Canonical Releases LXD 5.17 With OpenZFS 2.2 Delegation Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical Releases LXD 5.17 With OpenZFS 2.2 Delegation Support

LXD 5.17 is now available as the system container and virtual machine manager, which since last month has been reigned into control by Canonical and maintainership being limited to Canonical engineers. With this new LXD release there is ZFS delegation support as found with the upcoming OpenZFS 2.2...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/LXD-5.17-Released

[justinkb]

reined*

[muncrief]

I'm in the middle of converting my 4 home server disks, containing almost 12 TB of data, from ext4 to zfs. The sole reason is because I'm tired of getting hit by bit rot. I'm only using single disk zfs as I have both local and cloud backups, but now I'll finally be able to tell when a file is corrupted. Of course I also formatted my 2 local backup disks with zfs to protect them as well.

My only concern is that Linus has this nonsensical prejudice against OpenZFS and simply will not allow it to be included in the kernel, apparently because Oracle has its own zfs with a restrictive license. But it goes beyond even that, as Linus uses a combination of complaints about licensing, and the insane assertion that OpenZFS is unsupported and could disappear any day. When the truth is that OpenZFS uses the CDDL license which allows distributing it as a binary module or source code, and OpenZFS is supported incredibly well and used in many enterprise and data center environments.

For example, my home server runs Manjaro which distributes OpenZFS binary modules in its official repositories and keeps kernels and zfs in sync. However Arch, which I use for my main desktop workstation, distributes it as source code, with a dkms option that usually assures kernel version compatibility. But compatibility with various Arch kernels cannot be assured, so the lts kernel must always be installed as a backup option. However I always keep the lts kernel installed on any distro I use anyway, so it's not a problem.

But things would be so much easier if Linus would simply stop with his irrational rejection of OpenZFS so it could be included in the kernel and become effortlessly compatible across all Linux distros just like ext4, btrfs, etc.

[skeevy420]

I'm in the middle of converting my 4 home server disks, containing almost 12 TB of data, from ext4 to zfs. The sole reason is because I'm tired of getting hit by bit rot. I'm only using single disk zfs as I have both local and cloud backups, but now I'll finally be able to tell when a file is corrupted. Of course I also formatted my 2 local backup disks with zfs to protect them as well.

My only concern is that Linus has this nonsensical prejudice against OpenZFS and simply will not allow it to be included in the kernel, apparently because Oracle has its own zfs with a restrictive license. But it goes beyond even that, as Linus uses a combination of complaints about licensing, and the insane assertion that OpenZFS is unsupported and could disappear any day. When the truth is that OpenZFS uses the CDDL license which allows distributing it as a binary module or source code, and OpenZFS is supported incredibly well and used in many enterprise and data center environments.

For example, my home server runs Manjaro which distributes OpenZFS binary modules in its official repositories and keeps kernels and zfs in sync. However Arch, which I use for my main desktop workstation, distributes it as source code, with a dkms option that usually assures kernel version compatibility. But compatibility with various Arch kernels cannot be assured, so the lts kernel must always be installed as a backup option. However I always keep the lts kernel installed on any distro I use anyway, so it's not a problem.

But things would be so much easier if Linus would simply stop with his irrational rejection of OpenZFS so it could be included in the kernel and become effortlessly compatible across all Linux distros just like ext4, btrfs, etc.

As someone using ZFS for their root, Linus's views are irrelevant due to the GPLv2 and CDDL have differing ownership models. The gist is that the GPLv2 grants ownership to the individual committer whereas CDDL grants ownership to the repository owner. All the rest of the two licenses are compatible with each other.

Linus could be the biggest ally of ZFS on Linux and that still wouldn't change the ownership models of the licenses. The only one who can really fix that is Oracle changing the ZFS license to something GPL compatible. There's a very slight chance that GNU could vote on granting a CDDL exception for the GPLv2 and/or the Linux Foundation granting an exception for ZFS on Linux (an exception was granted for Andrew File System in the past so that's not unprecedented), but those are a snowball's chance in Hell compared to Oracle and their snowball in an ice chest in Hell.

[cynic]

I'm in the middle of converting my 4 home server disks, containing almost 12 TB of data, from ext4 to zfs. The sole reason is because I'm tired of getting hit by bit rot. I'm only using single disk zfs as I have both local and cloud backups, but now I'll finally be able to tell when a file is corrupted. Of course I also formatted my 2 local backup disks with zfs to protect them as well.

My only concern is that Linus has this nonsensical prejudice against OpenZFS and simply will not allow it to be included in the kernel, apparently because Oracle has its own zfs with a restrictive license. But it goes beyond even that, as Linus uses a combination of complaints about licensing, and the insane assertion that OpenZFS is unsupported and could disappear any day. When the truth is that OpenZFS uses the CDDL license which allows distributing it as a binary module or source code, and OpenZFS is supported incredibly well and used in many enterprise and data center environments.

For example, my home server runs Manjaro which distributes OpenZFS binary modules in its official repositories and keeps kernels and zfs in sync. However Arch, which I use for my main desktop workstation, distributes it as source code, with a dkms option that usually assures kernel version compatibility. But compatibility with various Arch kernels cannot be assured, so the lts kernel must always be installed as a backup option. However I always keep the lts kernel installed on any distro I use anyway, so it's not a problem.

