Btrfs Gets Talked Up, Googler Encourages You To Try Btrfs

[smitty3268]

Yeah well. It quite possibly does have some patent issues, but so does helloworld.c

ZFS is heavily patented, but my understanding is that Sun pledged not to sue anyone using a CDDL-licensed codebase. That's why they can't just reimplement it and stick it into the linux kernel, where it would be GPL2 code and invite patent lawsuits.

[arcas]

I've been taking a wait-and-see approach to btrfs. I'm presently running a raid5/ext4 array and will probably replace the hardware later this year or early next year and was going to use that as an opportunity to switch to raidz or btrfs raid. I'm still unclear about how btrfs raid compares to raidz. Some articles suggest that they're very similar. Other articles suggest that btrfs raid5/6 will be more similar to traditional lvm/raid than to raidz. Which is it?

Also, as I understand, btrfs presently supports only raid0 and raid1?

[jacob]

ZFS is heavily patented, but my understanding is that Sun pledged not to sue anyone using a CDDL-licensed codebase. That's why they can't just reimplement it and stick it into the linux kernel, where it would be GPL2 code and invite patent lawsuits.

ZFS code is CDDL, using it on another OS can't change that. It is also CDDL in FreeBSD. However unlike the BSD license, which allows parts of the kernel to use a different license (CDDL), the GPL2 does not. This is why it cannot be included in Linux, but then again, the whole point of the CDDL is precisely to be a nuisance for Linux.

[smitty3268]

ZFS code is CDDL, using it on another OS can't change that. It is also CDDL in FreeBSD. However unlike the BSD license, which allows parts of the kernel to use a different license (CDDL), the GPL2 does not. This is why it cannot be included in Linux, but then again, the whole point of the CDDL is precisely to be a nuisance for Linux.

Sun's ZFS code is CDDL. What i meant was that linux devs can't reimplement ZFS from scratch using the specs (or reverse engineer it) as GPL code, because then they'd be sued for patent infringement.

[dunovan]

Except within 3.14-2-amd64

INFO: task btrfs-transacti:1006 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
Tainted: G O 3.14-2-amd64 #1
"echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
btrfs-transacti D ffff8807fc696528 0 1006 2 0x00000000
ffff8807fc696110 0000000000000046 0000000000014380 ffff8800d38a5fd8
0000000000014380 ffff8807fc696110 ffff88081fa94c10 ffff88081fdb7388
0000000000000002 ffffffff81121280 ffff8800d38a5ad0 ffff8800d38a5bb8
[347545.451908] Call Trace:
[<ffffffff81121280>] ? wait_on_page_read+0x60/0x60
[<ffffffff814c8284>] ? io_schedule+0x94/0x130
[<ffffffff81121285>] ? sleep_on_page+0x5/0x10
[<ffffffff814c85f4>] ? __wait_on_bit+0x54/0x80
[<ffffffff8112108f>] ? wait_on_page_bit+0x7f/0x90
[<ffffffff8109f5a0>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x30/0x30
[<ffffffff8112e128>] ? pagevec_lookup_tag+0x18/0x20
[<ffffffff81121170>] ? filemap_fdatawait_range+0xd0/0x160
[<ffffffffa01f8ea5>] ? btrfs_wait_ordered_range+0x65/0x120 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa021f43e>] ? __btrfs_write_out_cache+0x6fe/0x8f0 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa021f909>] ? btrfs_write_out_cache+0x99/0xd0 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa01d0fde>] ? btrfs_write_dirty_block_groups+0x58e/0x680 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa024b53d>] ? commit_cowonly_roots+0x14b/0x202 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa01e058a>] ? btrfs_commit_transaction+0x42a/0x990 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa01e0b7b>] ? start_transaction+0x8b/0x550 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa01dc3dd>] ? transaction_kthread+0x1ad/0x240 [btrfs]
[<ffffffffa01dc230>] ? btrfs_cleanup_transaction+0x510/0x510 [btrfs]
[<ffffffff81080af8>] ? kthread+0xb8/0xd0
[<ffffffff81080a40>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x170/0x170
[<ffffffff814d308c>] ? ret_from_fork+0x7c/0xb0
[<ffffffff81080a40>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x170/0x170

[nils_]

ZFS is heavily patented, but my understanding is that Sun pledged not to sue anyone using a CDDL-licensed codebase. That's why they can't just reimplement it and stick it into the linux kernel, where it would be GPL2 code and invite patent lawsuits.

And Sun doesn't really exist anymore as a company (I made a nice bundle when ORCL bought them).

[nils_]

I'm using btrfs for my home directory now, but I have noticed that sometimes there are some odd bugs or hangs. For example, on my laptop running linux 3.16 the moment the partition is full the system becomes so unresponsive that I have to SysRq reboot it. Then afterwards some files are missing, and as usual the chrome preferences are corrupted...

[drSeehas]

... What i meant was that linux devs can't reimplement ZFS from scratch ...

WHY would they want to reimplement ZFS when it is open source?

[erendorn]

WHY would they want to reimplement ZFS when it is open source?

Because you cannot distribute ZFS with the kernel with its current license?

[brosis]

WHY would they want to reimplement ZFS when it is open source?

Not only they can?t distribute with kernel, they can?t integrate properly, reach proper speeds, memory efficiency, boot from it at least. ZFS license is one huge pile of dung.