ZFS On Linux Runs Into A Snag With Linux 5.0

[aht0]

Nah. To make a prediction which is acceptable as an argument in a discussion, you cant just say "oh, the sales of HDDs are falling, so they will soon be extinct". By that thinking, every line that starts falling down must continue to do so, by some unknown law of nature.

Predicion involves having much more data, and predicions must in general be more robust.

What you are doing is called speculation.



Most technology improvements require intoducing additional complications. That's nothing new.

The consensus predicion is that HDD capacity is going to increase further, and there are good reasons behind that predicion (like: plausible new technology is available).

It's prediction based on past analogue patterns. You don't need lots of data for making it. When the 'new solution' is at least as easy to use, has noticeable advantages, it will eat out the 'old'. SSD's are WAY FASTER. SSD's can take tens of G's of abuse - drop mech drive from lap to the floor, it's most likely screwed, SSD's are more energy efficient etc. Mech drives lack currently any advantages over SSD's except for better price/capacity ratio - when dealing with large ones - and mech drives being technologically better fit for data archival. Thus I conclude that over time it's the only purpose left for mech drives.

With more and more SSD's being produced, it's price-per-gigabyte is going to drop, until it's equal or cheaper to mech drives even at large capacities. Why would you buy mech drive when SSD has cheaper or equal price - for daily use? You don't. Not only you but large masses are going to follow the thought and so mech drives gradually disappear from daily use. End of logic chain and prediction.

[Bubbles_by_day]

To tell you the truth, I'm not much into what's happening with the kernel dev team. I don't know. So I was mostly judging by the quote you have posted.

In my opinion, that quote contains nothing abusive. The dev you quoted has every right to have such an opinion.

Well, the pre-5.0 kernels will continue to support ZFS for the next few years. So there is no real problem.

Am I wrong here somewhere, I don't get what are you not getting?

That is, more-or-less, what I think. It's a project led by Linus Torvalds. If someone doesn't like it, fork it or f-off.

What I think is that kernel devs have no moral obligation to put ZFS into kernel. Nor would its exclusion lead to some dramatic consequences. So, therefore, they can do what they please, or what they estimate is the best. You can't have every imagined feature built into the kernel, there must be a line: some things go in, some things don't.

Each source file of the kernel has a copyright line. The copyright line contains a name of the person or organization who is the owner of the said file.

That is a fact. Everything else is either interpretation or misinterpretation.

We seem tobe talking past each other. But at least I understand what you mean about pre-5.0 kernels, with your contextual reference to ZFS.

I often find that when someone says, "[I|they] have a right to say that", it means they are probably out of ideas and the conversation is over, or at least probably should be.

I never said anything about use of monopoly force by a state actor. Our constitutional rights have nothing to do with this. The First Amendment has nothing to do with this subject. It's a given. You have the right to say almost anything on this forum or social media, within certain legal limits...but you might get banned for it. This forum is not run with the backing of state-sponsored monopoly force. It's a private endeavor, you and I are guests. We can be kicked off at will. Similarly, you have the right to say stupid stuff on TV, but you might get fired for it.

Or kicked off an open source dev team. Even if it's something you originally created and still have considerable control over.

In none of those cases, does the First Amendment necessarily apply. Furthermore, we're talking about one random dude's opinion about decent, professional behavior, and the future of one of the most important pieces of tech and economic driver.

(And it's an opinion that just so happens to align closely with their own code of conduct, and decades of documented abuse that has driven away countless talented contributors, and Torvald's own apologies and promises to do better.)

You don't have to agree with my opinion, but to retort "that's their right" to act in ways that many find the adjective "abusive" appropriate, is meaningless and amateurish in context.

But relax. It's OK. There's literally nothing at stake here.

