Sometimes it’s nice being wrong. Contrary to what I predicted, ZFS will be supported in Debian Squeeze using the official installer.
This means that Debian Squeeze will be one of the first GNU distributions to support ZFS.
In fact, even though ZFS support didn’t make it to Debian-Installer beta1 by the time it was released, it is now available in the netboot images (this happens because netboot images fetch newer installer components from the internet).
As a consequence of this my unofficial installer can now be considered obsolete.
So why did I say something that turned out to be grossly inaccurate? It’s not due to anyone’s fault really. At that time, the version of Parted that included ZFS detection hadn’t migrated to Squeeze. The unblock policy didn’t appear to allow this migration. However, the Release Team kindly decided to make an exception that allowed this, and after Parted had migrated the changes in Debian-Installer itself went in quite smoothly.
April 27, 2012 at 12:28 |
[…] explica Robert millan en su blog, en el que destaca que por ejemplo ZFS ya está disponible en las imágenes con arranque en red […]
October 13, 2011 at 21:06 |
Hi guys. Just wanted to say that I could install GRUB on ZFS root filesystem with the kFreeBSD releases 6.0 and 6.0.3, but not with the 6.0.2.1 release.
Also with the 6.0 release (didn’t check with 6.0.3) I was only able to install GRUB after physically disconnecting my other three HDs before starting the installer.
February 18, 2011 at 11:31 |
It’s so interesting, in fact I’m trying to install debian/kfreebsd but stuck with some problems with grub. I tried with a ZFS / and a ext2 /boot partitions but it fails (among lots of different configurations).
Only configuration worked for me was a UFS / partition and /usr, /var, /tmp and /home with ZFS.
any hint?
I’m also wondering if debian/kfreebsd would be a reliable alternative to install on a production server.
February 18, 2011 at 16:16 |
ZFS / partition should work. But it’s hard to give advice just by knowing that “it fails”. I recommend you contact debian-bsd and/or debian-boot with a description of your problem.
As for a production server, it should be fine as long as you don’t depend on NFS.
February 18, 2011 at 19:23
I asked on #debian-kbsd explaining my problem and they said that many users joined channel with the same problem.
The only way to install system was creating a UFS / partition and /var, /home, /usr and /tmp over ZFS.
Booting with this config didn’t mount ZFS partitions (they don’t appear on /etc/fstab)
That configuration didn’t make grub fail. With fail I mean I can’t install it neither mbr nor harddisk.
I’m a little bit lost.
February 22, 2011 at 17:33
What prevented GRUB from installing? (you can see errors in the syslog, or just switch to tty 4)
February 7, 2011 at 13:25 |
[…] […]
December 31, 2010 at 19:13 |
Hmm. I tested todays debian installer for kfreebsd-i386, and I cannot find any zfs support there :( Is this a problem with i386 (I know it is not adviced, but i REALLY want zfs on my 32-bit box, as it nows works on by FreeBSD without problems), or there are still some integration needed.
January 2, 2011 at 20:09 |
Sorry, it’s amd64 only for now.
February 22, 2011 at 17:47 |
It should be available in the daily builds now:
http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/kfreebsd-i386/daily/netboot/
NOTE: these don’t install Debian squeeze/stable, they install Debian sid
December 13, 2010 at 22:44 |
[…] ZFS già dall’installer “netboot” con il kernel 8 di FreeBSD. Da quanto dice Robert Millan in un post, il supporto al ZFS ci sarà SOLO sulla “netboot image” e non sul Debian-Installer […]
December 10, 2010 at 10:12 |
Great work! I’m using it right now :)
I’ve a question about how you’re going to support the coming FreeBSD (kernel) releases hence ZFS releases. Are we going to see new FreeBSD 8.2,..8.x kernels landing on Debian kFreeBSD or only back-porting fixes to 8.1?
Thanks in advance and I can’t wait to celebrate the release of Debian 6 :)
December 10, 2010 at 10:35 |
I don’t think anyone will be into backporting ZFS to older kFreeBSD versions. So if you use kFreeBSD 8.1, you get ZFS 14. If you want newer ZFS you’ll need to upgrade to kFreeBSD 8.2, or to kFreeBSD 9.
However, when it comes to the distribution, it’s likely that backports of the kernel packages are provided.
December 10, 2010 at 07:30 |
Hi,
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there the main problem why any linux distribution haven’t implemented ZFS into it with the licence, which wasn’t compatible with the one of GNU’s ?
It’s only what I remember from some other articles, so perhaps I might be wrong in some details, but this was the first thing which came to my mind when I noticed this ZFS & Squeeze info.
Anyway I like that idea to finally have some distro with ZFS.
D.
December 10, 2010 at 10:32 |
Debian is more than a “linux distribution” :-)
It’s an operating system based on GNU, and it supports many kernels, including Linux, the Hurd, or the kernel of FreeBSD (kFreeBSD for short).
kFreeBSD in particular has had ZFS support since 2007. Debian added the missing bits (utilities, installer support) a few months ago. So when you use Debian with the kernel of FreeBSD, you get ZFS support now.
