The Linux kernel broke user space by egregiously decreeing that kernel modules cannot use certain CPU unless they are GPL. Derived work, my ass.
Linus: Don't Use ZFS
261–270 of 571 posts
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty simple, once they expose such an API they'd have to support it forever, hindering options for refactoring (that happens all the time). With all the drivers in the tree, they can simply update every driver at the same time to whatever new in-kernel API they're rolling out or removing. And being that the majority of drivers would arguably have to be GPL anyway, and thus open-source, the advantages of keepin…
You know, come to think of it, is there anything stopping Linux from having a... FKSE (Filesystem in Kernel SpacE) standard API? Presumably, such a thing would just be a set of kernel APIs that would parallel the FUSE APIs, but would exist for (DKMS) kernel modules to use, rather than for userland processes to use. Due to the parallel, it would only be the work of a couple hours to port any existing FUSE server over…
The problem is that nobody is interested in doing that and that's why we are in this situation in the first place. If Oracle wanted to integrate ZFS into Linux they would just relicense it.
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#263ZFS threatens the power of Linux and therefore Linus’ job. That’s the long and short of it. Mac and Windows have been able to maintain stable interfaces for binary kernel drivers for 20 years.
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#264I'll give up Linux on my servers before I give up ZFS especially so given the recent petulant attitude that broke API compatibility in the LTS branch just to spite the ZFS developers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186458 compete honestly on technical merit, rather than pulling dirty tricks that you'd expect of Oracle or 1990's MS
Yeah...I use FreeBSD for file servers because I don't have to even pay attention this constant ZFSonLinux drama. I treat them like almost like appliances. Linux servers are more than happy to use them on the back-end.
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here are his reasons for generally avoiding ZFS from what I consider most important to least. - The kernel team may break it at any time, and won't care if they do. - It doesn't seem to be well-maintained. - Performance is not that great compared to the alternatives. - Using it opens you up to the threat of lawsuits from Oracle. Given history, this is a real threat. (This is one that should be high for Linus but not…
None of these are good reasons to purposely hinder the optional use of ZFS as a third party module by users, which is what Linux is doing.
This want a case of "purposely hinder", but rather the zfs nodule broke because of some kernel changes. The kernel is careful to never break userspace and never break its own merged modules. But if you're a third-party module then you're on your own. The kernel developers can't be responsible for maintaining compatibility with your stuff.
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here are his reasons for generally avoiding ZFS from what I consider most important to least. - The kernel team may break it at any time, and won't care if they do. - It doesn't seem to be well-maintained. - Performance is not that great compared to the alternatives. - Using it opens you up to the threat of lawsuits from Oracle. Given history, this is a real threat. (This is one that should be high for Linus but not…
A former employer was threatened by Oracle because some downloads for the (only free for noncommercial use) VirtualBox Extension Pack came from an IP block owned by the organization. Home users are probably safe, but Oracle's harassment engine has incredible reach.
My employer straight up banned the use of VirtualBox entirely _just in case_. They'd rather pay for VMWare Fusion licenses than deal with any potential crap from Oracle.
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are no (stable) alternatives. BTRFS certainly not, as it's "under heavy development"¹ (since... forever). Note that they don't mean "it's unstable," just "there are significant improvements between versions." Most importantly: > The filesystem disk format is stable; this means it is not expected to change unless there are very strong reasons to do so. If there is a format change, filesystems which implement t…
There's differing opinions of BTRFS's suitability in production - it's the default filesystem of SUSE on one hand, on the other RedHat has deprecated BTRFS support because they see it as not being production ready and they don't see it being production ready in the near future. They also feel that the more legacy linux filesystems have added features to compete.
It's also the default file system of millions of Synology NASes running in consumer hands (although Synology shimmed on their own RAID5/6 support)
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm baffled by such arguments. > It doesn't seem to be well-maintained. The last commit is from 3 hours ago: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/commits/master . They have dozens of commits per month. The last minor release, 0.8, brought significant improvements (my favorite: FS-level encryption). Or maybe this is referred to the 5.0 kernel (initial) incompatibility? That wasn't the ZFS dev team's fault. > Performance…
bcachefs should be heavily supported, it doesn't get nearly enough for what it supposes to do: https://www.patreon.com/bcachefs
Honestly just use ZFS. We've wasted enough effort over obscure licensing minutia.
Re: Linus: Don't Use ZFS
#269So what would be a viable ZFS alternative on a Linux based NAS I'm planning to build in a few months?
I'm currently running Nas4Free on a giant rack sized thing I built using a Mini-ITX Atom board years ago, and ZFS works like a charm, but I also intend to move some day to the ARM architecture which unfortunately the *BSD based NAS software doesnt support (yet).
I'm tempted by this smaller hardware in particular: https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/intro/
So far the only viable option would be Openmediavault which supports ZFS only through external modules which I'd be not entirely comfortable with. I'd only arrange disks as RAID1 pairs however.