As for "ownership", I think it was clear I in the use of metaphorical language. That should have been obvious by implying "the world" owns it. And what I mean by that metaphor, in practical terms, is that while Torvalds or any other visible kernel (or any project) leader are free to exercise speech without threat of state retribution, they are not free from the natural, legal consequences of said free speech. Such as being run out of the Linux Foundation, the Linux Kernel Organization, etc. He is not entitled to not be run completely off of his own project, which not "his" anymore in a real-world practical sense. (Other than, as you said, the copyright on lines of code, and also the right to fork the whole thing at any time.)

But you don't have to take my opinion as gospel. It's a free country. However, their own opinion might matter more, as is the opinion of tech giants funding the whole endeavor. Check out their own code of conduct, and the opinions of others that might be considered "more relevant" than Random Internet Dude's (again you don't have to agree and of course there are dissenting opinions from other more reputable sources).

Arguably, and in Torvald's own words, the community consensus seems to be swinging towards "more civility". That's an observation, not an opinion. (Though you are still free to disagree with the observation, and/or disagree on it being a positive step. Free speech!)

Linux Kernel Contributor Code of Conduct

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

(Whether you think the original quote that initiated this discussion violates that, is a matter of opinion, but also not my point. It's the overall, well-documented culture of abusiveness among the kernel team, following Torvald's lead, that's the point. You seem to be fine with their culture, which is fine. I'm not terribly concerned with what you think, because you didn't say you don't work on the kernel team. I'm more concerned with what people think who do. Either way, you don't get to say that "no one gets to have a say in their culture but themselves". Well, obviously you can say that, but it would be silly to expect to be taken seriously. So we'll just have to disagree on whether or not it's a good or even valid opinion. I think it's a grossly uninformed, fanboy-ish, knee-jerk reactionary opinion. But that's just my opinion about your opinion. [Not you as a person.] Meta.)

Linux Foundation Diversity & Inclusiveness

Linux Foundation (events) Code of Conduct

Linux Foundation Corporate Members

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside

Abuse is indefensible

And this has long since passed the point of procrastinating and deep into pointlessness, and I need to stop! Peace.

[aht0]

[QUOTE=xfcemint;n1098914]
Thats is a questionable prediction to make. Maybe yes, maybe not. You can't say for certain at this point of time.
Maybe you can say (predict) that most casual computer users will be using solid state drives with less than 1TB capacity in the near future.
Why questionable? Tapes are pretty much extinct, except for niche (backup) use. But at one point tapes were used by common users. It's prediction based on past patterns.

Not true. That new heat-assisted write technology has a potential of 4x-10x increase in bit density over the next 10 years.

It means introducing additional complications into process. Which in turn, means making drives less reliable. I won't even start on speaking of required finer mechanical tolerances and results if these start to deviate too much. Prices of rare-earth metals may also skyrocket (mainland China controls most of these mines) because of economic issues with U.S making final prices of HDD's unappealing compared to SSD's.

[Bubbles_by_day]

Don't really care. Political correctness could be chased until it ends up distorting the very perception of reality, it does not affect it. There are probably people thinking God racist because snow is white. Simple facts of life remain: women base their buying decisions mostly on appearance - very few are techno-savvy and care about actual specs, gay males are much the same.

If I have to self-censor every thought through the "political correctness" filter, this Western society ain't better than Soviet Union was. Differences are only in what's allowed or not. Sorry, I was born in USSR, present ideas/practices of political correctness are simply repugnant. I want nothing to do with that bs.

You may think that kind of vapid commentary is edgy or "real", but honestly it just sounds like an Incel cry for help. Seriously. Blows any credibility on any subject you might otherwise legitimately have, tarnishes the whole community however minutely, and slightly reduces the signal-to-noise ratio of insightful commentary, for those that like to check in on the pulse of the community now and then.

Also, whatever you thought you were broadcasting, all I can hear is this:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/homophobes-might-be-hidden-homosexuals/

[Bubbles_by_day]

Its their kernel, they do with it as they like.

