Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2013 14:09:36 -0800 From: Jeremy Chadwick <jdc@koitsu.org> To: Andriy Gapon <avg@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: ZFS "stalls" -- and maybe we should be talking about defaults? Message-ID: <20130305220936.GA54718@icarus.home.lan> In-Reply-To: <5135D275.3050500@FreeBSD.org> References: <513524B2.6020600@denninger.net> <89680320E0FA4C0A99D522EA2037CE6E@multiplay.co.uk> <20130305050539.GA52821@anubis.morrow.me.uk> <20130305053249.GA38107@icarus.home.lan> <5135D275.3050500@FreeBSD.org>
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On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 01:09:41PM +0200, Andriy Gapon wrote: > Completely unrelated to the main thread: > > on 05/03/2013 07:32 Jeremy Chadwick said the following: > > That said, I still do not recommend ZFS for a root filesystem > > Why? Too long a history of problems with it and weird edge cases (keep reading); the last thing an administrator wants to deal with is a system where the root filesystem won't mount/can't be used. It makes recovery or problem-solving (i.e. the server is not physically accessible given geographic distances) very difficult. Are there still issues booting from raidzX or stripes or root pools with multiple vdevs? What about with cache or log devices? My point/opinion: UFS for a root filesystem is guaranteed to work without any fiddling about and, barring drive failures or controller issues, is (again, my opinion) a lot more risk-free than ZFS-on-root. I say that knowing lots of people use ZFS-on-root, which is great -- I just wonder how many of them have tested all the crazy scenarios and then tried to boot from things. > > (this biting people still happens even today) > > What exactly? http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2013-February/249363.html http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2013-February/249387.html http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2013-February/072398.html The last one got solved: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2013-February/072406.html http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2013-February/072408.html I know factually you're aware of the zpool.cache ordeal (which may or may not be the cause of the issue shown in the 2nd URL above), but my point is that still at this moment in time -- barring someone using a stable/9 ISO for installation -- there still seem to be issues. Things on the mailing lists which go unanswered/never provide closure of this nature are numerous, and that just adds to my concern. > > - Disks are GPT and are *partitioned, and ZFS refers to the partitions > > not the raw disk -- this matters (honest, it really does; the ZFS > > code handles things differently with raw disks) > > Not on FreeBSD as far I can see. My statement comes from here (first line in particular): http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2013-January/248697.html If this is wrong/false, then this furthers my point about kernel folks who are in-the-know needing to chime in and help stop the misinformation. The rest of us are just end-users, often misinformed. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@koitsu.org | | UNIX Systems Administrator http://jdc.koitsu.org/ | | Mountain View, CA, US | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |
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