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Apple Looking at ZFS For Mac OS X

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the only-the-shadow-knows dept.

Udo Schmitz writes "Apples Filesystem Development Manager, Chris Emura, is looking into porting Sun Microsystems' file system ZFS to OS X. At least this is what Sun's Eric Kustarz states on the ZFS mailing list. Is this a glimpse of hope for all those of us who think HFS+ isn't up to par for a 21st century OS? Next thing you know and they'll rewrite the Finder ..."

6 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Comparison of Filesystems. by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Have a look at wikipedia's Comparison of file systems page to see the difference between ZFS & HFS+.

    The main advantage for HFS+ users (I mean who's really going to need a 16,000,000 Gigabyte file) would be the introduction of journalling beyond metadata (and even this is unlikely to be useful to most people).

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    1. Re:Comparison of Filesystems. by captnitro · · Score: 5, Informative

      Since OS X.3, I believe the kernel has defragmented files under 20 MB on the fly.

  2. Re:This is meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ZFS actually is a ver good file system.

    Here is the ars technica low-down on what ZFS does differently and why that's such a good thing.

    arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051117-5595.html

  3. Re:HFS+ vs. UFS vs. ZFS by rsmith-mac · · Score: 4, Informative
    From the AirPort page:
    This issue is resolved in Mac OS X 10.1 and later.

    It's the same deal with the problem with Classic. All 3 items you link to are for OSX 10.0 and have been fixed since then. The number of UFS problems now is minute compared to then.

  4. Re:HFS is big endian by BurntNickel · · Score: 4, Informative

    Currently on intel macs, all disk IO has to be byte swapped, degrading performance. ZFS on the other hand will store data in the machines native format.

    While the non-native byte ordering does slow performance this only applies to metadata and not the contents of the files.

    --
    And the knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them...
  5. Re:Think you'll get it? by booch · · Score: 4, Informative

    I agree that there was a lot in VMS that the world has "lost". I think that modern UNIX implementations should look at what VMS had, to reuse some of the good ideas that we still have not replicated. My favorite is the security system -- various small capabilities that each user (or program) could be granted. And the super-user only had one capability by default: the ability to grant privileges. I also appreciated the automated versioning, with the ability to pull up a previous version from the filesystem without having to use any special programs.

    And yes, I know that Windows NT is sort of descended from VMS. But I've not seen many of the concepts make it up to userland cleanly implemented.

    And I'm also aware that VMS is still around. It may not be on life-support yet, but it's clearly in the nursing home already.

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    Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.