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Linus: Don't Use ZFS

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Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#71

Post by the8472 »

Youden wrote: post #56
jessant wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does btrfs met your requirements?

I've tried btrfs without much luck. btrfs still has a write hole for RAID5/6 (the kind I primarily use) [0] and has since at least 2012. For a filesystem to have a bug leading to dataloss unpatched for over 8 years is just plain unacceptable. I've also had issues even without RAID, particularly after power outages. Not minor issues but "your filesystem is gone now, sorry" issues. [0]: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/in…

It's not a bug, but an unimplemented feature. They never made any promise that raid5 is production-ready.

Pretty much all software-raid systems suffer from it unless they explicitly patch over it via journaling. Hardware raid gets away with it if it has battery backups, if they don't they suffer from exactly the same problem.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#72

Post by [deleted] »

bromonkey wrote: post #27

"Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me." - Linus I have a strong feeling Linus has never actually used ZFS.

[deleted]

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#73

Post by paulddraper »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #70
Jonnax wrote: post #4

Here's his reasoning: "honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it's ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL'd. Other people think it can be ok to merge ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface makes it ok, and that's their decision. But…

> And I'm not at all interested in some "ZFS shim layer" thing either If there is no "approved" method for creating Linux drivers under licenses other than the GPL, that seems like a major problem that Linux should be working to address. Expecting all Linux drivers to be GPL-licensed is unrealistic and just leads to crappy user experiences. nVidia is never going to release full-featured GPL'd drivers, and even corpor…

There's a unique variable here and that's Oracle.

That shouldn't actually matter; it should just depend on the license. But millions in legal fees says otherwise.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#74

Post by kirstenbirgit »

Linus should stick to his kernel and git. It feels like he has very little knowledge about computing outside of those areas. That would also make his abrasive way of communicating easier to tolerate. He mostly comes across as the typical autistic savant type that's great at an extremely specific area, but only that.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#75

Post by wstrange »

maximente wrote: post #58

i wouldn't use ZFS either. my guess is 90% of ZFS users have never run failure scenarios and grappled with potential failure modes of ZFS, nor even know that you really need ECC RAM to run ZFS without fear of existential data corruption due to bit flips. furthermore, the allure of ZFS means people aren't testing their disaster plans until it's too late, bc ZFS is "resilient". lastly, data recovery is expensive as all…

So better to use ext4 and let it silently corrupt your data?

ZFS does indeed catch memory errors. If you are running without ECC, most filesystems will happily write that corrupt data to disk. Unless the corruption is in the metadata, you will be none the wiser.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#76

Post by m463 »

anon73044 wrote: post #69
m463 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me." When he says that, I think on the $500 million Sun spent on advertising java.

Sun isn't going to sue anyone into oblivion any time soon, but Oracle sure will

I was thinking more of "the buzzword" bit, and how it got to be such a well known technology.

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#77

Post by gh123man »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #70
Jonnax wrote: post #4

Here's his reasoning: "honestly, there is no way I can merge any of the ZFS efforts until I get an official letter from Oracle that is signed by their main legal counsel or preferably by Larry Ellison himself that says that yes, it's ok to do so and treat the end result as GPL'd. Other people think it can be ok to merge ZFS code into the kernel and that the module interface makes it ok, and that's their decision. But…

> And I'm not at all interested in some "ZFS shim layer" thing either If there is no "approved" method for creating Linux drivers under licenses other than the GPL, that seems like a major problem that Linux should be working to address. Expecting all Linux drivers to be GPL-licensed is unrealistic and just leads to crappy user experiences. nVidia is never going to release full-featured GPL'd drivers, and even corpor…

I am also not an expert in this space - but if I understand correctly the reason the linux Nvidia driver sucks so much is that it is not GPL'd (or open source at all).

There is little incentive for Nvidia to maintain a linux specific driver, but because it is closed source the community cannot improve/fix it.

> Why are all drivers expected to use the GPL?

I think the answer to this is: drivers are expect to use the GPL if they want to be mainlined and maintained - as Linus said: other than that you are "on your own".

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#78

Post by anon73044 »

akerro wrote: post #8
Ygg2 wrote: post #3

Probably should add Java to that list. The sooner Oracle stops existing, the better.

Google and Microsoft too!

Microsoft and Google contribute more to open source than any other company.

Source: https://www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/article/microsoft-ma... https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/google-remains-the-top-ope...

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#79

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #73
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I'm not at all interested in some "ZFS shim layer" thing either If there is no "approved" method for creating Linux drivers under licenses other than the GPL, that seems like a major problem that Linux should be working to address. Expecting all Linux drivers to be GPL-licensed is unrealistic and just leads to crappy user experiences. nVidia is never going to release full-featured GPL'd drivers, and even corpor…

There's a unique variable here and that's Oracle. That shouldn't actually matter; it should just depend on the license. But millions in legal fees says otherwise.

[deleted]

Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS

#80

Post by jessant »

reacharavindh wrote: post #54
jessant wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty reliable these days. Are you commenting based upon personal experience? If so, when was it that you used btrfs?

When it comes to file systems “pretty reliable” these days does not sound very good. Reliability had to have been a fundamental requirement for design of a file system. If not, it sounds like putting lipstick on a pig. Redhat throwing towel on their support for development does not instill confidence either. Nothing personally against Btrfs. Just an end user making a file system choice saying what I care about.

re Redhat deprecating btrfs:

> People are making a bigger deal of this than it is. Since I left Red Hat in 2012 there hasn't been another engineer to pick up the work, and it is _a lot_ of work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14909843

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