Making ZFS and DTrace Work On Ubuntu Linux

New submitter Liberum Vir writes "Many of the people that I talk with who use Solaris-like systems mention ZFS and DTrace as the reasons they simply cannot move to Linux. So, I set out to discover how to make these two technologies work on the latest LTS release of Ubuntu. It turned out to be much easier than I expected. The ports of these technologies have come a long way. If you or someone you know is addicted to a Solaris-like system because of ZFS and DTrace, please, inquire within."

Comments

Re:ZFS on Linux

[stox]

DTrace and ZFS are quite mature running under FreeBSD.

Re:ZFS on Linux

[Liberum Vir]

I haven't done any performance testing so far. My objective with this was just as a proof of concept, if you will. I'm sure, if you are having kernel panics and absurdly slow IO/transfer speeds, the developers would welcome your input to make it better. Personally, I prefer LVM and ext4 for most uses. Again, this was more just to prove that it could be done.

Re:OK Howto article, but missing key points

[Darik]

I just looked at this article as my employer uses Debian and Ubuntu heavily and I've been pushing for ZFS on our file servers. There is no mention of ZFS version, the feature set available, or even a link to the source material.

ZoL is based on ZFS version 28 from the last open Solaris release, and currently integrating Illumos as its upstream.

There isn't much mention of how to use ZFS. I happen to know most commands, but I think this article would be difficult for a beginner even though it seems to be targeted at that demographic.

It looks like the Slashdot editors are doing this blogger a favor by linking to a mostly empty article.

At a minimum, this article should link to the ZoL home page, the ZoL Launchpad page for packages, and maybe the ZFS introduction or another tutorial.

Re:ZFS on Linux

[catmistake]

I used to have very high expectation of OpenSolaris after Ian Murdock became the head of the project... But then Oracle came and destroyed all my hopes.

Good news! Your high expectations and hopes are alive and well at the [open] crossroads of America . They're also welcome at freenode on #openindiana.

Re:ZFS on Linux

[MightyYar]

I have to second this... Debian was always my preference but I tried FreeBSD to get ZFS. For dependencies, ports does some things... differently than APT, but they are similar enough that it won't completely shock your system.

And just like Debian, it is easy to start with an extremely minimal system and only add what you need, so stability and boot speeds are excellent.

I think that Debian is still faster at certain things, though that is subjective.