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ZFS For Linux Finally Lands In Debian GNU/Linux Repos (softpedia.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the hard-work-pays-off dept.

prisoninmate quotes a report from Softpedia: It took the Debian developers many years to finally be able to ship a working version of ZFS for Linux on Debian GNU/Linux. For those not in the known, ZFS on Linux is the official OpenZFS implementation for Linux, which promises to offer native ZFS filesystem support for any Linux kernel-based operating system, currently supporting Arch Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, openSUSE, and now Debian. And it looks like their ZFS for Linux implementation borrows a lot of patches from Ubuntu, at least according to the changelog for zfs-linux 0.6.5.6-2, the version that is now available in the unstable channel for Debian users to install and test.

13 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Bunking with Hans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I notice that this article was submitted by prisoninmate, yet the filesystem in discussion is ZFS, not ReiserFS.

    What gives?

  2. Re:I'll probably hold out a while longer. by ArchieBunker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll use it with FreeBSD.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  3. Don't Bother with ZFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you want the benefits of ZFS use FreeBSD. It's a much nicer/cleaner OS than Debian or the other 3000 linux distros in use cases that require ZFS.

    1. Re: Don't Bother with ZFS by reg · · Score: 3, Informative

      Some people would say that is the biggest strength of freebsd... In fact that is the primary concern of developers worried about moves to package the freebsd base system. Regards, -Jeremy

    2. Re:Don't Bother with ZFS by poet · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you are building a server, then file system absolutely matters.

      Ext4 is fine but limited and not nearly as mature or stable as XFS. When building a server that *matters*.

      ZFS blows the doors off of anything the Open Source community has *ever* built (in terms of file systems). It has features that Linux users have been desperate for. For example, file system snapshots and rollbacks. Yes, you can do it with LVM2. Guess what? LVM2 sucks at it (in comparison to ZFS).

      --
      Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
    3. Re:Don't Bother with ZFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Because ZFS is actually part of the kernel structure of FreeBSD. Linux puts the filesystem in userspace which makes ZFS in userspace inefficient. (Hell all filesystems in user space are inefficient, but ZFS doubly so because of what ZFS is.)

      ZFS, in short is a bullet-proof file system, if setup correctly. Unfortunately the VAST majority of use cases are overkill. A proper ZFS setup would require no less than 4 mechanical drives and 8GB of RAM. Just for the file system. Because underneath ZFS is essentially a very smart software RAID 6 and journaling system. So you can pretty much kill one drive in a 4 drive system and it will still function as if it was still there, no "degraded mode" like in a hardware raid. Then when you replace the drive, or upgrade it to a larger drive it just works seamlessly, no week-long rebuilds with impaired performance.

      Compare that to ext2/ext3/ext4/UFS/exFAT/NTFS which are nothing but filesystems, some with journaling.

    4. Re:Don't Bother with ZFS by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      > ZFS, in short is a bullet-proof file system, if setup correctly. ... Because underneath ZFS is essentially a very smart software RAID 6 and journaling system.

      Well, considering hardware RAID has a silent corruption bug, I'd say it more then "essentially" :-) Especially with Raid-Z2 and Raid-Z3.

      See Pages 13 .. 18
      ZFS The Last Word in FileSystems

      Measurements at CERN
      * Wrote a simple application to write/verify 1GB file
      * Write 1MB, sleep 1 second, etc. until 1GB has been written
      * Read 1MB, verify, sleep 1 second, etc.
      * Ran on 3000 rack servers with HW RAID card
      * After 3 weeks, found 152 instances of silent data corruption
      * Previously thought âoeeverything was fineâ
      * HW RAID only detected âoenoisyâ data errors

  4. Re: Did you know? by Sasayaki · · Score: 2

    "The lack of evidence for this claim is evidence of a cover-up to hide the evidence of this claim, and is therefore evidence for this claim" is basically the prime argument for every conspiracy theory argument ever.

    --
    Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
  5. Re:Love ZFS still hoping for BTRFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Linux and BSD accounting for memory currently in use for ZFS ARC differs.

  6. Why, or why not ZFS? by lalleglad · · Score: 2

    The inclusion of ZFS support into Linux has been discussed for so long I can't remember the first time anymore.

    And what I still can't understand is, and please excuse me my ignorance:

    1. What is it I can do with ZFS in Linux that is so important?
    2. What is it I can't do without ZFS?

    I am not saying that we shouldn't support ZFS, because I think we should eventually support anything and everything, but why all the fuss?

    1. Re:Why, or why not ZFS? by Tapewolf · · Score: 5, Informative

      What is it I can do with ZFS in Linux that is so important?
      What is it I can't do without ZFS?

      It does a lot, but the features I'm interested in are the protection against bit-rot. Specifically, if you set up a mirrored pair of disks in a ZFS pool, it will checksum everything on both sides of the mirror.
      When the array is checked (scrubbed), it verifies the checksums. If there is a mismatch because the data has glitched on the media, the checksum won't be valid on one disk, but it will be valid on the other disk so it can repair it. If there's a mismatch in a more conventional mirrored pair, the controller wouldn't really have a way to know which one is correct.

      This capability is also in BTRFS, but much has been written about how BTRFS is still experimental. Also, last time I looked, BTRFS was only available for Linux - with ZFS it would be possible to migrate to FreeBSD if Linux does jump the shark.

      The other thing is that the scrubbing process is done in the background. My main data pool is a pair of 4TB disks, which was EXT4 to begin with, then BTRFS and now ZFS. The system is a desktop which is powered down at night. Every 180 boots it would run FSCK, which took something like 2 hours to run on EXT4, during which the system was unusable. With BTRFS and ZFS, the scrubbing takes place while the pool is mounted. So yes, you can do this with BTRFS as well, but ZFS is the more proven option of the two.

  7. Re:GPL ? GNU/Linux ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The SFC is not the be-all end-all legal authority on the GPL. The SFLC, which has been around much longer than the SFC, has a differing opinion on the issue. The only thing for sure is that a resolution will be adjudicated in the courts and not press releases.

  8. Re:Love ZFS still hoping for BTRFS by Lord+Crc · · Score: 2

    Just create another vdev with the new disks and add it to the pool. Voila, more space in the pool.