Ubuntu 20.04 Atop ZFS+Zsys Will Take Snapshots On APT Operations

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 20.04 Atop ZFS+Zsys Will Take Snapshots On APT Operations

Ubuntu 20.04 is coming out next month and will be the first LTS release with Ubuntu desktop ZFS support available for the root file-system after it was made easy-to-deploy the Ubuntu desktop on ZFS last cycle. One of the areas being expanded upon with the ZFS support has been Ubuntu's Zsys daemon for offering extra functionality for ZFS-based setups...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-20.04-Zsys-APT-Snapshots

[mskarbek]

I have this ZFS snapshotting implemented as a DNF hook since Fedora 29, nobody cares because of CDDL. I'm really curious how far will Canonical go on this integration route with OpenZFS and when somebody will start seriously complaining.

[anarki2]

Unless you run nothing else during apt transactions, this is bound to cause problems. A separate /home should be mandatory, at the bare minimum.

Or better yet, apt shouldn't solve apt problems at the filesystem layer. MSI supported rollbacks for decades. It may or may not install, but at least it won't break MSI installs altogether. At least I haven't seen such a case in my life. At least yum supports undo for reverting successful transactions, but with apt, they still haven't even figured out how to do a proper autoremove. Sometimes it removes all the packages that were installed as dependencies, sometimes it leaves a few. WHY.

Again, this boils down to the awfully designed FHS, because putting files in 10 separate, shared dirs with hundreds or thousands of files thrown together is so much better than each program having its own directory nice and clean. Plus the complete lack of a win32 alternative, leading to the dependency hell, still thriving after all these years. Yes, even with the likes of Flatpak.

[Britoid]

I have this ZFS snapshotting implemented as a DNF hook since Fedora 29, nobody cares because of CDDL. I'm really curious how far will Canonical go on this integration route with OpenZFS and when somebody will start seriously complaining.

I see including it as a little insulting to the upstream Linux developers, as surely it would be better to try and improve and work on btrfs.

[mskarbek]

I see including it as a little insulting to the upstream Linux developers, as surely it would be better to try and improve and work on btrfs.

Insulting how? BtrFS is worked on and improved for how many years? It still doesn't work as it should, so I'm not surprised that Canonical started working with something that is actually usable. I'm just wondering how long this will go until Linux devs reexport everything as GPL-only to "punish" Canonical and others who would like to have something useful as a file system.

[anarki2]

I see including it as a little insulting to the upstream Linux developers, as surely it would be better to try and improve and work on btrfs.

Red Hat deprecating btrfs has been pretty much the last nail in the coffin, let it go.

[Britoid]

Insulting how? BtrFS is worked on and improved for how many years? It still doesn't work as it should, so I'm not surprised that Canonical started working with something that is actually usable. I'm just wondering how long this will go until Linux devs reexport everything as GPL-only to "punish" Canonical and others who would like to have something useful as a file system.

Symbols aren't exported as GPL-only to "punish" people. GPL-only kernel symbols are the boundary set by the Linux developers for where they see what module counts as being derived from the kernel or not.

If you don't like the GPL, don't use Linux.

[DanL]

nobody cares because of CDDL. I'm really curious how far will Canonical go on this integration route with OpenZFS and when somebody will start seriously complaining.

We've already had complainers like the FSF. But the only complaint that matters is if Oracle decides to sue. And Canonical has already cleared their action with the SFLC, so grounds for that would be shaky.

[starshipeleven]

Unless you run nothing else during apt transactions, this is bound to cause problems.

CoW filesystems can do that

A separate /home should be mandatory, at the bare minimum.

in OpenSUSE, stuff is split into different volumes (zvols in ZFS or whatever else in btrfs) so it won't snapshot your stuff in the home folder for rolling back system updates, but it's a convenience thing, it's not like dangerous or anything.

MSI supported rollbacks for decades. It may or may not install, but at least it won't break MSI installs altogether.

Too bad it's not as commonly used as normal installers that can and will screw up the installed application.

[starshipeleven]

Red Hat deprecating btrfs has been pretty much the last nail in the coffin, let it go.

I'm not seeing how deprecating something they never really used at all has any relevance.