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ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

ahl.dtrace.org

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Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#131

Post by cryptonector »

ahl wrote: post #123
mixmastamyk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it not open source at that point?

It was! And Apple seemed fine with including DTrace under the CDDL. I’m not sure why Apple wanted some additional arrangement but they did.

The NetApp lawsuit. Apple wanted indemnification, and Sun/Oracle did not want to indemnify Apple.

At the time that NetApp filed its lawsuit I blogged about how ZFS was a straightforward evolution of BSD 4.4's log structured filesystem. I didn't know that to be the case historically, that is, I didn't know if Bonwick was inspired by LFS, but I showed how almost in every way ZFS was a simple evolution of LFS. I showed my blog to Jeff to see how he felt about it, and he didn't say much but he did acknowledge it. The point of that blog was to show that there was prior art and that NetApp's lawsuit was worthless. I pointed it out to Sun's general counsel, too.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#132

Post by cryptonector »

ethbr1 wrote: post #126
ahl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was! And Apple seemed fine with including DTrace under the CDDL. I’m not sure why Apple wanted some additional arrangement but they did.

The argument advanced in the piece isn't without merit -- that ripping out DTrace, if subsequent legal developments demanded it, would be a heck of a lot easier than removing a filesystem that would by then contain massive amounts of customer data. And given what a litigious jackass Larry Ellison / Oracle is, I can't fault Apple for being nervous.

No, it was that Apple wanted to be indemnified in the event that Sun/Oracle lost the NetApp lawsuit.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#133

Post by wkat4242 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #127
ethbr1 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument advanced in the piece isn't without merit -- that ripping out DTrace, if subsequent legal developments demanded it, would be a heck of a lot easier than removing a filesystem that would by then contain massive amounts of customer data. And given what a litigious jackass Larry Ellison / Oracle is, I can't fault Apple for being nervous.

Ironic since the post above tells the story as LE saying no to Jobs.

There's always two sides to one story. And Jobs was not the kind of person to take no for an answer. I've known other narcissists and they've always seen friends as more of a resource than someone to care about.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Another rumour was that Schwartz spilling the beans pissed Jobs off, which I wouldn't really put past him. Though I don't think it would have been enough to kill this.

I think all these little things added up and the end result was just "better not then".

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#134

Post by wkat4242 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #59
wkat4242 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called marketing. Give it a snazzy name, like say "TimeMachine" and users will jump on it. Also, ZFS has a bad name within the Linux community due to some licensing stuff. I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. Which works amazingly well I might add. Especially with something like sanoid added to it, it basically does th…

> I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. I don't think it's that they don't care , it's that the CDDL and BSD-ish licenses are generally believed to just not have the conflict that CDDL and GPL might. (IANAL, make your own conclusions about whether either of those are true)

Hmm yeah but that's the thing, who really cares about licenses as a user? I certainly don't. It's just some stuff that some lawyers fuss over. I don't read EULAs either nor would I even consider obeying them. The whole civil-legal world is just something I ignore.

I do have a feeling that Linux users in general care more about the GPL which is quite specific of course. Though I wonder if anyone chooses Linux for that reason.

But really personally I don't care whether companies give anything back, if anything I would love less corporate involvement in the OS I use. It was one of my main reasons for picking BSD. The others were a less fragmented ecosystem and less push to change things constantly.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#135

Post by wkat4242 »

badc0ffee wrote: post #99
wkat4242 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called marketing. Give it a snazzy name, like say "TimeMachine" and users will jump on it. Also, ZFS has a bad name within the Linux community due to some licensing stuff. I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. Which works amazingly well I might add. Especially with something like sanoid added to it, it basically does th…

Time Machine was released 17 years ago, and I wish Windows had anything that good. And they're on their 3rd backup system since then.

Windows has a really good basis for it though, in volume shadow copy. I also don't understand why Microsoft never built a time machine based on that. Well, they kinda did but only on samba shares. But not locally.

