Re: BTRFS in 2012?

On Jan 22, 2012, at 2:08 PM, Kaleb wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Jeffrey Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
>> One of the issues on flash performance with small block size.
>> 
>> (again off topic and unrelated to BTRFS and perhaps unrelated to linux)
>> 
>> ZFS has a huge 5+ year head start on BTRFS in terms of deployment
>> and stability testing that is still preventing common usage.
>> 
>> This is the nature of filesystems: it takes years to deploy successfully.
>> 
>> ZFS has been blocked for adoption because of licensing issues
>> related to GPLv2. The licensing issue (afaik) has a loophole
>> that permits ZFS to be installed if built on the end-user system,
>> but the binaries cannot be distributed by a linux vendor.
>> 
>> IANAL and all the usual disclaimers.
>> 
>> But there is an engineering solution to target the loophole
>> in the licensing that might permit ZFS to be added as a
>> "feature" in 2012.
>> 
>> Yes I'm saying dkms (or equivalent) and EULA in the installer
>> and a build tool that addresses the licensing obstacles to
>> using ZFS on Linux.
>> 
>>        Any interest in ZFS in 2012?
>> 
>> +1 from me (but I fully expect to be outvoted by GPL fanatics: oh well)
>> 
>> 73 de Jeff
> 
> I would love to see ZFS, but realistically, how would it work to use
> it for the root filesystem? I would have to install it, then create a
> remaster and install that?


I'm glad to see that there is ZFS "feature" interest.

Meanwhile
	Using ZFS.
and
	Using ZFS as / (i.e. root file system).
are rather two different issues.

In order to "Use ZFS as root" a multistage install would
be needed.

One of the stages would need to download
and build ZFS from source to be included as a kernel module.

The final root file system would then have to be created, mounted
and populated. While complex, there are ways to do this. Hmmm,
I dunno whether the licensing forbids distributing a ZFS lived
image: that would need some careful investigation.)

E.g. there are closely similar issues to ZFS root that have been solved when
root needs to be created on sw RAID (where a separate /boot is needed)
and with encrypted root fs on laptops. "Use ZFS as root." would
follow along with the same known good installer techniques.

Please note that I intended only to name a possible feature.

There's some considerable additional effort that would need
to be planned and prioritized to achieve
	Use ZFS as root.
I do not wish to promise anyone a pony inadvertently.

hth

73 de Jeff