I didn't suggest otherwise. But since you brought it up, no, they can't really do with as they like. Or by extension, behave any way they like. At least, not without the community fracturing with a competing fork. That would be bad for most of us, including me, professionally. I have a vested interest in seeing the kernel succeed, and I therefore have a vested interest in seeing them not f*** it up.

I take what has been offered for free.

Who says you have to just "take it"? Are you implying that other people should feel the same way? Just because it's FLOSS, doesn't mean we just have to put up with abuse, or watch others be abused, silently. Don't get me wrong, I don't like seeing SJW'ing on behalf of others that haven't asked for help. That said, I also don't have to remain silent. Or stick with an old LTS kernel. (Which I'm not getting the logic of - what are you suggesting that would accomplish?)

Also, I do contribute indirectly, so the kernel is not technically "free" for me. And like many who speak out, I feel like I can only do so anonymously, even if that's not completely warranted. (My minor and indirect contributions wouldn't be worth their time to personally attack me.)

It's possible to benefit from FLOSS software, and expect it to be done humanely. You probably wouldn't stand for the dev team of a near monopoly technology you rely on for a living, killing 20 rabbits a day for sport. That would probably cross some line. You'd probably want both: use of the kernel, without supporting that. So, where's the line? I'll tell you where it is: it's different for everyone.

Maybe you disagree on the options available, that's fine too. Maybe just quit using the kernel and switch to BSD? Fine, if you can professionally. Get another job? Use the kernel but publicly speak out against it? Fork the kernel and manage it yourself with your own code of ethics?

Guess what: Those are all viable, ethical, legal, moral options. Some maybe more effective than others. Some more realistic than others. But just because one person decides to use the kernel and speak out against what s/he sees as abusive behavior, is no less worthy an option than someone who chooses to use a different kernel, or fork it (which lets face it is not a real option), or something else.

Point is, using the kernel or not, and speaking out or not, are not tied to each other. You can choose any combination. If you think some combinations have more value or worth than others, I'd suggest that's an artificial construct.

Furthermore, the Linux kernel is not some garage project to just accept whatever happens, or f*** off. There is serious economic output poured into it from large commercial entities, millions of dollars in paid man-hours poured into it. The Linux kernel, like it or not, is a significant workhorse of the global economy. And many organizations are not happy at all with the core kernel culture. Why do you think Linus had such a public "change of heart"? Because it was genuine, or because he risked losing major financial backers, if not an outright fork?

The kernel no longer belongs to Linus, or the kernel team. You might say, arguably, that it belongs to the world. It's a public good. Maybe you disagree with that, but at minimum, it's way beyond the scope of one man. Yet, he could still probably manage to f*** it up with bad behavior if he really set his mind to it.

I don't get where is the problem for you

I laid it out as best as I have time for. (More, actually. As everyone commenting could probably also say.) If you disagree with my opinion, or don't understand it, that's cool. We can agree to disagree, or not understand. I don't know you, you don't know me, the stakes couldn't possibly be lower. But that doesn't mean I can't treat you with basic respect and try to lay out a cogent argument (in part, a process which helps clarify my own thinking, thus having value beyond arguing on the internet).

[skeevy420]

Well, since we're just going full on retard

[retardxfce]

If you use IBM filesystems then dont be surprised there are problems. I use FAT32 for my root and home partition with my debian+XFCE desktop and I never had any issues.

[Bubbles_by_day]

Linus Torvalds' second in command, Greg KH, had to say the following about his views about ZFS On Linux with the current issue at hand:

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?

Oh I don't know...because ZFS is a wildly popular filesystem that people who use your code rely on for mission-critical data storage?

Because Btrfs has been out for ten years and is still not ready for prime-time, and Linux users desperately need the reliability and dependability of ZFS?

