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I mean you can’t maintain ZFS normally, and people have been trying to make zfs happen for what… two decades now?

by nailer 4y ago

jacob019 4y ago
I guess the trolls are out today. Thought I was on Reddit for a minute.
hnlmorg 4y ago
I don’t understand why you’re being snarky. ZFS has been hugely successful since it’s release, and continues to be successful even now. The reason why it’s popular is precisely because it’s easy to maintain.
- nailer 4y ago
  Not sure why you’d consider criticism of ZFS to he snark. Running any filesystem outside the mainline kernel is a bunch of extra effort and I’m sure as a ZFS user you’d know that. I’m not sure how ZFS could be “hugely successful” after two decades and still not in the Linux kernel.
  - kobalsky 4y ago
    > Running any filesystem outside the mainline kernel is a bunch of extra effort and I’m sure as a ZFS user you’d know that zfs-dkms makes usage simple since openzfs backwards compatible down to 3.xx kernels. no need to mix match zfs with kernel versions anymore. the only drawback is that you may not get to use the lastest kernel until openzfs mantainers give it the thumbs up (no 6.xx compatible release yet), but that's not "a bunch of extra effort". and that's only a problem if you want to be in the bleeding edge. LTS kernel users wouldn't know about it. > I’m not sure how ZFS could be “hugely successful” after two decades and still not in the Linux kernel. "There is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it's OK to do so and treat the end result as GPL'd" -Linus Torvalds sound like a legal issue more than technical.
    - PlutoIsAPlanet 4y ago
      IIRC the kernel module also uses a compatibility layer, which is also unlikely to ever be accepted. So its a technical issue too
    - nailer 4y ago
      LTS kernel users don’t generally have access to ZFS - RHEL won’t touch it with a ten foot pole and very few large organisations use Ubuntu.
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    Linux users are constantly using drivers outside of the mainline kernel. Whether it’s graphics cards, radio drivers (things have gotten better in that regard but Bluetooth is support is still terrible) or FUSE file systems. The difference with ZFS is that the code is kernel-ready but there’s just some licensing worries (understandable ones) that stop it from being mainlined. I’ve been running ZFS on Ubuntu Server for several years now and frankly ZFS is the only part of that entire system that doesn’t suck (in my opinion). I’d switch back to FreeBSD in a heartbeat if I didn’t need Docker support but credit where credit is due, Ubuntu’s ZFS support has been really good. Edit: just to add, I’ve got nothing against anyone who does enjoy Ubuntu Server. It’s just not a Linux distro I personally have much fondness for.
phaer 4y ago
What do you mean "have been trying to make zfs happen"? ZFS is used in production in many places.
knaekhoved 4y ago
When you say "normally", do you mean "badly, with fsck"? ZFS is growing incredibly quickly in popularity, and the only reason it's not the dominant filesystem already is because A) it took linux a long time to add support, and only dedicated appliance vendors had the will and ability to move to freebsd and B) macos was going to switch to zfs in the late '00s, but they got scared off by oracle's legal shenanigans, which seems to no longer be a relevant factor.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  > A) it took linux a long time to add support Linux has no support for ZFS. This is an out-of-tree patch set and therefor a no-go for most including myself. ZFS intentionally has a terrible license and is owned by Oracle. People are free to do what they want but I wish all the time wasted on it could have been put in something more interesting.
  - erk__ 4y ago
    As with most thinks in the linux world it depends on who builds your upstream. ZFS is in the kernel distributed by Ubuntu which is one of the largest distributions. Linux is unlike Eg freebsd not a monolithic operating system, but only a kernel so it is in my opinion not really right to say that it has no support.
    - PlutoIsAPlanet 4y ago
      > but only a kernel so it is in my opinion not really right to say that it has no support. The kernel has no native support for ZFS. Ubuntu may ship with ZFS, but that's one distro. Meanwhile, RHEL etc won't even touch it. On Linux, XFS dominates and likely will continue to dominate the server world, meanwhile btrfs will slowly erase ext4 in the desktop side of things. Android/Embedded have always used their own different filesystems so it's irrelevant there.
      - throw0101c 4y ago
        > The kernel has no native support for ZFS. Neither does it have accelerated Nvidia card support that could be used for things like HPC/AI/ML. Yet I'm administrating an entire cluster of Ubuntu machines with cards just fine. We generally use the "nvidia-driver-NNN-server" package. If you want to live ideologically pure no one is going to stop you, but someone of us need to get work done.
magicalhippo 4y ago
> people have been trying to make zfs happen for what… two decades now? When players like AWS provides ZFS as one of four alternatives in their "filesystem as a service"[1], I'd say we're beyond "trying to make zfs happen". Not to mention the PB worth of data others[2] rely on ZFS to keep safe. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/ https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/ [2]: https://openzfs.org/wiki/Companies https://openzfs.org/wiki/Companies