But things would be so much easier if Linus would simply stop with his irrational rejection of OpenZFS so it could be included in the kernel and become effortlessly compatible across all Linux distros just like ext4, btrfs, etc.

If you need bitrot detection and want to avoid the whole ZFS license issues, just use btrfs.

[muncrief]

If you need bitrot detection and want to avoid the whole ZFS license issues, just use btrfs.

I considered that, and it was a difficult decision. But overall it seemed that zfs was more mature and had a long history of reliability, while btrfs seems to have been stable for only a few years, with many problems before that. The lack of zfs kernel integration was of course very concerning, but in the end I decided keeping my data safe was the overriding issue.

But I'm no fanboy of either file system, and have only used ext4 until now. However my media archive has been building over 40 years, and I've unknowingly lost too many files to bit rot as it grew larger and larger. I have the original sources in storage, but I suspect the VHS (and yes, even a few Betamax) tapes are no longer viable, and other media degrades as well. On top of that everything is in uncounted unarranged, and often unlabeled, boxes, and a few times it's taken a couple of days to find what I need. But things like the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy are impossible to replace, and I'm certain the VHS tapes are defunct.

So I certainly hope I made the right decision, but I really don't know. But since I'm on my last TB of restoring to my new zfs filesystem I can't change my mind now

[nadir]

Oracle is probably the worst software company, period. They're very, very sue happy. Which is why there are these complications in shipping ZFS.

They had all the time in the world to change to a compatible license and people would be very happy to include ZFS in the kernel, but they haven't and likely won't, so we're stuck with the situation as it is.

Don't be angry at Linus of all people. Be angry at Oracle. There is always a good reason to be angry at them anyway.

[skeevy420]

I considered that, and it was a difficult decision. But overall it seemed that zfs was more mature and had a long history of reliability, while btrfs seems to have been stable for only a few years, with many problems before that. The lack of zfs kernel integration was of course very concerning, but in the end I decided keeping my data safe was the overriding issue.

But I'm no fanboy of either file system, and have only used ext4 until now. However my media archive has been building over 40 years, and I've unknowingly lost too many files to bit rot as it grew larger and larger. I have the original sources in storage, but I suspect the VHS (and yes, even a few Betamax) tapes are no longer viable, and other media degrades as well. On top of that everything is in uncounted unarranged, and often unlabeled, boxes, and a few times it's taken a couple of days to find what I need. But things like the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy are impossible to replace, and I'm certain the VHS tapes are defunct.

So I certainly hope I made the right decision, but I really don't know. But since I'm on my last TB of restoring to my new zfs filesystem I can't change my mind now

If you're that worried I'd highly recommend getting a 2nd disk for a mirror. Using a mirror/raidz1 has saved my ass/data twice now due to disk failures. You just never know. The first one lasted over a decade; the 2nd one lasted a few years.

A combination of how flexible ZFS's disk adding/removal is and being able to set both per dataset compression algorithms and case sensitivity when necessary is ultimately why I chose ZFS over anything else back in 2016*. There hasn't been any great advancement in file systems or new file systems created that have made me regret that decision. Once you start to really utilize ZFS, I don't think you'll regret it.

*And all sorts of other per dataset options due to how powerful "zpool create" is when you get used to it. I've really become spoiled to that and it's genuinely difficult for me to go back to anything else. You can go balls to the wall crazy with your archival directories while using saner settings on your more active directories and you don't have to worry about planning ahead, partitions, thin provisions, etc for when new things come up or those times when certain programs prefer data stored in a certain way. It's hard to stress how nice it really is to not have to think and plan for an unknown future and to be able to optimize as necessary.

[opticblu]

If you need bitrot detection and want to avoid the whole ZFS license issues, just use btrfs.

If you need bitrot detection and for your filesystem not to self-destruct in any pool layout more complicated than simple mirrors, stick with ZFS

[mirmirmir]

I considered that, and it was a difficult decision. But overall it seemed that zfs was more mature and had a long history of reliability, while btrfs seems to have been stable for only a few years, with many problems before that. The lack of zfs kernel integration was of course very concerning, but in the end I decided keeping my data safe was the overriding issue.

But I'm no fanboy of either file system, and have only used ext4 until now. However my media archive has been building over 40 years, and I've unknowingly lost too many files to bit rot as it grew larger and larger. I have the original sources in storage, but I suspect the VHS (and yes, even a few Betamax) tapes are no longer viable, and other media degrades as well. On top of that everything is in uncounted unarranged, and often unlabeled, boxes, and a few times it's taken a couple of days to find what I need. But things like the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy are impossible to replace, and I'm certain the VHS tapes are defunct.

So I certainly hope I made the right decision, but I really don't know. But since I'm on my last TB of restoring to my new zfs filesystem I can't change my mind now

I converted a 2tb disk into btrfs /home partition. And it was a painless experience. And I never had a problem with it.

Save yourself from future headache. Choose something that's properly supported. (I'm looking at you, nvidia driver)