I was browsing around the OpenSolaris pages and came across the <a href="http://www.genunix.org/wiki/">OpenSolaris wiki</a> at genunix. I did a quick search for "zfs" on the wiki and it returned no results. Are there plans for putting content related to ZFS on a wiki? Would the OpenSolaris wiki be the desired place for this content? Thoughts? -Nate This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Sun, 25 Jun 2006, Nathanael Burton wrote: [.... reformatted... ]> I was browsing around the OpenSolaris pages and came across the <a > href="http://www.genunix.org/wiki/">OpenSolaris wiki</a> at genunix. I > did a quick search for "zfs" on the wiki and it returned no results. > Are there plans for putting content related to ZFS on a wiki? Would the > OpenSolaris wiki be the desired place for this content?Currently the Genunix facility, including the wiki, is a resource for the OpenSolaris Community, run by OpenSolaris community members. Anyone wishing to contribute OpenSolaris related content is welcome to make use of it. Down the road, Sun may decide to provide a wiki facility. If they do, then any content on the genunix wiki could be migrated to Suns wiki solution - or it could be linked to, or .... whatever! If you have something in mind for Genunix, please contact myself or Ben Rockwood (offlist) if you need help getting it set up. Regards, Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. al at logical-approach.com Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134 Timezone: US CDT OpenSolaris.Org Community Advisory Board (CAB) Member - Apr 2005 OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Feb 2006
Another place would be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS Of course, there are pros and cons to each place, and also pros and cons to one ZFS wiki page vs. two. Nathanael Burton wrote:> I was browsing around the OpenSolaris pages and came across the <a > href="http://www.genunix.org/wiki/">OpenSolaris wiki</a> at genunix. I did a > quick search for "zfs" on the wiki and it returned no results. Are there plans > for putting content related to ZFS on a wiki? Would the OpenSolaris wiki be the > desired place for this content? > > Thoughts? > > -Nate-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff VICTOR Sun Microsystems jeff.victor @ sun.com OS Ambassador Sr. Technical Specialist Solaris 10 Zones FAQ: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zones/faq --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Currently the Genunix facility, including the wiki, > is a resource for the > OpenSolaris Community, run by OpenSolaris community > members. Anyone > wishing to contribute OpenSolaris related content is > welcome to make use > of it. > > Down the road, Sun may decide to provide a wiki > facility. If they do, > then any content on the genunix wiki could be > migrated to Suns wiki > solution - or it could be linked to, or .... > whatever! > > If you have something in mind for Genunix, please > contact myself or Ben > Rockwood (offlist) if you need help getting it set > up. > > Regards, > > Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. > al at logical-approach.com > Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134 > Timezone: US CDT > enSolaris.Org Community Advisory Board (CAB) Member - > Apr 2005 > OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) > Member - Feb 2006 > ______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discu > ss >There is quite a lot of information out there about ZFS that various Sun and OpenSolaris community members have posted on their blogs. The problem I see, and the reason for my question, is that I think for people new to OpenSolaris and ZFS it can be hard to track down the information you may be looking for. I guess it''s a matter of policy or procedure. If there is a sanctioned, central place for people to post that useful information I think it could help newcomers to answer their questions easily. I don''t want to force people to do things a certain way, but I''ve always felt that creating a wiki page about a tutorial, like "ZFS Automatic snapshots" or "Backup and Recovery with ZFS", and then creating a blog post in which one links to the tutorial and provides sidebar information is extremely effective. It supports more of a "community" documentation effort, than strictly posting that information on a blog. -Nate This message posted from opensolaris.org
