ZFS On Linux Runs Into A Snag With Linux 5.0

[aht0]

Not everyone has your disk storage needs, so no.

Regardless, eventually mech drives go extinct, except for pure archival purposes.

Trends are such that smaller SSD's are already quite cheap, with bigger and bigger ones coming into market. Besides, mech drives have reached their physical limitations. There's nowhere to go..

[Weasel]

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

Not everyone has your disk storage needs, so no.

[aht0]

And that's a good way to put it (and I agree). But there's no point in picking on women or other social categories. You're only showing how ZFS users are misogynistic assholes, or whatever.

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.

[GrayShade]

I felt it was necessary. I really do think buying expensive but limited hardware when it could be avoided with some forethought ain't something to brag with, especially doing it in a sneering manner while implying some particular item/feature/whatever (in this case ZFS) is next to useless or inferior just because of his particular use case. Use case which was based on thoughtless buying decision to start with.

And that's a good way to put it (and I agree). But there's no point in picking on women or other social categories. You're only showing how ZFS users are misogynistic assholes, or whatever.

[aht0]

That remark is completely unnecessary, and doesn't help make your point.

I felt it was necessary. I really do think buying expensive but limited hardware when it could be avoided with some forethought ain't something to brag with, especially doing it in a sneering manner while implying some particular item/feature/whatever (in this case ZFS) is next to useless or inferior just because of his particular use case. Use case which was based on thoughtless buying decision to start with.

Thanks for the rest of the data bits. I have OpenZFS primarily on SSD's, so I haven't bothered with fragmentation.

[GrayShade]

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.

That remark is completely unnecessary, and doesn't help make your point.

In order to determine "volume_name" just type

[I]mount[/I]

Or just

zfs list

FreeBSD's ZFS has built-in TRIM by the way. No clue about ZoL. Been there like forever now.

It's been in the works for a while now.

I can't even understand why you'd whine about defragmentation.

ZFS isn't so bad with fragmentation, especially if you add a SLOG. My (maybe 1-year old, I re-created it recently) pool is at 1% fragmentation.

[aht0]

Cool, so I'm supposed to change laptop and pay quite some money for.... what exactly? Any measurable gains worth of all these tantrums, money spendings, OS reinstall, etc? For me laptop isn't center of the universe, just one of machines I use. I'm not okay when some tech throws such a bizarre demands on my head like that.

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. 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.

Yes, I do think failure to support busload of existing configurations, including those I do care of, is a limitation. Furthermore, such replies of ZFS sealots is what makes me not really fond of this thing. Look, I like btrfs because it proven to be convenient, does not throws unreasonable demands on my head, and takes existing real-world configurations into account. Somehow I think things should happen this way.

I do not seek for super-solutions to all humankind problems. While CRC32 surely not perfect and just 2 copies could be a problem if one needs ULTIMATE reliability, it surely not a case on laptop. At the end of day, keeping dozen of copies of metadata on laptop is dumb thing to do for many other reasons. Look, just some funny DC-DC failure inside - and all your dozen of copies of metadata are TOAST. As well as most of electronic components around. Same crap if you just spill water (coffee, tea, whatever). And these failure modes are more likely than getting unreadable metadata on exactly same offsets or getting through CRC32 - both imply I neglected storage failures for a while and if I've been ignorant that badly, I would hardly use any filesystem reasonably anyway. Especially ZFS throwing such a weird demands on my head and making inconvenient assumptions.

Except that it just does not works on single-drive configuration out of the box by easy means. And if it comes to complicated means - damn I would be easier just unrolling OS template and backups should drive fail that badly and need total replacement or something like this. And no, I'm not going to turn my laptop into data warehouse just to keep zfs happy.

Actually, your case is a revulsion caused by ideological NIH syndrome combined with total lack of experience.
ZFS single drive install on a laptop, easiest way:
You'd run the installer, reboot the machine upon completion, open the shell, get root and type

[I]zfs set copies=3 volume_name[/I]

In order to determine "volume_name" just type

[I]mount[/I]

which would give you list of mounts. You can do it fine-grained (for example, manual-files are not exactly critical, you don't need triplicate copies) or if you have bunch of spare space, just apply zfs set copies=3 volume name to actual / and every sub-volume would inherent it.
Wanna check the results, type

zfs get copies

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

I would agree, its bullshit to start your message with demand to buy "decent laptop" and then mumble something about EEE. Hilarious.

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.

Uhm yea, except one little problem: CoW inherently implies fragments. Furthermore, VM CoW disk vs FS CoW, DBs, just DLing some torrents and so on may not play well all together. And somehow I prefer technical solution over loud marketing BS. So btrfs got it. Ranging from deduplication/thin provisioning that does not hogs resources (e.g. reflinks) to defrag should mentioned assumption fail to work. Someting ZFS wasn't able to afford.
Sure, if you can't access your filesystem at all, like topic implies, it could be stable condition, but I think there is some catch.

Fragments are utterly meaningless concept in this modern era of SSD's. FreeBSD's ZFS has built-in TRIM by the way. No clue about ZoL. Been there like forever now. I can't even understand why you'd whine about defragmentation. Even enterprise is slowly migrating to SSD's.

[GrayShade]

Look, btrfs would use "dup" storage scheme for metadata (DUP stores metadata twice into same storage) BY DEFAULT if it spots filesystem consists of single drive. It can do same trick for data if one asks.

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

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.

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.

As for familiarity, the ZFS commands and terminology are a little strange, but -- having used md, I'd take ZFS over it any day. You'll also find a lot of FUD wrt. ZFS (like the oft-repeated advice of having 1 GB RAM / 1 TB of data).

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.

[SystemCrasher]

Have you ever tried to use ZFS?

Only as short-term experiment in VM, so my practical experience is verrrry limited and rather negative. Why? I dislike my experience compared to btrfs so I gave up easily and early. Look, btrfs would use "dup" storage scheme for metadata (DUP stores metadata twice into same storage) BY DEFAULT if it spots filesystem consists of single drive. It can do same trick for data if one asks. I have to admit it really sane and friendly default behavior, btw. And its okay to change mind and ask for it later, it could convert storage scheme on the fly if desired. It is transparent and not set in stone. Somehow all guides and use cases around ZFS are encircled on high-profile enterprise and it just does not looks like my configurations. Nor I want to throw as much efforts as enterprise admins would do.

There is also certain chance btrfs just mapped better on my ways of thinking and using computers. Somehow I do understand what this thing does and why and find it very logical most of time. I like this feeling.

[aht0]

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Not unexpected at all to see another Linux-supremacist beating his e-dick.
Inferiority-superiority complex at it's finest.