4 ms·

why not use zfs, since it does the things that kvdo, bcachefs, and tux3?

dragonsh 7y ago
Only one reason of Oracle law suite sword hanging over neck. Even if canonical gives guarantee they will fight with Oracle, if a small company is dragged by oracle in a court room it's hard to fathom the expenses. So yes there is a need for zfs alternative. So far stayed away from it and using btrfs which works well, except for some RAID limitations.
- p_l 7y ago
  Fortunately the license Sun applied means any lawsuit would need to attack something much more fundamental, like the very idea of interoperability, as they don't have option to "claw back" any portion of the OpenZFS codebase.
  - takeda 7y ago
    Given that they are currently fighting that an API should be copyrightable, doesn't make me confident that they won't do this.
    - p_l 7y ago
      If they do, GPL is fucked anyway. And not just GPL.
      - dragonsh 7y ago
        ZFS is not released under GPL, if it is then it won't be a problem. So there is a need for an alternative and BTRFS works well for me, no need of license encumbered ZFS, not sure of others.
mappu 7y ago
My personal reason is that zfs.ko entirely bypasses the kernel page cache, preferring its own internal cache (the ARC). Reimplementing kernel subsystems is a recipe for interoperability nightmare (c.f. the NVIDIA binary driver). For instance, this causes unnecessary memory pressure when you have a mix of ZFS and non-ZFS filesystems (e.g. SMB mounts). Additionally I curmudgeonly have yet to come to terms with the blatant layering violation of ZFS being a combined block-device-manager and filesystem. But the benefits (file-level RAID behaviour) of that are indeed clear.
- josteink 7y ago
  > I curmudgeonly have yet to come to terms with the blatant layering violation of ZFS being a combined block-device-manager and filesystem It has both advantages and disadvantages. It’s a trade-off. ZFS decided it was worth it, and so did btrfs.
- takeda 7y ago
  Sure they committed these crimes, but those are the reasons why ZFS is better than the alternatives.

Only one reason of Oracle law suite sword hanging over neck. Even if canonical gives guarantee they will fight with Oracle, if a small company is dragged by oracle in a court room it's hard to fathom the expenses. So yes there is a need for zfs alternative. So far stayed away from it and using btrfs which works well, except for some RAID limitations.

p_l 7y ago
Fortunately the license Sun applied means any lawsuit would need to attack something much more fundamental, like the very idea of interoperability, as they don't have option to "claw back" any portion of the OpenZFS codebase.
- takeda 7y ago
  Given that they are currently fighting that an API should be copyrightable, doesn't make me confident that they won't do this.
  - p_l 7y ago
    If they do, GPL is fucked anyway. And not just GPL.
    - dragonsh 7y ago
      ZFS is not released under GPL, if it is then it won't be a problem. So there is a need for an alternative and BTRFS works well for me, no need of license encumbered ZFS, not sure of others.

mappu 7y ago

My personal reason is that zfs.ko entirely bypasses the kernel page cache, preferring its own internal cache (the ARC). Reimplementing kernel subsystems is a recipe for interoperability nightmare (c.f. the NVIDIA binary driver). For instance, this causes unnecessary memory pressure when you have a mix of ZFS and non-ZFS filesystems (e.g. SMB mounts). Additionally I curmudgeonly have yet to come to terms with the blatant layering violation of ZFS being a combined block-device-manager and filesystem. But the benefits (file-level RAID behaviour) of that are indeed clear.

josteink 7y ago
> I curmudgeonly have yet to come to terms with the blatant layering violation of ZFS being a combined block-device-manager and filesystem It has both advantages and disadvantages. It’s a trade-off. ZFS decided it was worth it, and so did btrfs.
takeda 7y ago
Sure they committed these crimes, but those are the reasons why ZFS is better than the alternatives.