I mean you can’t maintain ZFS normally, and people have been trying to make zfs happen for what… two decades now?

by nailer 4y ago

I mean you can’t maintain ZFS normally, and people have been trying to make zfs happen for what… two decades now?

jacob019 4y ago

I guess the trolls are out today. Thought I was on Reddit for a minute.

hnlmorg 4y ago

I don’t understand why you’re being snarky. ZFS has been hugely successful since it’s release, and continues to be successful even now. The reason why it’s popular is precisely because it’s easy to maintain.

nailer 4y ago
Not sure why you’d consider criticism of ZFS to he snark. Running any filesystem outside the mainline kernel is a bunch of extra effort and I’m sure as a ZFS user you’d know that. I’m not sure how ZFS could be “hugely successful” after two decades and still not in the Linux kernel.
- kobalsky 4y ago
  > Running any filesystem outside the mainline kernel is a bunch of extra effort and I’m sure as a ZFS user you’d know that zfs-dkms makes usage simple since openzfs backwards compatible down to 3.xx kernels. no need to mix match zfs with kernel versions anymore. the only drawback is that you may not get to use the lastest kernel until openzfs mantainers give it the thumbs up (no 6.xx compatible release yet), but that's not "a bunch of extra effort". and that's only a problem if you want to be in the bleeding edge. LTS kernel users wouldn't know about it. > I’m not sure how ZFS could be “hugely successful” after two decades and still not in the Linux kernel. "There is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it's OK to do so and treat the end result as GPL'd" -Linus Torvalds sound like a legal issue more than technical.
  - PlutoIsAPlanet 4y ago
    IIRC the kernel module also uses a compatibility layer, which is also unlikely to ever be accepted. So its a technical issue too
  - nailer 4y ago
    LTS kernel users don’t generally have access to ZFS - RHEL won’t touch it with a ten foot pole and very few large organisations use Ubuntu.
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  Linux users are constantly using drivers outside of the mainline kernel. Whether it’s graphics cards, radio drivers (things have gotten better in that regard but Bluetooth is support is still terrible) or FUSE file systems. The difference with ZFS is that the code is kernel-ready but there’s just some licensing worries (understandable ones) that stop it from being mainlined. I’ve been running ZFS on Ubuntu Server for several years now and frankly ZFS is the only part of that entire system that doesn’t suck (in my opinion). I’d switch back to FreeBSD in a heartbeat if I didn’t need Docker support but credit where credit is due, Ubuntu’s ZFS support has been really good. Edit: just to add, I’ve got nothing against anyone who does enjoy Ubuntu Server. It’s just not a Linux distro I personally have much fondness for.

phaer 4y ago

What do you mean "have been trying to make zfs happen"? ZFS is used in production in many places.

knaekhoved 4y ago

When you say "normally", do you mean "badly, with fsck"? ZFS is growing incredibly quickly in popularity, and the only reason it's not the dominant filesystem already is because A) it took linux a long time to add support, and only dedicated appliance vendors had the will and ability to move to freebsd and B) macos was going to switch to zfs in the late '00s, but they got scared off by oracle's legal shenanigans, which seems to no longer be a relevant factor.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> A) it took linux a long time to add support Linux has no support for ZFS. This is an out-of-tree patch set and therefor a no-go for most including myself. ZFS intentionally has a terrible license and is owned by Oracle. People are free to do what they want but I wish all the time wasted on it could have been put in something more interesting.
- erk__ 4y ago
  As with most thinks in the linux world it depends on who builds your upstream. ZFS is in the kernel distributed by Ubuntu which is one of the largest distributions. Linux is unlike Eg freebsd not a monolithic operating system, but only a kernel so it is in my opinion not really right to say that it has no support.
  - PlutoIsAPlanet 4y ago
    > but only a kernel so it is in my opinion not really right to say that it has no support. The kernel has no native support for ZFS. Ubuntu may ship with ZFS, but that's one distro. Meanwhile, RHEL etc won't even touch it. On Linux, XFS dominates and likely will continue to dominate the server world, meanwhile btrfs will slowly erase ext4 in the desktop side of things. Android/Embedded have always used their own different filesystems so it's irrelevant there.
    - throw0101c 4y ago
      > The kernel has no native support for ZFS. Neither does it have accelerated Nvidia card support that could be used for things like HPC/AI/ML. Yet I'm administrating an entire cluster of Ubuntu machines with cards just fine. We generally use the "nvidia-driver-NNN-server" package. If you want to live ideologically pure no one is going to stop you, but someone of us need to get work done.

magicalhippo 4y ago

> people have been trying to make zfs happen for what… two decades now? When players like AWS provides ZFS as one of four alternatives in their "filesystem as a service"[1], I'd say we're beyond "trying to make zfs happen". Not to mention the PB worth of data others[2] rely on ZFS to keep safe. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/ https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/ [2]: https://openzfs.org/wiki/Companies https://openzfs.org/wiki/Companies