zfs discuss - Nov 2005 - Snapshots

I''ve been reading a bit about ZFS and I must say that I''m
quite
impresses so far, but there are still a couple of things that I''m 
curious about (and I apologise if this has been discussed before).

Will it be possible for a normal user to take a snapshot of (and 
restore) filesystems that belong to them (like the home-directory)
or will root-access be necessary?

Is there (or will there be) a tool to quickly compare snapshots or a 
live filesystem and a snapshot? While one could use some tool (like 
diff) to compare all the files it should be possible to do this much 
faster by traversing the directories and see which files/directories 
that are the same (point to the same place on disk) and which are not.

Erik Wikstr?m
-- 
"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
  telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure
  out how to use my telephone" -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Erik Wikstr?m wrote:
> I''ve been reading a bit about ZFS and I must say that I''m
quite
> impresses so far, but there are still a couple of things that I''m 
> curious about (and I apologise if this has been discussed before).
> 
> Will it be possible for a normal user to take a snapshot of (and 
> restore) filesystems that belong to them (like the home-directory)
> or will root-access be necessary?
> 
Yes, this issue is currently being investigated.  We have several 
bugs/rfes (6349470, 6280676 and 6352860) on this issue.  The basic ideas 
is to allow certain users the ability to do things such as create, 
backup, destroy, restore, snapshot and so on.

> Is there (or will there be) a tool to quickly compare snapshots or a 
> live filesystem and a snapshot? While one could use some tool (like 
> diff) to compare all the files it should be possible to do this much 
> faster by traversing the directories and see which files/directories 
> that are the same (point to the same place on disk) and which are not.
> 
> Erik Wikstr?m