December 10, 2010 at 12:00
ah so, that’s the trick :)
thx for the explanation.
December 9, 2010 at 08:56 |
[…] https://robertmh.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/about-zfs-in-squeeze-2/ 15. https://robertmh.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/about-zfs-in-squeeze/ 16. […]
December 9, 2010 at 04:58 |
[…] Robert Millen in seinem Blog mitteilt, ist es wohl auch mal schön, wenn man falsch liegt. Gegenteilig von dem […]
December 8, 2010 at 18:23 |
@robertmh:
Does ZFS on Debian come with all the security features of ZFS available on Solaris, like encryption, file system quota, etc
December 8, 2010 at 19:23 |
kFreeBSD implements encryption independently from ZFS, but the userspace utilities to support this aren’t yet available in Debian.
Support for quotas is in ZFS v15. Squeeze will ship with kFreeBSD 8.1 which includes ZFS v14. For v15 you’ll need kFreeBSD 8.2 (which will be available shortly after the release).
As for other features, I don’t know. Certainly not *all* features are supported, a summary is available at http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS
December 5, 2010 at 08:17 |
Thank You Man.
December 5, 2010 at 02:46 |
Robert,
I’ve did some tests with the “mini.iso” and I found out that you can’t rename the root pool created during installation. That’s quite annoying, cause the installer use something like “hostname-device” as pool name and would be much more simplier if you can use something like “rpool” or “tank”.
Do you have any ideias on how to pick up another nome for the root pool? I tried to create it with zpool during install using another terminal (CTRL+ALT+F2) but when I got back to the menu, it says that there’s only free space on the disk.
December 2, 2010 at 20:21 |
[…] Źródło: https://robertmh.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/about-zfs-in-squeeze-2/ […]
December 1, 2010 at 21:36 |
With it being uncertain what will come out of Oracle how do you think ZFS will progress. I’m thinking of the difference beween the OpenIndiana version of ZFS and the one which comes with Solaris Express. Do you expect Oracle to release the source which will allow it to be ported to Linux?
December 2, 2010 at 10:42 |
In the same announcement that killed the bazaar-style development model, Oracle committed to continue releasing updates to the published source code of OpenSolaris. You can read more about this here:
http://sstallion.blogspot.com/2010/08/opensolaris-is-dead.html
They will continue to develop ZFS, they just won’t release nightly updates (which is a pity, but is not as bad as usually portrayed).
December 2, 2010 at 15:21
As you say “releasing updates to the published source code of OpenSolaris” but isn’t OpenSolaris dead as regards Oracle? I have OpenIndiana and Solaris Express
Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 snv_151a November 2010
paulj@solaris:~$
paulj@solaris:~$ pfexec zpool get version rpool
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
rpool version 31 default
and
OpenIndiana SunOS 5.11 oi_147 September 2010
paulj@openindiana:~$ pfexec zpool get version rpool
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
rpool version 28 default
The question is will Oracle actually release the source for version 31?
Do you know if they have?
Regards Paul
PS Like the blog and I don’t even sell shoes :-)
December 2, 2010 at 18:16
I just know what their announcement said. According to their words (see link above), they will continue to release source code, just not real time (i.e. no public VCS, no public BTS, etc).
December 1, 2010 at 20:41 |
[…] на базе glibc и GNU-утилит. Разработчики данного проекта сообщили, что в официальном инсталляторе kFreeBSD в релизе Debian 6.0 […]
December 1, 2010 at 11:13 |
Will Dedup be supported?
December 1, 2010 at 16:09 |
Not yet. Dedup is in v28 which will be supported shortly after Squeeze.
November 29, 2010 at 18:13 |
[…] e innovative per la distribuzione altre del tutto normali per le distribuzioni di massa!L’ultima è proprio inaspettata,è riguarda l’inclusione di ZFS che sarà supportato in Debian […]
November 29, 2010 at 12:37 |
Well, Nexenta isn’t as much GNU as GNU/kFreeBSD is – especially what they target with 4.x branch is:
– illumos kernel (former OpenSolaris)
– Mostly illumos native tools + Debian where not present in illumos foundation
– Apt as packaging system
– Using SUN libc insterad of GNU libc.
(http://www.gulecha.org/2010/10/21/ncp-3plus/)
Anyway, great to see kFreeBSD is really alive and kicking :-)
November 29, 2010 at 10:00 |
[…] explica Robert millan en su blog, en el que destaca que por ejemplo ZFS ya está disponible en las imágenes con arranque en red […]
November 28, 2010 at 16:09 |
Sometimes unexpected things happen. What is ZFS?
November 28, 2010 at 17:09 |
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
November 28, 2010 at 07:58 |
Not considering http://www.nexenta.org/ to be a GNU/* distribution then?
November 28, 2010 at 17:07 |
You’re right. I didn’t think of it. The text is adjusted now.
November 28, 2010 at 07:14 |
Err, wasn’t Nexenta GNU/Opensolaris the first? Still, great work getting ZFS support in.
November 28, 2010 at 17:07 |
My bad. I’ve corrected it, thanks!