Hi everyone, That''s my 1st question here and one from a Windows user who only tried "Live" CDs, so far. Anyway, i read that the ZFS system was meant to be reliable; a quick read tells me there should be no data loss possible under ZFS so i''m quite a bit intrigued... What are the chances to benefit from some failsafe filesystem provided by an installable "Live" CD in a near future? I''m hoping it will come soon, that ZFS will be available to the whole Linux world!... This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Michel Samson wrote:> That''s my 1st question here and one from a Windows > user who only tried "Live" CDs, so far. Anyway, iHello and welcome!> read that the ZFS system was meant to be reliable; > a quick read tells me there should be no data loss > possible under ZFS so i''m quite a bit intrigued...ZFS is great; you can play with it today by installing the current release of Solaris Express.> a near future? I''m hoping it will come soon, that > ZFS will be available to the whole Linux world!...The GPL (which the Linux kernel is licensed under) forbids the distribution of GPLed stuff linked with non-GPL stuff, so it''s unlikely that Linux will pick up ZFS any time soon. Of course, nothing is stopping some enterprising Linux hacker from reimplementing ZFS from scratch, but that would be a nontrivial undertaking. -- Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member President, Rite Online Inc. Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638 URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
Rich Teer <rich.teer at rite-group.com> wrote:> The GPL (which the Linux kernel is licensed under) forbids > the distribution of GPLed stuff linked with non-GPL stuff, > so it''s unlikely that Linux will pick up ZFS any time soon.This is not true..... Please read GPL ?2 first section and ?2 b) If you are a German citizen, you are not allowed to use more GPLd code in a non GPL project if this exceeds the amount that is OK for the "Wissenschaftliches Kleinzitat". If you are a US citizen, you are not allowed to use any amount of GPLd code in a non GPL project. However: You are allowed to use non GPL code from within a GPLd project. Verify by: FSF did not sue Veritas. J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 02:21:34PM -0700, Michel Samson wrote:> > That''s my 1st question here and one from a Windows > user who only tried "Live" CDs, so far. Anyway, i > read that the ZFS system was meant to be reliable; > a quick read tells me there should be no data loss > possible under ZFS so i''m quite a bit intrigued...ZFS is able to _detect_ all forms of data corruption, even the silent kind (firmware bugs, driver bugs, misdirected reads/writes, etc). Of course, data loss is always possible given enough damage - if your data is all on a single drive and I whack it with a sledgehammer, chances are your data is gone for all practical purposes. But if you replicate your data appropriately (preferably with the upcoming double parity RAID-Z and hot spare features), then data corruption is a statistical impossibility.> What are the chances to benefit from some failsafe > filesystem provided by an installable "Live" CD in > a near future? I''m hoping it will come soon, that > ZFS will be available to the whole Linux world!...I believe that there are LiveCD versions of several OpenSolaris distros, including Nexenta and Schilix, so you should be able to play with ZFS on any system using those. ZFS is Open, OpenSolaris is Open, so it''s very much available to the "open world", just not the "Linux world" ;-) As to porting to Linux, it''s theoretically possible, but the incompatible license (CDDL vs. GPL) would forever "taint" the module and prevent it from being accepted into in the mainline tree. To avoid any ratholing on licensing and/or proprietary module threads, please direct any further questions regarding the legalitiy/acceptability of this to a Linux mailing list. Hope that helps, - Eric -- Eric Schrock, Solaris Kernel Development http://blogs.sun.com/eschrock
> That''s my 1st question here and one from a Windows > user who only tried "Live" CDs, so far. Anyway, i > read that the ZFS system was meant to be reliable; > a quick read tells me there should be no data loss > possible under ZFS so i''m quite a bit intrigued...Oog. That''s a bit strong. Certainly ZFS has many features that promote data stability and is definitely meant to be reliable, especially in the face of disk corruption (when you''re using redundant storage) and power/connection failures. But "no data loss possible" would seem to imply "no bugs allowed" as well and I don''t think anyone thinks that is true. Besides, you can always have several disks die or something besides the filesystem scribble over your disks to the point that the data is gone.> What are the chances to benefit from some failsafe > filesystem provided by an installable "Live" CD in > a near future?It would seem pretty simple that a Live CD could search for and import any ZFS pools that it found on local disks. I don''t know that any of them do that today. Is that what you''re thinking of?> I''m hoping it will come soon, that > ZFS will be available to the whole Linux world!...ZFS is "available" today, but under a license that is not used by Linux. So distributing them together is a separate issue. -- Darren This message posted from opensolaris.org
Hi, I wish to thank you all! I thought for a second i could forget about acronyms and just trust ZFS for keeping my data safely at no cost; MicroSoft file systems appear to leave people exposed to threaths like viruses, SoftWare glitches, gremlins... that is somewhat worrysome and i''d have welcomed a cure to this misery. Well, i taken notes about double- parity RAID-Z devices, Solaris Express and Nexenta systems. I did appreciate your explanations about licensing conflicts and the need to migrate toward OpenSolaris for anyone who wishes to evaluate ZFS. I''ll DownLoad every single OpenSolaris "Live" CD i can get in hope that one will let me use KDE, etc! It''s nice to get such swift replies, thanks again. This message posted from opensolaris.org
Eric Schrock <eric.schrock at sun.com> wrote:> As to porting to Linux, it''s theoretically possible, but the > incompatible license (CDDL vs. GPL) would forever "taint" the module and > prevent it from being accepted into in the mainline tree. To avoid any > ratholing on licensing and/or proprietary module threads, please direct > any further questions regarding the legalitiy/acceptability of this to a > Linux mailing list.As the GPL only forbids to use GPLd code in a non-GPL project but not vice versa, it is only a result of decisions made by the Linux kernel people but not a GPL vs. CDDL incomptibility problem. J?rg -- EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily