. So explain how it isn't worth it in your opinion? Experience for myself has proven otherwise. And made me loathe BTRFS for being so behind zfs of even 10 years ago. (I've had BTFS zero out data for a Makefile I had open while running make, if it wasn't in a git repo I would have been super pissed off)
  - barrkel 7y ago
    It's not a big win because the OS shouldn't have much data of any value, for similar reasons we don't generally back up our OS installs. It certainly shouldn't be in the same pool as your actual data, the stuff you back up. /home can live in that pool though. I have to squint really hard to see the upside of snapshotting anything other than things like /etc - I have in the past put /etc in git just to track ad-hoc changes. Overall, for the base OS, a minimal set of defaults + a provisioning script does me.
  - pknopf 7y ago
    I have a similar requirements out of my OS, but using a different approach. I essentially boot Docker images bare-metal, directly from Grub. https://godarch.com/ https://godarch.com/ My recipes: https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  The kernel version supported by zfs is available on the release page. 0.8.2 is Compatible with 2.6.32 - 5.4 Linux kernels You have to combine out of date zfs with bleeding edge kernels to have a difficulty. Basically you just check the zfs release page before upgrading x.y to x.y+1 This could be trivially avoided with packaging
  - rollcat 7y ago
    This is theory vs practice at its best, I've been running zroot from January 2017 until April 2019 on my primary machine, and got lots of empirical data (aka scary stories) to back up my claim ;)
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      a version 1 only works with b version >= 1 and <=17 is pretty basic stuff. If someone isn't doing it than submit an issue and run your own repo that does
geofft 7y ago
Hmm, this seems like a solvable problem - install the kernel on disk, but don't promote it to the default kernel on reboot until all the DKMS modules have built. At that point, you might even be able to optionally background the compile process and have it run asynchronously and update your kernel only once it builds successfully. Alternatively, teach GRUB to be able to boot "the most recent kernel with all of this set of modules available".

barrkel 7y ago

Root zfs isn't worth it IMO.

rollcat 7y ago
It's a integration / packaging / polishing problem (caused by a licensing problem), technically it's 100% viable and desirable.
mitchty 7y ago
As a FreeBSD user that has had root zfs for a while, and used zfs on solaris before that doing the same thing. Explain how it isn't worth it? Made backing out of patches easy mode, snapshot, patch, reboot, if its effed up, go back to the snapshot with a reboot. The only thing I've seen that comes close is NixOS, but it takes a completely different take on those kinda things. Better in some ways. But zfs root is great, means you can just set compression on for log dirs and don't need to worry about compressing logs. Fs takes care of that for ya, now grep works fine, no zgrep etc... needed. I honestly can't see why you wouldn't want to boot off it. Hell I just upgraded my FreeBSD nas box at home, took a snapshot of the entire pool before I did just in case things went south. It may not be as performant as some filesystems, but to be honest, with nvme ssd's, its a non issue. So explain how it isn't worth it in your opinion? Experience for myself has proven otherwise. And made me loathe BTRFS for being so behind zfs of even 10 years ago. (I've had BTFS zero out data for a Makefile I had open while running make, if it wasn't in a git repo I would have been super pissed off)
- barrkel 7y ago
  It's not a big win because the OS shouldn't have much data of any value, for similar reasons we don't generally back up our OS installs. It certainly shouldn't be in the same pool as your actual data, the stuff you back up. /home can live in that pool though. I have to squint really hard to see the upside of snapshotting anything other than things like /etc - I have in the past put /etc in git just to track ad-hoc changes. Overall, for the base OS, a minimal set of defaults + a provisioning script does me.
- pknopf 7y ago
  I have a similar requirements out of my OS, but using a different approach. I essentially boot Docker images bare-metal, directly from Grub. https://godarch.com/ https://godarch.com/ My recipes: https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes
michaelmrose 7y ago
The kernel version supported by zfs is available on the release page. 0.8.2 is Compatible with 2.6.32 - 5.4 Linux kernels You have to combine out of date zfs with bleeding edge kernels to have a difficulty. Basically you just check the zfs release page before upgrading x.y to x.y+1 This could be trivially avoided with packaging
- rollcat 7y ago
  This is theory vs practice at its best, I've been running zroot from January 2017 until April 2019 on my primary machine, and got lots of empirical data (aka scary stories) to back up my claim ;)
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    a version 1 only works with b version >= 1 and <=17 is pretty basic stuff. If someone isn't doing it than submit an issue and run your own repo that does

geofft 7y ago

Hmm, this seems like a solvable problem - install the kernel on disk, but don't promote it to the default kernel on reboot until all the DKMS modules have built. At that point, you might even be able to optionally background the compile process and have it run asynchronously and update your kernel only once it builds successfully. Alternatively, teach GRUB to be able to boot "the most recent kernel with all of this set of modules available".