I don't really know enough about filesystem internals to comment on the design one way or another. I can say that Oberlin College Computer Science switched to using ZFS with snapshots in 2008 or so (on Solaris 10) and it greatly simplified restoring from backups. Home directories had weekly snapshots taken, rolling over a month or two, and it was a godsend when a student (or a professor...) accidentally deleted something important. No more trawling through backup tapes by the admin to restore the file you wanted, it could easily be taken from an on-disk snapshot. Obviously it required a certain greater amount of disk space, but I contend that it was worth it. -Henry On Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 10:47, Will Senn wrote: > On 2/3/21 11:43 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote: > > On Sat, 30 Jan 2021, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > [ Usual insightful... insights ] > > > >> If you like ZFS you don't understand operating systems design. I do. > > ... > > > > There's no way that I'd use ZFS; lose a block in an ordinary file, > > well, you now have a hole (but not in the file-system sense); lose a > > block in a compressed system, well... > > > ZFS needn't be compressed, and I don't generally do compression or > encryption unless required by law, so I can't speak from personal > experience on those use cases (others, far more experienced can). I do > know that it's truly a pain to recover from issues with either. > > In response to the negative vibes around ZFS. I've never lost a file (or > a piece of a file) in 10+ years of using ZFS. I get the feeling we may > not be talking about the same ZFS. My experience is with the ZFS FreeBSD > comes with, not the version that Oracle owns. Perhaps the info is a > little out of date for the naysayers. In my experience, using ZFS is > fairly transparent and simple to use - no partitioning to deal with, no > need to worry about generating filesystems, none of that - add your > disks to a pool, choose your RAID levels and it gets mounted, no fuss. > I've lost plenty of disks along the way, but ZFS just keeps on chugging > along nicely until I replace them and then rebuilds the arrays, again, > no fuss other than replacing the hardware. In terms of massive system > updates and such, I just snapshot the environment (a near instantaneous > operation) before making significant changes to my system, that might > break things and when they do break (and they do, more often than I'd > like), I just rollback. man bectl. Painless (and I mean painless, > hundreds of times, or mor). I'm sure it all sounds scifi, but it's my > experience along with plenty of other folks, and this ZFS sucks thread > seems to be FUD to me - ala Microsoft vs Linux, or at best informed > hypothetical speculations - reminds me of an if statement conversation I > had online in the early 1990's where one group of folks claimed that > braces worked a certain way, based on the then current standard, and > another group of folks (I'd be on this side of things), tested the > theory with a host of compilers, observed the functions effects, shook > their heads and wondered why it didn't match up with the theory, and > said it worked another. Who was right? I'm still not entirely sure, from > a philosophical perspective, but I have since coded my if statements > according to my environment, not the standards. > > As I mentioned in the prior thread, I've lost my share of files and file > systems (many, many times since 1993 when I started with linux - 0.9 > kernel, slackware, then redhat, then debian, now mint) with ext3/4, and > btrfs, though, and the only recovery was backup (a time intensive > process). I really don't see the logic behind the negative arguments. > Don't like it, fine, say it and live it. Claim it sucks? Then, back it > up with a real-world, current experience and I'll cede the point - I'll > keep using ZFS though :). > > I want to be clear, I don't dislike Linux. I don't think FreeBSD is > superior. I like both. I use both... daily. With enough prep and > planning, my linux environment is similarly recoverable, but with > freebsd, the prep and planning requires a lot less time and effort. > Personally, I heart linux Mint - it's based on Debian and Ubuntu - is a > straightforward install, works well, has zfs (not yet on boot), has > timeshift (lovely piece of software), and can be quite pretty. > > Vive la difference. > > Will > > > > >