Just some random thoughts on this... One of the initial design criteria of ZFS is that it''s simple. If it''s not, that was a bug... If we need tutorials to use the zfs commands, has something missed the mark? If the information that is needed to do the work is NOT in the man pages, perhaps we could look to address that... Personally, I''d prefer to read a manpage than scour the web for a tutorial that may or may not be current. hm... man zfs_tutorial? :) Nathan. On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 10:34, Nathanael Burton wrote:> > Currently the Genunix facility, including the wiki, > > is a resource for the > > OpenSolaris Community, run by OpenSolaris community > > members. Anyone > > wishing to contribute OpenSolaris related content is > > welcome to make use > > of it. > > > > Down the road, Sun may decide to provide a wiki > > facility. If they do, > > then any content on the genunix wiki could be > > migrated to Suns wiki > > solution - or it could be linked to, or .... > > whatever! > > > > If you have something in mind for Genunix, please > > contact myself or Ben > > Rockwood (offlist) if you need help getting it set > > up. > > > > Regards, > > > > Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. > > al at logical-approach.com > > Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134 > > Timezone: US CDT > > enSolaris.Org Community Advisory Board (CAB) Member - > > Apr 2005 > > OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) > > Member - Feb 2006 > > ______________________________________________ > > zfs-discuss mailing list > > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discu > > ss > > > > There is quite a lot of information out there about ZFS that various Sun and OpenSolaris community members have posted on their blogs. The problem I see, and the reason for my question, is that I think for people new to OpenSolaris and ZFS it can be hard to track down the information you may be looking for. > > I guess it''s a matter of policy or procedure. If there is a sanctioned, central place for people to post that useful information I think it could help newcomers to answer their questions easily. > > I don''t want to force people to do things a certain way, but I''ve always felt that creating a wiki page about a tutorial, like "ZFS Automatic snapshots" or "Backup and Recovery with ZFS", and then creating a blog post in which one links to the tutorial and provides sidebar information is extremely effective. It supports more of a "community" documentation effort, than strictly posting that information on a blog. > > -Nate > > > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss--
On 6/25/06, Nathan Kroenert <Nathan.Kroenert at sun.com> wrote:> Just some random thoughts on this... > > One of the initial design criteria of ZFS is that it''s simple. If it''s > not, that was a bug... > > If we need tutorials to use the zfs commands, has something missed the > mark?When new ways of doing things are introduced, it is often times desirable to have a way to express it in a different context, a different format, etc. Creating pools, file systems, snapshots, clones, etc. may be simple to those that have spent a lot of time thinking about it. Now put yourself in the mindset of a junior level admin that is qualified only because the course completion certificate on his cube wall says he is. Now, looking forward a bit, where does the ZFS integration with zones documentation belong? How about real world replication strategies with zfs send/receive, including appropriate utility scripts? Converting UFS root to ZFS root?> If the information that is needed to do the work is NOT in the man > pages, perhaps we could look to address that...All of the information is in man pages. Often times, stringing man pages together to bigger concepts is too hard. Hence the general fear of man pages by UNIX newbies and some oldbies. Personal example: I learned lots of systems programming from man pages, looking through header files, and looking at others'' code. Then one day I was in the book store and found a book call "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by W. Richard Stevens (RIP). I sat down in the middle of the isle for what must have been 3 - 5 hours reading so much of what I had learned through so much effort. At that point, most of what I was reading was review or stuff I didn''t care about. However, there were a few "ah-ha!" moments scattered in there. All the while, I was thinking how much it would have helped me to have that book when I first started learning.> Personally, I''d prefer to read a manpage than scour the web for a > tutorial that may or may not be current.While not ZFS, I can offer a current example. Brendan Gregg has a great page (http://users.tpg.com.au/adsln4yb/zones.html) on configuring zones, including setting up resources pools, and management strategies. I suspect that a future update will talk about using zones with ZFS. If I need to know a particular option to zoneadm or zonecfg, man is great. When I was first learning how to get zones and resource controls to play together, Brendan''s page was a good overview of my options that cannot be adequately conveyed in man pages, if I can find the right one.> hm... man zfs_tutorial? :)I think this is the case of there is an admin guide and a man page. I see a wiki as serving the purpose of an admin guide in an Open Source environment. Wiki''s are really simple to learn to use (from an authoring standpoint) and have the right barrier to entry to encourage those that aren''t coders to contribute to development of documentation. If the way to make changes to documentation requires a source tree checkout, learning docbook, etc. most would-be authors or editors will be discouraged. Else, I guess it just winds up in a bunch of blogs that are really hard to find. Mike -- Mike Gerdts http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/