I gotta say, the toxic dude-culture of the kernel team is sickening. I know this quote doesn't define Greg or anyone else, but it is a fitting example among countless, of a broader toxic culture. I'm surprised #MeToo hasn't caught up with Linus, because people that talk the way he (still) talks, and treats people the way he does even if online, are often raging a--holes IRL. It's not that I think my decision to use free programs, or not, would change anyone's behavior. (And as a minor FLOSS contributor, they aren't all "free" for me, technically.)

Speaking only for myself, I've been unable to switch away from Windows (or MacOS) for the last 15 years...not because of lack of apps, compatibility, etc. But because of the toxic kernel culture. My choice, no one has to agree. But I know for a fact I'm not alone. (How much not alone, I have no idea.)

Don't tell me Linus has turned a corner and things are changing. Grade-A BS. That kind of wholesale change only happens when nearly everyone is replaced almost all at once, and/or die off. That's why major cultural change only happens on the timescales of generations.

[SystemCrasher]

ZFS always stores multiple copies (I don't know how many) of the metadata since it deems them to be too important.

"Always" isn't terribly good idea either. Look, I could use filesystems in vastly different scenarios. Say, if I do seed torrent from that single board computer, I do not really care about filesystem state. Should it send bad data, it would be detected on application layer by others. Should OS go nuts, it would be reimaged in like ~2 minutes. At which point I don't really like 2 or more metadata copies as something mandatory. It would be just pointless slowdown.

If you have more than one drive, it will split them across the drives. Regardless of that, you can also configure it to store multiple copies of the data. It doesn't by default, but it's a single command away.

Haven't ever seen examplles how to configure metadata redundancy. Data is another story. Let us assume data and metadata may have different value. Yet this may or may not be true under particular scenario.

As for using a single disk, you can do that just fine when you set up your pool. You can start with one and add a mirror later if you feel like it.

But I can't mirror existing data and/or metadata on same disk, if that disk is only thing I get as far as I understand.

What ZFS isn't great at is reconfiguring the pool after it's created. You can expand it, and you can add mirrors, but you can't e.g. switch from a mirror to a RAIDZ pool. You also can't remove drives from the pool, although I believe that's being worked on.

That's what I like about btrfs. Even if I don't like current setup, it can be reconfigured to do something else. Without stopping storage and so on. I think it pretty much awesome idea. Just as well as ability to add arbitrary drives I've got - and get them as abstract "free space" that doesn't really cares on its own what storage scheme would be used on top of that. I consider this approach big win in terms of management woes.

As for md and somesuch, well, I don't really like it. TBH I got idea what I REALLY don't like is idea of static allocation of RAIDs. It makes management pain in the rear and reconfiguration turns into horror and hell. Btrfs is meant to be better than that. And speaking for myself it feels like an improvement in this regard.

I haven't tried btrfs, but AFAIK it doesn't have a stellar history of not eating your data (regardless of your personal experience with it). When I built my NAS I wanted it to do a good job at not losing data. In exchange, I paid the cost in learning about it, and using an out-of-tree module. I don't regret that trade-off at all.

From pragmatic standpoint, btrfs haven't lost my data and looking on commits and overall state here and now it does not looks anyhow scarier than any other Linux file system to me in terms of code quality, bugs fixed and so on. Sure, shit could happen - but it could happen just as well in any other code, just read commit messages to get the idea . I guess if ZFS devs aren't all about marketing their commit messages could be fun as well. Just as EXT4, XFS, or whatever. Fortunately these days shit hits fan either in very unusual configurations or with very low probability. That's what backups for. Whatever, I don't believe in super-reliable storages and "should never happen". So I have plan B, just in case. And this time B stands for Backups.

[SystemCrasher]

Then why the previous whine about having only single disk earlier? When you are buying hardware for yourself, unless you are woman or gay - you don't buy tech based on how it looks but based on what's in it.

