ZFS Indications Have Us Already Eager For Ubuntu 19.10

[itoffshore]

Unless you're building that kernel yourself with this patch, you are screwing yourself with unnecessary slowdowns due to 5.0+ blocking ZFS from using the GPL exports, specifically the AES parts for encryption/decryption speed since you mention native encryption.

At the moment I'm sticking on 4.20.7.a-1-hardened - it's fast enough for GPU passthrough

Thanks for the "headsup" though ;o)

[skeevy420]

I've not had any problems running Manjaro with linux-hardened & zfs-dkms-git - this avoids kernel incompatibilities & gives me native encryption.

Unless you're building that kernel yourself with this patch, you are screwing yourself with unnecessary slowdowns due to 5.0+ blocking ZFS from using the GPL exports, specifically the AES parts for encryption/decryption speed since you mention native encryption.

[skeevy420]

I thought that the ZOL license was not GPLv2 compatible, which is why no distro has packaged it to date. What am I missing?

Something, something, Manjaro has ZFS modules for every kernel in their repository by default, something, something, and they're work on ZFS on root in their installer.

[skeevy420]

FreeBSD and Illumos use features defined as Version 5000 that was the last set of features from the old SUN days and opensolaris, ZoL on the other hand have extra features like large dnodes, lz4 compression, TRIMM, etc. that neither FreeBSD nor Illumos current ZFS implementations understand, your best bet is to recreate the pools passing an specific version flag to retain compatibility.

If you want the best experience on ZOL+ Linux your best bet right now is ArchLinux with archzfs repo, since is usually couple day behind new kernels top and pacman is smart to block kernel updates until archzfs repo is up to date.

For those few hours you may have to wait between repo syncs just use

pacman -Syu --ignore=linux to upgrade the rest of your system

I use the AUR zfs-dkms package and don't bother with ArchZFS. I've tested up to 5.1.5 which is also what I'm currently using (with the gpl exports patch). Nothing against ArchZFS, but all we really need is the DKMS package and there really isn't a point of installing a complete repository for just that one package.

From there I keep at least two kernels installed -- whatever is LTS and whatever is the current stable. If current breaks during, say, the 5.1>5.2 upgrade, then I can switch over to LTS long enough to downgrade back to 5.1...note that I'm just pulling kernel versions out of my ass on that last line...for all I know 5.2rc works just fine with ZFS, I've never tried...

Also, Manjaro makes it even easier since all the kernels they include contain prebuilt ZFS modules as well as all the necessary ZFS packages are in their repository. Only "problem" is they're still on 0.7.13 so the DKMS package from the AUR is still my recommendation.

Also, wik, if a person is going to compile their own kernels and not use what a distribution offers, the DKMS package is all that's necessary. I consider it necessary to compile all my kernels from 5.0 on up to circumvent the GPL exports stuff (and so should every ZOL user). IMHO, it's damn-near pointless to use ZFS & Linux 5.0+ without that patch.

[aht0]

Ubuntu is more interested in helping everyday users in the real world rather than stroking their own egos like some kernel developers.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/1/15/305

It's funny, kind of that kernel dev is not aware that Oracle as a license owner might not be able to change the license. It might be that Oracle specifically agreed to not to changle license when it got NetApp dropping the law suit. It might be the reason why Oracle was backing BtrFs, not just using it's own ZFS.

About kernel space, some interfaces are only allowed to interact with other GPL software, there he has a point..

But overall, yes, "Not Invented Here Thus I don't Care" syndrome is shining through.

[superstructor]

Ubuntu is more interested in helping everyday users in the real world rather than stroking their own egos like some kernel developers.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/1/15/305

[aht0]

Ubuntu is taking a dare. That happened.

[sheldonl]

I thought that the ZOL license was not GPLv2 compatible, which is why no distro has packaged it to date. What am I missing?

[itoffshore]

I was a big fan of ZOL, until I got tired of dealing with new kernel incompatibilites from using it under Fedora, and I decided to use FreeBSD for my NAS instead. Seems ZOL sets a filesystem flag that is specific to Linux, and thus the zpools made with, or upgraded under, ZOL cannot be opened read-write, and must be manually opened read-only under any non-ZOL ZFS implementation.

I'm gonna check for that (in a VM) before any future usage of ZOL.

I've not had any problems running Manjaro with linux-hardened & zfs-dkms-git - this avoids kernel incompatibilities & gives me native encryption.

[Chugworth]

OK, I suppose I should have specified, I just didn't want to go look it up.

org.zfsonlinux:userobj_accounting

This is only on ZOL (currently), is put in by default on new volumes made with ZOL, and is incompatible with the current non-ZOL implementations, meaning that FSes made with ZOL are not universal.

Also, yes, I'm upset because it killed a weekend doing a migration from ZFS and back to ZFS so I could move to something more stable.

Just a few weeks ago I transferred several ZFS datasets from Ubuntu 18.04 to FreeNAS using "zfs send". I did notice that their storage usage was a bit more on FreeNAS, but other than that the datasets worked fine.