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FreeNAS Switching From FreeBSD To Debian Linux
dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."
Release 0.6x:
- User authentication I must add at minimum LDAP authentication... For NIS and RADIUS I must check if it's possible (don't know if it's possible to use PAM for samba).
Release 0.7x:
- Migrate to FreeBSD 7.0 (with ZFS support)
- Testing a new way for configuring/using share:
'Adding a new disk' will automatically initialize it (format under UFS) and mount it (transparent process for the user).
. 'Creating a share'(create a folder on a selected disk), with user/group/quota property on this share
Release 0.8x:
- Adding monitoring features (SNMP, email alerting, etc..) - Adding other features (I18n Web GUI, LCD, disk encryption, etc...)
Release 0.9x:
- Only Bug fixes, no more new features - This step will depend a lot's about the development of the "geom vinum tools". If this tools is not stable at this moment, I will replace it by 'geom mirror' for RAID 1 and by 'geom stripe' for RAID 0.
Release 1.0:
- The D day! - Lot's of documentation: User guide and developers guide.
and...
Date: 2009-09-17 17:23
Sender: votdev
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Anyway, 0.7 seems to be the last version of FreeNAS as it is right at the moment. For the next version the whole system will be recoded (what i'm doing at the moment). There will be no more embedded installs anymore, also the OS will be Debian.
Regards
Volker
By any other definition, this would be a fork. It's not even FreeNAS any more, it will be CoreNAS?
Anyone have more insight into what's REALLY going on with this project?
Isn't the real solution to start a new project for a Linux-based NAS solution and leave FreeNAS development to those who want to use FreeBSD?
Why downgrade?
Aww I'm just messing with you all. Anyone who had a genuine emotional reaction to the above needs to go outside right now and recommune with nature.
Not only that, but FreeBSD is a far more reliable and higher-quality core than even Debian could ever hope to be.
The FreeBSD development process and team is far more integrated and centralized. This has resulted in a codebase that is much cleaner than what we see in the more distributed development model non-BSD open source software (including Linux).
Changes and new features go through a strenuous review process before they're admitted to the FreeBSD codebase. If code makes it into a public release of FreeBSD, you can be damn sure that it is of an extremely high quality, and has been reviewed by some of the best minds in the field.
This isn't as much the case with Linux and much of the userland software that Debian uses. The quality of the code is generally lower than that of FreeBSD's code, and bugs can creep in much easier.
For something as critical as storage, FreeBSD is clearly the way to go.
You are not inflammatory, you just give more meaning to the position of the first decimal point in the version number than it deserves.
Would the software magically be better if the version was 8.0? 2009.12? 3.141592? 666.123.789? There are many post-1.0 applications that are hopeless, buggy crap, quite a bit of them even commercial, and just as much sub-1.0 software of high stability and overall quality.
In this case, as with many FOSS projects, the sub-1.0 numbers probably mean "there are still features to be added before we consider our work complete". The keywords are "we", "consider" and "complete". "We" != "any other user with a different set of requirements", "consider" != "claim as absolute truth", "complete" != "stable". In other words, a 0.8 version might be perfectly stable, just not feature-complete from the author's point of view, and perfetly sufficient for a subset of potential users with less sophisticated needs.
And why 0.8 and not 2.3.075? My best guess is "because they could and they liked it better."
Case closed, have a good day.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4959
"FreeNAS needs some big modification for removing its present limitation (one of the biggest is the non support of easly users add-ons).
We think that a full-rewriting of the FreeNAS base is needed. From this idea, we will take 2 differents paths:
- Volker will create a new project called "'OpenMediaVault" based on a GNU/Linux using all its experience acquired with all its nights and week-ends spent to improve FreeNAS during the last 2 years. He still continue to work on FreeNAS (and try to share its time with this 2 projects).
- And, a great surprise: iXsystems, a company specialized in professional FreeBSD offers to take FreeNAS under their wings as an open source community driven project. This mean that they will involve their professionals FreeBSD developers to FreeNAS! Their manpower will permit to do a full-rewriting of FreeNAS.
Personally, I come back to actively work in FreeNAS and begin to upgrade it to FreeBSD 8.0 (that is "production ready" for ZFS)."
In this case, as with many FOSS projects, the sub-1.0 numbers probably mean "there are still features to be added before we consider our work complete".
I'd change your definition to "before we consider the initial version of our work complete". This is exactly why I mentioned sub 1.0 version number in a piece of free software. It means there is no marketing department requiring bumping up the version number to impress anybody.
So, as you say, the devs themselves don't think it has the capabilities to be granted the 1.0 number. For whatever reasons they feel.
In other words, a 0.8 version might be perfectly stable, just not feature-complete from the author's point of view, and perfetly sufficient for a subset of potential users with less sophisticated needs.
The key word here is "might". It might, it might not. One also has to consider that even if the system does have all the features you want and seems stable, is it being properly tested and maintained? Has it been around long enough for it to count as some indication that the devs aren't going to just give up on it soon? Is there already a community around it?
All of this goes into choosing a sub-1.0 project for something important. This is what I meant. To depend on an early version of a piece of software is too big of a commitment without the proper analysis of these and many other issues, most of which are not related to the features per se.
And, in any case, it is free software. So anyone can fork the project and continue with it. And it seems there is actually a fork of this project to keep it running over FreeBSD.
None of this changes what I said. If whoever is using it and worried about its future did consider this issues, good for them. If not, well...
-- SouNerd.com
FreeNAS is an "easy-to-use" NAS for old hardware, and light on documentation -- read: it has a wiki; generate your own. So it's going to get a lot of first-timers, however technical, and they're going to have questions about the migration. Hence "concerns" in this sense really shouldn't be read as 'emotional outbursts of near panic', but as inquiries.
Anyhow, the traditional /. missing link for this story would be: http://www.learnfreenas.com/blog/
I guess /. is running the story because it's a migration from a BSD to a Linux. But it's a nice minor news items on an interesting project, and is mostly useful by bringing FreeNAS to the attention of /.'ers who are starting to think about setting up a NAS.
btrfs is not even in the same league as ZFS. ZFS is a LVM and fs replacement, done so data doesn't get lost between those two layers.
btrfs offers nowhere near as many featres. ZFS has 64 bit CRCs (which are EXTREMELY useful for finding changed files on backups.) btrfs has 32 bit CRCs which are almost useless as a way of detecting changes, unless one goes by timestamps alone. btrfs also doesn't have transactions (better hope your UPS is up to snuff), and cannot detect corruption on the fly.
Finally, btrfs has not seen any production use and abuse. No way I'm trusting my data to this filesystem for at least 1-2 years, and by then, there will be a "real" filesystem that is on par with ZFS. At best btrfs is a transitional filesystem, like ext4. It isn't a generation changer like ZFS.