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> Case study: recovery of a severely corrupted 12 TB multi-device pool, plus constructive gap analysis and reference tool set #1107 Please don't be btrfs pleas

> Case study: recovery of a severely corrupted 12 TB multi-device pool, plus constructive gap analysis and reference tool set #1107 Please don't be btrfs please don't be btrfs please don't be btrfs...

toaste_ 6mo ago
I mean, the only other option was bcachefs, which might have been funny if this LLM-generated blogpost were written by the OpenClaw instance the developer has decided is sentient: https://www.reddit.com/r/bcachefs/comments/1rblll1/the_blog_of_an_llm_saying_its_owned_by_kent_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bcachefs/comments/1rblll1/the_blog_... But no. It was btrfs. As a side note, it's somewhat impressive that an LLM agent was able to produce a suite of custom tools that were apparently successfully used to recover some data from a corrupted btrfs array, even ad-hoc.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
  It could be ZFS. I'd be much more surprised, but it can still have bugs.
  - praseodym 6mo ago
    ZFS on Linux has had many bugs over the years, notably with ZFS-native encryption and especially sending/receiving encrypted volumes. Another issue is that using swap on ZFS is still guaranteed to hang the kernel in low memory scenarios, because ZFS needs to allocate memory to write to swap.
    - nubinetwork 6mo ago
      The swap issue isn't zfs' fault though, it works just fine on FreeBSD and illumos... its a issue with how the Linux kernel handles things.
    - badgersnake 6mo ago
      The zero copy that zero copied unencrypted blocks onto encrypted file systems was genius. It’s almost like they don’t test.
curt15 6mo ago
Where are all of the ZFS corruption stories? Or are there simply fewer of those?
- Neikius 6mo ago
  Not sure about the stats, but it does feel like there are fewer. So from what I know encryption and sending fs state had bugs in ZFS. And on btrfs anything above raid1 (5,6 etc) has had very serious bugs. Actually read an opinion somewhere (don't remember where) raid5,6 on btrfs cannot work due to on-disk format being just bad for the case. I guess this is why raid1c3/c4 is being promoted and worked on now?
- nubinetwork 6mo ago
  Most of them are from new features that didn't get a proper shakedown test, like encryption.
- abrookewood 6mo ago
  I love ZFS, but have been corrected a couple of times when I said it was bomb proof. Can't remember the details, but it has served me faithfully for 10 years or so? Plus the bugs were pretty niche if I recall correctly. Edit: found some comments below: ZFS on Linux has had many bugs over the years, notably with ZFS-native encryption and especially sending/receiving encrypted volumes. Another issue is that using swap on ZFS is still guaranteed to hang the kernel in low memory scenarios, because ZFS needs to allocate memory to write to swap.

toaste_ 6mo ago

I mean, the only other option was bcachefs, which might have been funny if this LLM-generated blogpost were written by the OpenClaw instance the developer has decided is sentient: https://www.reddit.com/r/bcachefs/comments/1rblll1/the_blog_of_an_llm_saying_its_owned_by_kent_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bcachefs/comments/1rblll1/the_blog_... But no. It was btrfs. As a side note, it's somewhat impressive that an LLM agent was able to produce a suite of custom tools that were apparently successfully used to recover some data from a corrupted btrfs array, even ad-hoc.

yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
It could be ZFS. I'd be much more surprised, but it can still have bugs.
- praseodym 6mo ago
  ZFS on Linux has had many bugs over the years, notably with ZFS-native encryption and especially sending/receiving encrypted volumes. Another issue is that using swap on ZFS is still guaranteed to hang the kernel in low memory scenarios, because ZFS needs to allocate memory to write to swap.
  - nubinetwork 6mo ago
    The swap issue isn't zfs' fault though, it works just fine on FreeBSD and illumos... its a issue with how the Linux kernel handles things.
  - badgersnake 6mo ago
    The zero copy that zero copied unencrypted blocks onto encrypted file systems was genius. It’s almost like they don’t test.

curt15 6mo ago

Where are all of the ZFS corruption stories? Or are there simply fewer of those?

Neikius 6mo ago
Not sure about the stats, but it does feel like there are fewer. So from what I know encryption and sending fs state had bugs in ZFS. And on btrfs anything above raid1 (5,6 etc) has had very serious bugs. Actually read an opinion somewhere (don't remember where) raid5,6 on btrfs cannot work due to on-disk format being just bad for the case. I guess this is why raid1c3/c4 is being promoted and worked on now?
nubinetwork 6mo ago
Most of them are from new features that didn't get a proper shakedown test, like encryption.
abrookewood 6mo ago
I love ZFS, but have been corrected a couple of times when I said it was bomb proof. Can't remember the details, but it has served me faithfully for 10 years or so? Plus the bugs were pretty niche if I recall correctly. Edit: found some comments below: ZFS on Linux has had many bugs over the years, notably with ZFS-native encryption and especially sending/receiving encrypted volumes. Another issue is that using swap on ZFS is still guaranteed to hang the kernel in low memory scenarios, because ZFS needs to allocate memory to write to swap.