From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 8 18:34:31 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0587B106566B for ; Tue, 8 Nov 2011 18:34:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gull@gull.us) Received: from mail-bw0-f54.google.com (mail-bw0-f54.google.com [209.85.214.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 910A58FC08 for ; Tue, 8 Nov 2011 18:34:30 +0000 (UTC) Received: by bkbzs8 with SMTP id zs8so957183bkb.13 for ; Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:34:29 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.205.132.16 with SMTP id hs16mr9019512bkc.7.1320777269089; Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:34:29 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.204.38.195 with HTTP; Tue, 8 Nov 2011 10:34:28 -0800 (PST) X-Originating-IP: [76.104.147.221] In-Reply-To: <4EB8D654.6080808@gmx.net> References: <4EB5B512.2000601@gmx.net> <4EB67034.2080507@gmx.net> <4EB8D654.6080808@gmx.net> Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 10:34:28 -0800 Message-ID: From: David Brodbeck To: Martin von Gagern Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: zfs file names (inodes) without files (ENOENT) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:34:31 -0000 On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Martin von Gagern wrote: > Thought the same, and gave it a try. zpool claims there is no pool of > that name. "zpool -f" doesn't help. Looking at the device nodes, it > appears as though OI would only recognize 3 of my 4 HDDs, which seems > really strange, given the fact that they're all wired the same way. That is pretty odd. OI's biggest weakness is hardware support, IMHO. The kernel is written by Sun (well, Oracle, now) and they have no interest in supporting hardware they don't sell. Drivers for commodity hardware are often buggy or nonexistent. It reminds me of the early, early days of Linux and BSD, where you'd have to buy and return three SCSI cards before you got one that worked. > OI boot process provides too little information for my taste Yeah, it's *quite* terse. The OI text console in general is lacking in refinement; Sun hardware grew frame buffers pretty early, so the assumption was you'd either be running some windowing environment (if you were physically at the system) or you'd be using a serial console (if it's a headless server.) Trying to administer an OI box via the system console tends to be an exercise in frustration. > So I'm heading towards Linux now, as no solution to the FreeBSD ZFS > problems seems to be forthcoming. Will probably be running some tandem > of btrfs and Ext4 for now, until btrfs becomes more mature or space > requirements force me to drop one of those file systems. I share your frustrations. I would really like to see btrfs mature. I really want a filesystem with pooled free space and transparent compression, but I've found OI frustrating from a hardware standpoint. I didn't have the problems you did with the FreeBSD ZFS implementation (maybe because I didn't dig into it very far), but I do need NFSv4, and the performance of FreeBSD's NFSv4 server is just too slow for me to consider it a reasonable replacement. So I'm kind of left with no way to get everything I want in one OS.