But these days they want you to subscribe to their cloud storage so the versioning is done there, which makes sense in their commercial point of view.

I think snapshots on ZFS are better than time machine though. Time machine is a bit of a clunky mess of soft links that can really go to shit on a minor corruption. Leaving you with an unrestorable backup and just some vague error messages.

I worked a lot with macs and I've had my share of bad backups when trying to fix people's problems. I've not seen ZFS fail like that. It's really solid and tends to indicate issues before they lead to bigger problems.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#136

Post by wkat4242 »

gruturo wrote: post #98
wkat4242 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called marketing. Give it a snazzy name, like say "TimeMachine" and users will jump on it. Also, ZFS has a bad name within the Linux community due to some licensing stuff. I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. Which works amazingly well I might add. Especially with something like sanoid added to it, it basically does th…

>I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. What a weird take. BSD's license is compatible with ZFS, that's why. "Don't really care?" Really? Come on.

I just mean that GPL is a bit of a religion. There are very strong opinions and principles behind it. Whereas the BSD license is more like "do whatever you want". It makes sense that the followers of the former care more deeply about it, right?

Personally I don't care about or obey any software licenses, as a user.

But this is kinda the vibe I get from other BSD users if a license discussion comes up. Maybe it's my bubble, that's possible.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#137

Post by wkat4242 »

worthless-trash wrote: post #129
gruturo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find that most BSD users don't really care about such legalese and most people I know that run FreeBSD are running ZFS on root. What a weird take. BSD's license is compatible with ZFS, that's why. "Don't really care?" Really? Come on.

There is an increase of posts with casual confidence in their own absolute correctnes. I originally attributed it to the influence of llms, but it is becoming so common now it is hard to dismiss.

I never claimed absolute correctness, just stating what I see with the other BSD users I know.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#138

Post by wkat4242 »

mdaniel wrote: post #121
badc0ffee wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time Machine was released 17 years ago, and I wish Windows had anything that good. And they're on their 3rd backup system since then.

> I wish Windows had anything that good I can't readily tell how much of the dumbness is from the filesystem and how much from the kernel but the end result is that until it gets away from 1980s version of file locking there's no prayer. Imagine having to explain to your boss that your .docx wasn't backed up because you left Word open over the weekend. A just catastrophically idiotic design

Ah but this is really not true. Volume shadow copy makes snapshots of files and through that it can make a backup of an entire NTFS including files with a lock on them and fully quiesced. It was invented for that exact purpose. Backup software on windows leverages this functionality well. It took much longer for Linux to have something similar.

I have many criticisms of NTFS like it being really bad at handling large volumes of small files. But this is something it can do well.

The lock prevents other people from copying the file or opening it even in read only, yes. But backup software can back it up just fine.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#139

Post by E39M5S62 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #11

I wonder what ZFS in the iPhone would've looked like. As far as I recall, the iPhone didn't have error correcting memory, and ZFS is notorious for corrupting itself when bit flips hit it and break the checksum on disk. ZFS' RAM-hungry nature would've also forced Apple to add more memory to their phone.

Not this myth again. ZFS does not need ECC RAM. Stop propagating this falsehood.

Re: ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016)

#140

Post by tw04 »

cryptonector wrote: post #131
ahl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was! And Apple seemed fine with including DTrace under the CDDL. I’m not sure why Apple wanted some additional arrangement but they did.

The NetApp lawsuit. Apple wanted indemnification, and Sun/Oracle did not want to indemnify Apple. At the time that NetApp filed its lawsuit I blogged about how ZFS was a straightforward evolution of BSD 4.4's log structured filesystem. I didn't know that to be the case historically, that is, I didn't know if Bonwick was inspired by LFS, but I showed how almost in every way ZFS was a simple evolution of LFS. I showed…

While I was disappointed that NetApp sued, the ZFS team literally referenced NetApp and WAFL multiple times in their presenations IIRC. They were kind of begging to be sued.

Also, according to NetApp, "Sun started it".

https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center-networking/neta...

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