When I buy laptop for myself, I do care about battery life, weight and good Linux HW support and overall bang per buck as high priorities. Turning that into datawarehouse isn't high priority. If I would need decent storage, more suitable hardware would do it much better anyway. For laptop it happens to be just utterly pointless and inefficient waste of money to buy expensive exotic crap. It hardly justifies itself. Two drices are cool. Would it have at least ECC RAM to ensure corrpution does not gets through? Are there laptops and laptop RAM with ECC support?

Non-Windows users especially so, because Linux hardware support has not been always good. Roll back 15 years and getting Linux graphical desktop working was major pain in the ass. Of course, could be, you are just kid pretending to be an adult and your laptop was gift from parents, you had no say-so in process.

Look, adult man who seems to be unable to read and follow the line: I ALREADY OWN LAPTOP. And I'm more or less fine with its specs for its jobs. Btrfs just adds some little extra value to my existing hardware. Demanding me to buy yet another laptop to make ZFS happy or prove I'm not women or gay and adult man is so... childish . Sorry, but it just not going to happen. Little added value for nothing is so neat. Exotic uber-special configurations at uber-special price ... is what I always disliked about Sun's way of doing things. You can mumble whatever shit you want but I've checked local store and, honestly >1 drive in laptop is still hell a lot exotic setup.

Actually, your case is a revulsion caused by ideological NIH syndrome combined with total lack of experience.

My case is simple: I want system management to be easy, logical, reasonable and do not eat my brain where it not supposed to. Bothering me with demands of special configurations only going to achieve one thing: if I still had that thing, I would get rid of it. I do believe good things should cope with commodity hardware, including arbitrarily chosen one.

ZFS single drive install on a laptop, easiest way:

But it wouldn't protect neither data, nor metadata reasonably on single-drive system. And when it comes to demands to buy "right hardware", oh, I would rather join womens and gays. As long as it makes life cheaper and easier I'm fine with it. And expecting everyone to drop their existing HW and go buy something else is naive to say the least.

That's all there is to it. Probably too difficult for WinLinux fanboy without GUI though.

I'm not a GUI fan. However it does not imply I would jump like crazy and go replace my existing HW just because some fanboy tells me my HW is crap. Look, if some thing supports my HW reasonably and another thing does not - I would consider it advantage of 1st thing and disadvantage of 2nd thing. As simple as that.

And it's a equally bullshit response, because the reason I even talked about eeePC was to point out ZFS can run even on it. These things are barely faster than shitty Raspberry Pi's are. And yet, here you are, crying crocodile tears claiming it does not run on your little laptop. Get a grip on reality, dude.

In reality I've used btrfs even on 256Mb RAM ARM SBCs and 64MB RAM MIPS routers. That's how I define good HW support. So if eee is weakest HW you can imagine, you've got very poor imagination to my taste.

Fragments are utterly meaningless concept in this modern era of SSD's.

Only to some extent. Parsing truckload of metadata still wouldn't improve performance for sure. And if you have truckload of fragments, you have truckload of metadata to describe where to get them. Oh, maybe not a big deal on filesystem that can't even afford "real" extents. But overall it could be noticeable on modern designs with large extents.

FreeBSD's ZFS has built-in TRIM by the way. No clue about ZoL.

Trim got nothing to do with fragments. Furthermore, when file is finally removed, and trim request hits flash translation layer of SSD it is very funny question what would happen and if it would be something good. Trimming large contigious areas surely good, it allows SSD to prepare eraseblocks easily, etc. But if it some fragmented spaghetti, SSD should go for far more complicated RMW & GC sequences in its firmware, more dangerous in terms of powerloss/crash and taking plenty of time, or ignore request.

Been there like forever now. I can't even understand why you'd whine about defragmentation. Even enterprise is slowly migrating to SSD's.

They do. Where it works better for them. I do the very same. Price per gig on SSD is nowhere close to HDDs - so HDDs still make a lot of sense to store relatively "cold" data. On side note, my runs of btrfs on SSDs shown it quite "SSD-friendly" in terms of wearout (amount of writes, tracked via SMART).