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I guess someone’s mentioned how great ZFS is and this page is here to prove the opposite. Every file system has bugs.

rincebrain 3y ago
I mean, the spreadsheet was to illustrate how many bugs this feature had and how unfixed they are. Source: it's my document, though I didn't submit it here, and haven't updated it in a while after I gave up trying to convince other people about how bad an idea using it is.
- transpute 3y ago
  Thanks for creating the spreadsheet. Discovered while banging head against docs and builds. The feature should be emblazoned as experimental and advertised as seeking developers/funding, to protect ZFS reputation.
transpute 3y ago
Were the "stale" / timed-out bugs due to user or developer attrition?
- nubinetwork 3y ago
  https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/10769 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/10769 I wasn't a fan of that change, it serves no purpose other than to sweep issues under the carpet (which can be said of any project that uses one). Which is funny because they have just as many open issues now as they did when it was implemented. Had they had better user/developer relations and documentation, it's possible that a lot of open issues would have never been opened. (edit: or remained open otherwise)
  - transpute 3y ago
    That's a troubling policy signal, with impact beyond encryption.
    - nubinetwork 3y ago
      To be fair, I believe the test suite has improved over the years, but adding new features requires meticulous caution to make sure you don't miss any edge cases, at least on the functional side. But then you occasionally get bugs like https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/15453 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/15453 which can't easily be caught by test suites.
stephen_g 3y ago
ZFS is great and generally stable and mature, but it seems like the support for encryption, a buggy optional feature, was merged in without enough scrutiny and the problems are still unfixed. All the advice you'll get from anybody experienced (which I am not very with ZFS, but have been setting up some NAS projects with it so am researching) is to not even touch encryption with a 10 foot pole. As long as you don't enable it (and I expect a lot of GUI driven NAS products probably don't even let you through the GUI or warn you if they do), you're good.
- didntcheck 3y ago
  Which is a shame, since zero-trust zfs send is a pretty nice feature, if it could be relied upon
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    Yeah, true, I want to use it for backups but unfortunately I can't given the instability!

I mean, the spreadsheet was to illustrate how many bugs this feature had and how unfixed they are. Source: it's my document, though I didn't submit it here, and haven't updated it in a while after I gave up trying to convince other people about how bad an idea using it is.

transpute 3y ago
Thanks for creating the spreadsheet. Discovered while banging head against docs and builds. The feature should be emblazoned as experimental and advertised as seeking developers/funding, to protect ZFS reputation.

transpute 3y ago

Were the "stale" / timed-out bugs due to user or developer attrition?

nubinetwork 3y ago
https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/10769 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/10769 I wasn't a fan of that change, it serves no purpose other than to sweep issues under the carpet (which can be said of any project that uses one). Which is funny because they have just as many open issues now as they did when it was implemented. Had they had better user/developer relations and documentation, it's possible that a lot of open issues would have never been opened. (edit: or remained open otherwise)
- transpute 3y ago
  That's a troubling policy signal, with impact beyond encryption.
  - nubinetwork 3y ago
    To be fair, I believe the test suite has improved over the years, but adding new features requires meticulous caution to make sure you don't miss any edge cases, at least on the functional side. But then you occasionally get bugs like https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/15453 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/15453 which can't easily be caught by test suites.

stephen_g 3y ago

ZFS is great and generally stable and mature, but it seems like the support for encryption, a buggy optional feature, was merged in without enough scrutiny and the problems are still unfixed. All the advice you'll get from anybody experienced (which I am not very with ZFS, but have been setting up some NAS projects with it so am researching) is to not even touch encryption with a 10 foot pole. As long as you don't enable it (and I expect a lot of GUI driven NAS products probably don't even let you through the GUI or warn you if they do), you're good.

didntcheck 3y ago
Which is a shame, since zero-trust zfs send is a pretty nice feature, if it could be relied upon
- stephen_g 3y ago
  Yeah, true, I want to use it for backups but unfortunately I can't given the instability!