> Just some random thoughts on this... > > One of the initial design criteria of ZFS is that > it''s simple. If it''s > not, that was a bug... > > If we need tutorials to use the zfs commands, has > something missed the > mark? > > If the information that is needed to do the work is > NOT in the man > pages, perhaps we could look to address that... > > Personally, I''d prefer to read a manpage than scour > the web for a > tutorial that may or may not be current. > > hm... man zfs_tutorial? :) > > Nathan.Tutorial might have been the wrong word. Man pages are good for finding quick reference about specific commands, syntax, basic functionality. I understand that ZFS was built around being simple but powerful. Some users/admins have trouble seeing the "big picture"...putting it all together. This is where I feel the power of a wiki, or any centralized documentation space related to ZFS, could be of benefit. Also things that may not be explained in a man page such as tying other applications in with ZFS, such as NetBackup and ZFS(?), ZFS and zones, ZFS and Oracle, etc. Most of those topics wouldn''t be in a man page(except the zones one), but are important topics that could be very useful. -Nate This message posted from opensolaris.org
A lesson we learned with Solaris Zones applies here to ZFS. Accomplishing high-level goals, e.g. "prepare an appropriate environment for application XYZ installation (Zones)" or "prepare an appropriate filesystem for application XYZ data (ZFS)" is different than it was before Solaris 10. For Zones, a Sun BluePrint, "Solaris Containers Technology Architecture Guide", was written to begin to address this need. Fortunately, with ZFS it will be easier to determine appropriate factors and settings than it was for earlier filesystems. However, documenting the lessons learned in a wiki would be very valuable. Nathanael Burton wrote:>> Just some random thoughts on this... >> >> One of the initial design criteria of ZFS is that it''s simple. If it''s not, >> that was a bug... >> >> If we need tutorials to use the zfs commands, has something missed the mark? >> >> If the information that is needed to do the work is NOT in the man pages, >> perhaps we could look to address that... >> >> Personally, I''d prefer to read a manpage than scour the web for a tutorial >> that may or may not be current. >> >> hm... man zfs_tutorial? :) >> >> Nathan. > > > Tutorial might have been the wrong word. Man pages are good for finding quick > reference about specific commands, syntax, basic functionality. I understand > that ZFS was built around being simple but powerful. Some users/admins have > trouble seeing the "big picture"...putting it all together. This is where I > feel the power of a wiki, or any centralized documentation space related to > ZFS, could be of benefit. > > Also things that may not be explained in a man page such as tying other > applications in with ZFS, such as NetBackup and ZFS(?), ZFS and zones, ZFS and > Oracle, etc. Most of those topics wouldn''t be in a man page(except the zones > one), but are important topics that could be very useful. > > -Nate > > > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff VICTOR Sun Microsystems jeff.victor @ sun.com OS Ambassador Sr. Technical Specialist Solaris 10 Zones FAQ: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zones/faq --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Gerdts wrote:> On 6/25/06, Nathan Kroenert <Nathan.Kroenert at sun.com> wrote: > > Now, looking forward a bit, where does the ZFS integration with zones > documentation belong?Some of it will appear in the next update to the Sun BluePrint "Solaris Containers Architecture Technology Guide."> How about real world replication strategies > with zfs send/receive, including appropriate utility scripts? > Converting UFS root to ZFS root? > >> If the information that is needed to do the work is NOT in the man >> pages, perhaps we could look to address that... > > > All of the information is in man pages. Often times, stringing man > pages together to bigger concepts is too hard. Hence the general fear > of man pages by UNIX newbies and some oldbies.Should every sys admin who is maintaining an Oracle (or MySQL, or...) database be forced to go through the process of determining good combinations of ZFS settings? (There aren''t many settings, but there are a few.) Will people learn that there are limitations to ZFS that are not documented? Wouldn''t a wiki be useful as a central repository of such knowledge? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff VICTOR Sun Microsystems jeff.victor @ sun.com OS Ambassador Sr. Technical Specialist Solaris 10 Zones FAQ: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zones/faq --------------------------------------------------------------------------