Re: [tlug] solaris 10 ZFS and Japanese

["J. David Beutel" <jdb@example.com>]

Josh Glover wrote, on 2005-Mar-21 5:27 PM:

> Funny, I have a draft brewing to talk about Solaris 10 and why it is
>
>so great that I am ditching Linux for it... look for it soon. :)
>
>  
>

Thanks, I will!

>>"ZFS can self-heal data in a mirrored or RAID configuration. When one
>>copy is damaged, ZFS detects it via the checksum and uses another copy
>>to repair it."
>>    
>>
>
>ZFS is awesome, but you cannot get it yet. You will need to subscribe
>to Solaris Express[1] and wait a month or more until Sun makes a
>public version available.
>
>  
>

That's disappointing.  Sun's web site led me to believe that ZFS was 
already released with Solaris 10.  If that's not the case, then Sun's 
advertising is deceptive.  Solaris Express looks like beta versions with 
no bug fixes, no localization, and $100/year for commercial use.  (It's 
not that I have commercial plans; I just don't like the restriction.  
Who would use unsupported beta software commercially, anyway?)

>>For that repair, does ZFS include software-based bad block relocation,
>>like EVMS?  Or, does it just rewrite the bad block and leave all the
>>relocation up to the disk hardware?  (I'm using IDE disks.)
>>    
>>
>
>I do not know. I can check my notes and try to find the answer, if you
>really need it. Google might help, as well.
>
>  
>

I've already googled, but I can't find any technical details on that, 
beyond the level I quoted above.  I'm just wondering what ZFS means by 
"repair", although I don't need to know exactly how it works.

>>Is it easy to install the root/boot filesystem on a mirrored ZFS?
>>    
>>
>
>Knowing Sun, probably, but you will have to look through about five
>hundred manuals to find the one that tells you how... ;)
>  
>

I googled a blog entry from a ZFS engineer around August that mentioned 
that it can't support the root filesystem yet, especially on x86.  It 
didn't mention a time frame for such support.  But such support is 
critical to me; what good are the non-root filesystems if I can't boot?

Thanks for all the info!

Cheers,
11011011