ZFS On Linux Runs Into A Snag With Linux 5.0

[ferry]

People here seem to be forgetting that developing free software is not free. Major new stuff only gets accepted when there is corporate backing (i.e. money or people are allocated to it). Even if ZFS code would be suddenly re-licensed, more is needed to get it upstream.

There are many projects, including file systems, with compatible licenses that are having a hard time being accepted upstream.

[GruenSein]

This issue is so representative of the weird attitude that seems to cloud the Linux development community. The question "So why would we do extra work to get their code to work properly?" can be answered quite easily. It is because many people have wanted to use ZFS for a long time and it is one of the most advanced FSs for its purpose. It is not like the Linux kernel crew is asked to do ZOL a favor out of the goodness of their hearts. They can choose to support a piece of software which would significantly extend the kernels capabilities. Also, I don't get why they don't simply restore the symbols that ZOL uses and mark them "deprecated" or whatever until the software depending on it can adapt (assuming there is an actual reason to remove them at all).

[BeardedGNUFreak]

If they want it to run on Linux, then they just have to relicense it.
It is not ZFS that will allow FreeBSD to take Linux's market shares. Lots of people are happy with Linux's filesystems.

I remember a similar issue happened a few years ago with AMD's proprietary drivers… not long before AMD switched to their hybrid driver stack. So, I think that GKH's attitude is acutally the best way to convince ZFS's rights owners to relicense it.
FreeBSD's ZFS implementation is now based on ZOL, a good indication that ZOL is the main ZFS implementation now, and ZFS needs Linux support much more thant Linux needs ZFS support. Maybe ZFS will end up being relicensed and included in the kernel, so we can finaly see wich FS is the best, without having to care about kernel inclusion.

LOL

Dream on.

Such a clusterfuck.

Linux Slashdot kiddies still bitter over Btrfs crashing and burning.
2019 and clowns still crying over the garbage viral GPL causing endless nightmares for everyone.
And pointless developer drama over something that would be an IMMEDIATE AND MASSIVE improvement.

ZFS really is that good. It was a life changing event when I first migrated my systems to it.

What is hilarious about ZFS is just how furious the rapidly shrinking FreeBSD community is about losing it to Linux. You would think out of pure pettiness that the Linux community would get their shit together and get such an amazing bit of tech to work flawlessly out of pure spite for FreeBSD as it continues to circle the drain into irrelevance.

[cdufour]

My tolerance for ZFS is pretty non-existant. Sun explicitly did not want their code to work on Linux, so why would we do extra work to get their code to work properly?

Surely I'm missing something or this statement is pretty disrespectful to the people who contributed to ZFS *on Linux* since its fork from the original Sun/Oracle codebase.
I bet those people would gladly work without this license imbroglio that Sun has gotten them into.
But Sun is dead and we all know what Oracle is.

A very sad state of affair, considering ZFS (on Linux) in the only *serious* (iow. production-grade, even if not advertised as such) open/free filesystem in its category.

[cygn]

Also, I don't get why they don't simply restore the symbols that ZOL uses and mark them "deprecated" or whatever until the software depending on it can adapt (assuming there is an actual reason to remove them at all).

Like oiaohm explained above, those signals are deprecated since 2008. Which is roughly when ZOL has started by the way. So no, this one is not on kernel devs.

[pcxmac]

>> FreeBSD. lots of ways to sync files over a network.

[varikonniemi]

2019 and clowns still crying over the garbage viral GPL causing endless nightmares for everyone.

That garbage is what allowed Linux to become the kernel that runs the world. The alternative would be staying irrelevant like the BSDs.

[arokh]

It's a shame that BTRFS turned out to be be such a steaming pile of crap, ZFS is the only filesystem of its kind worth using right now.

I'm on BTRFS for about 5 years now, last year+ with Zstd compression. Runs absolutely great, never had a problem, how is it a steaming pile of crap again?

[lichtenstein]

I'm on BTRFS for about 5 years now, last year+ with Zstd compression. Runs absolutely great, never had a problem, how is it a steaming pile of crap again?

Ditto (well, less than 5 but still). I have it on my mini-server mirroring two external usb 4TB drives. I explicitly chose to run it like that instead of going for an external case that mirrors the drives itself. With its checksumming btrfs provides bitrot protection which is why I use it. It's been very stable and fast and I've had no issue with it.
BTW, I'm have experience with ZFS (on a separate freebsd machine) so I'm aware it provides similar protection but it's a mini-server and ZFS doesn't like "mini" - it needs (lots of) ram to perform well. I could use it on my desktop (ext4 atm) but in order to reap the benefits I really would need more than one drive - otherwise zfs/btrfs can report but not correct errors.

[skeevy420]

Well that sucks, but it really isn't unexpected... I've been using ZoL since the .65 days. This isn't the first time that a kernel point release broke ZFS and they've already listed a bunch of 5.0 stuff under the git issues.

Also why I always keep an LTS kernel installed. As long as the ZoL folks get it figured out before 4.19 EOLs, I'll be fine. I suspect most of us ZoL people are in a similar situation.

No BTRFS hate myself -- I'm just using the more feature filled and powerful FS (IMO). If BTRFS ever reaches feature parity with ZFS I'd likely switch.