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Ehm... The old OpenSolaris (even before IllumOS) have had "boot environments" based on zfs clones, on GNU/Linux NixOS/Guix System offer "generations" with a net

by kkfx 2y ago

Ehm... The old OpenSolaris (even before IllumOS) have had "boot environments" based on zfs clones, on GNU/Linux NixOS/Guix System offer "generations" with a network of symlinks to obtain the same result. This distro honestly sound like btrfs: an answer of those fanatically convinced their model is right and others really different are wrong. I state this because btrfs/stratis vs zfs "a rampant layer violation" (for those who remember) was the perfect example of a devs reactionary cohort who try, fails and even fails to recognize their failure, trying to state that anything new is bad, their old beloved way is the best. Honestly package managers, boot process and installers are RELIC from another era and most fails to understand that. Declarative systems on top of modern storage like zfs (witch is modern since the others are stuck in the '80s even if born after zfs) or hammer (DragonFly BSD log-based fs like the old Linux nilfs2, but with much less of it's garbage collection issues and much more useful than "modern" ffs used on Android and alike) are "the future" since more than a decades but most try to ignore that sticking with relics and some try to denied they are the future creating monsters from stratis to docker, passing through snap/appimage/flatpacks etc all do denied a substantial change who simplify ENORMOUSLY anything just because such revolution will empower users and operations instead of the service industries and devs under Silicon Valley mode dummy-Toyoda-alike managers slavery command. If you do not understand try to visualize how simple is to build a custom ISO with NixOS/Guix System, describe an easy to replicate system, orchestrate your hosts and handling their storage with zfs send-able snapshots. If you succeed you'll understand that AT HOME, on much smaller iron, you can do more than a k8s deploy, with much more resilience and much less effort. Now try to imaging it on scale: how many companies will remain on someone else computer (aka the cloud) with such systems common and spread?

tecleandor 2y ago
Well, the result is kind of similar, but the way of doing it is different. IIRC OpenSolaris (and other derivations) had a writable root but did ZFS snapshots on changes, kind of similar as Ubuntu was (crudely) doing with ZSys for a while. I would rather use zfsbootmenu in Linux. In this case (and other similar distros), it has a read only root, and does overlays over it and/or running things inside containers and namespaces. That also allows sandboxing. I haven't thought much about what system I like more. ZFS is easier to me, of course, as I already use it and don't have to change my workflow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- kkfx 2y ago
  > IIRC OpenSolaris (and other derivations) had a writable root but did ZFS snapshots on changes, Not exact, there is SUN zfs auto-snapshot service, but that's for another purpose, a time-machine alike setup at a certain point in time even integrated with nautilus with a right-click menus to see the $volRoot/.zfs/snapshots/* of a specific file/folder, the package manage do clones so you can create different roots and keep or dispose them independently as long as you want. GNU/Linux scripts to wrapper grub-install and package managers try to mimic that but that's not on feature parity at all. Yes, in OpenSolaris/IllumOS the root was/is not read-only, but if you manage the system with IPS it's nearly that, "only" lacking respect of NixOS/Guix System the declarative configuration since IPS (the package manager) was a classic manual one. NixOS/Guix System lack the zfs integration, using a network of symlinks to mount a read-only root out of /{gnu,nix}/store. Doing something like containers, even if done "the right way" (meaning without wasting resources, something not easy on x86 and AFAIK not done by anyone so far) it's pointless because it's a false "security" model typically led to far less safe systems. Even if done properly like OpenSolaris/IllumOS zones, who do not waste much resources at least for storage thanks to zfs dedup, they only waste ram/cpu, it's not a good practice. A safe system is one designed to be safe in every bit, not one were you create "shells", compartments to "keep something potentially unsafe in a sandbox". All have tried this approach have failed.
jasomill 2y ago
FreeBSD also supports ZFS boot environments: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/nluug-zfs-boot-environments-reloaded-2018-11-15.pdf https://vermaden.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/nl...

by kkfx 2y ago

tecleandor 2y ago

Well, the result is kind of similar, but the way of doing it is different. IIRC OpenSolaris (and other derivations) had a writable root but did ZFS snapshots on changes, kind of similar as Ubuntu was (crudely) doing with ZSys for a while. I would rather use zfsbootmenu in Linux. In this case (and other similar distros), it has a read only root, and does overlays over it and/or running things inside containers and namespaces. That also allows sandboxing. I haven't thought much about what system I like more. ZFS is easier to me, of course, as I already use it and don't have to change my workflow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

kkfx 2y ago
> IIRC OpenSolaris (and other derivations) had a writable root but did ZFS snapshots on changes, Not exact, there is SUN zfs auto-snapshot service, but that's for another purpose, a time-machine alike setup at a certain point in time even integrated with nautilus with a right-click menus to see the $volRoot/.zfs/snapshots/* of a specific file/folder, the package manage do clones so you can create different roots and keep or dispose them independently as long as you want. GNU/Linux scripts to wrapper grub-install and package managers try to mimic that but that's not on feature parity at all. Yes, in OpenSolaris/IllumOS the root was/is not read-only, but if you manage the system with IPS it's nearly that, "only" lacking respect of NixOS/Guix System the declarative configuration since IPS (the package manager) was a classic manual one. NixOS/Guix System lack the zfs integration, using a network of symlinks to mount a read-only root out of /{gnu,nix}/store. Doing something like containers, even if done "the right way" (meaning without wasting resources, something not easy on x86 and AFAIK not done by anyone so far) it's pointless because it's a false "security" model typically led to far less safe systems. Even if done properly like OpenSolaris/IllumOS zones, who do not waste much resources at least for storage thanks to zfs dedup, they only waste ram/cpu, it's not a good practice. A safe system is one designed to be safe in every bit, not one were you create "shells", compartments to "keep something potentially unsafe in a sandbox". All have tried this approach have failed.

jasomill 2y ago

FreeBSD also supports ZFS boot environments: https://vermaden.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/nluug-zfs-boot-environments-reloaded-2018-11-15.pdf https://vermaden.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/nl...