Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Making ZFS and DTrace Work On Ubuntu Linux

Posted by timothy on from the crossing-the-platforms dept.

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."

7 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. ZFS on Linux by dnaumov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So what am I supposed to do about all the kernel panics and absurdly slow IO and transfer speeds?

    1. Re:ZFS on Linux by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 4, Interesting
      +1, After having used linux daily for more than 14 years, I have recently ventured in to the BSD land. And I like it a lot.

      If you've been playing in Linux land, and never bothered with any of the *BSD, do yourself a favor and install one of the BSDs in a VM. You'll not be disappointed.

      --
      for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
  2. Huh? by Score+Whore · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So there's a list of 10 steps to install zfs and that's it? Didn't do anything? zfs/zpool upgrade -v? zvols? zfs send/receive? snapshots? rollback? Scrub? Performance tests? Compression? Encryption? Can I export my pool from my Solaris 11 SPARC system and import it into linux, make some changes and then move it? L2ARC support? Separate ZIL support? Case sensitivity?

    I know this isn't exactly a great comment, but is it at all possible that someone make a judgement as to the value and truth of a submission before putting it up?

    1. Re:Huh? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It performs fairly well in my testing so far. Yes. Yes. Yes, if the pool version is below the currently supported Linux port's version (28). Yes. Yes.

      Granted, we haven't been using it long, but so far it's been fairly stable and capable.

      http://zfsonlinux.org/

  3. Re:Issue is not implementation by Liberum+Vir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The whole GPL/CDDL issue is still around, however, since the CDDL code is not added to the Linux Kernel, but instead a loadable kernel module distributed separately, it is possible to satisfy both the GPL of the Linux Kernel and the CDDL of ZFS and DTrace. Because of the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL, you could not distribute a complete system using of Linux, ZFS, and DTrace. You can, however, distribute packages to allow people to build it themselves. This is what the authors of these projects have done.

  4. Now that it's been Oracled... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been running ZFS on FreeBSD for a few years and it's lived up to its promises, but I think I'll be migrating off of it. The problem is that I trusted Sun. They did some goofy things, but you knew where you stood with them. They release ZFS under an Open Source license? You could take them at face value and know that you were allowed to use it. But now that Oracle holds the reins, I have no desire to depend on any Sun-borne projects anymore. Yes, ZFS is Open Source. So was Java, and Google just spent roughly a bazillion dollars defending themselves for using something that looked like it. I can't afford to take on a case like that.

    Other than the Oracle-owned btrfs, what ZFS alternatives are available and ready for use today?

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  5. Used both on Linux: ZFS is great, Dtrace unstable by GrumpyOldMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I use ZFS on Ubuntu 11.10 in "production" for my main workstation and fileserver with a 3x3TB raidz pool with an L2 ARC. I/O is blindingly fast, and it has been rock solid. It serves about 10 machines, and feels an order of magnitude faster than the md/lvm based xfs array it replaced.

    I write 10GbE drivers for Linux, MacOSX, FreeBSD and Solaris. I make heavy use of Dtrace for both debugging and performance analysis. I feel naked without Dtrace, and I've used the linux dtrace a few times for debugging. Unfortunately, I've never had dtrace run on linux for more than a few minutes without crashing a machine. This is not necessarily bad, and often just a few seconds is all I need. But I would never run linux Dtrace on any production machine, whereas I use it all the time under Solaris / FreeBSD and MacOSX and often have customers run Dtrace probes on those OSes to diagnose issues.