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OpenZFS is on an exceedingly short list of software in my life that I actually trust to do what it's supposed to. Where most software just up and falls over eve

OpenZFS is on an exceedingly short list of software in my life that I actually trust to do what it's supposed to. Where most software just up and falls over every so often, ZFS chugs along, day in and day out. Then ZFS has one bug and everyone starts acting like the sky is falling. And sure, it was a bad bug, but you had to be pretty unlucky to trigger it, and it was present in ZFS for all of a month. Meanwhile, people's Google Drives are apparently forgetting the last the eight months of changes. OpenZFS is fine.

jmbwell 3y ago
I’m sure for those who encountered it, it’s not easy to dismiss. But it does seem like this might be getting a little extra attention perhaps because it’s relatively uncommon to hear about a flaw in ZFS at all. Drawbacks and tradeoffs abound, but outright “bugs” doesn’t seem like something ZFS is generally associated with.
chungy 3y ago
Block cloning happened to expose this bug easier, but it seems like this bug might actually date back to the very beginning of ZFS with Sun, with the opportunities to trigger it being so rare, that nobody had noticed until now. I suppose it's still a bad bug, but it goes to show that file systems are complicated beasts, practically impossible to test all the ways they can be put through the wringer, and bugs like this can hide for 17 years before being unearthed.
- evanjrowley 3y ago
  > it seems like this bug might actually date back to the very beginning of ZFS with Sun Looks like you might be right about that. The oldest commit referenced in the fix [0] was from 2006[1], which was ~5 months after Sun released ZFS. Glad this is fixed! [0] https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/15571 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/15571 [1] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/c543ec060d https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/c543ec060d

jmbwell 3y ago

I’m sure for those who encountered it, it’s not easy to dismiss. But it does seem like this might be getting a little extra attention perhaps because it’s relatively uncommon to hear about a flaw in ZFS at all. Drawbacks and tradeoffs abound, but outright “bugs” doesn’t seem like something ZFS is generally associated with.

chungy 3y ago

Block cloning happened to expose this bug easier, but it seems like this bug might actually date back to the very beginning of ZFS with Sun, with the opportunities to trigger it being so rare, that nobody had noticed until now. I suppose it's still a bad bug, but it goes to show that file systems are complicated beasts, practically impossible to test all the ways they can be put through the wringer, and bugs like this can hide for 17 years before being unearthed.

evanjrowley 3y ago
> it seems like this bug might actually date back to the very beginning of ZFS with Sun Looks like you might be right about that. The oldest commit referenced in the fix [0] was from 2006[1], which was ~5 months after Sun released ZFS. Glad this is fixed! [0] https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/15571 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/pull/15571 [1] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/c543ec060d https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/commit/c543ec060d