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OpenSolaris Boot Support For ZFS Root FS on x86 and SPARC

Posted by timothy on Sun Apr 20, 2008 02:17 PM
from the devilish-wings-spread-wider dept.
Derkjan de Haan writes "I am glad to see progress is being made on the the ability of OpenSolaris to boot from a ZFS filesystem: 'This putback provides the ability to boot the Solaris Operating System from a ZFS root file system on both x86 and SPARC platforms. Full ZFS boot and install support will be available in a subsequent build. Because of the phased putback, we recommend waiting for the full boot and install support rather than attempting to use the ZFS boot features separately.'"

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  • by TheRaven64 (641858) on Sunday April 20, @02:21PM (#23135572) Homepage Journal
    This is an article about System V UNIX, and it's in the BSD category and tagged bsd. WTF?
  • Honk! Honk! (Score:5, Informative)

    by tripwirecc (1045528) on Sunday April 20, @02:23PM (#23135582)
    The OpenSolaris distribution can already install ZFS root and boot, based on the previous putback. This current putback makes it more robust, especially when it comes to finding the root device after having been swapped to a different port. What's still missing is multidisk pool and RAID-Z boot support.
  • I don't think booting from ZFS is all that interesting. I think expanding a RAID-Z pool is far more interesting: http://blogs.sun.com/ahl/entry/expand_o_matic_raid_z [sun.com]
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      The reason booting is important is twofold. First, it means that you can simplify your configuration by having all of all of your disks managed by the ZFS storage pool manager. Secondly, it means that you get all of the nice transactional features from Z
  • by Marcion (876801) on Sunday April 20, @04:25PM (#23136394) Homepage Journal
    ... when does Linux get ZFS?
    • by TheRaven64 (641858) on Sunday April 20, @04:56PM (#23136586) Homepage Journal
      First, in spite of the section, this article has nothing to do with BSD - it is about Solaris, which is a System V derivative. FreeBSD also has ZFS support, but does not have more than very limited support for ZFS booting (and none in the stable release, I believe).

      As to when Linux will get support for ZFS, it requires one of two things to happen. Either Linux developers need to do a clean-room reimplementation of ZFS, or they need to modify their license to one that isn't incompatible with many other Free Software licenses , including the CDDL.

      • You missed the most likely option...

        Or Linux needs to get user mode filesystems up to the point you can store your mission-critical data on them.

        ZFS has been written ported to linux, I tried it last year but one of my tests was to pull power to the drive w
        • FUSE is quite stable. It's ZFS FUSE that's unstable.

          -:sigma.SB

          • I can believe that, though I haven't tested FUSE for much other than ZFS (just mythtvfs and sshfs and both for fun at home rather than production use). I also believe the ZFS code is stable and not prone to corrupting drives when power is lost.

            The problem
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      http://zfs-on-fuse.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

      Except on fuse either when Sun goes GPL 2, or when both Sun and Linux goes GPL 3, or if Linux stop being GPL at all but uhm, yeah right ..
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Whenever the Linux zealots feel like putting down the "one-True-Holy-license" pitchforks and start to implement it.

      The code is out there. You're welcome to use it following the license under which it was released.
    • SunOS and subsequently Solaris, as inherited in OpenSolaris, the subject of this article, are AT&T UNIX System V derivatives, not from the Berkely Software Distribution (BSD) of UNIX. You're offtopic, my dear.
      • SunOS and subsequently Solaris, as inherited in OpenSolaris, the subject of this article, are AT&T UNIX System V derivatives, not from the Berkely Software Distribution (BSD) of UNIX.

        SunOS was BSD. Solaris is AT&T. See Wikipedia or something for t