From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jul 12 00:43:17 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 378CB106566B for ; Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:43:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from duncan.young@pobox.com) Received: from out3.smtp.messagingengine.com (out3.smtp.messagingengine.com [66.111.4.27]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C7CC8FC1A for ; Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:43:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from duncan.young@pobox.com) Received: from compute1.internal (compute1.internal [10.202.2.41]) by out1.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18A2713A0CB for ; Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:43:16 -0400 (EDT) Received: from heartbeat2.messagingengine.com ([10.202.2.161]) by compute1.internal (MEProxy); Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:43:16 -0400 X-Sasl-enc: ZSJHhUh8SckvYKzZb7p29Cv1y1rFAB/gUbBatHxLgpuG 1215823395 Received: from triple0.qld.optushome.com.au (c122-108-168-198.rochd4.qld.optusnet.com.au [122.108.168.198]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 9DEC22975D for ; Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:43:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by triple0.qld.optushome.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBE7DD05F for ; Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:43:11 +1000 (EST) From: Duncan Young To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:43:09 +1000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7 References: <4877A343.2010602@ibctech.ca> <20080711182430.GA76378@keltia.freenix.fr> In-Reply-To: <20080711182430.GA76378@keltia.freenix.fr> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200807121043.10473.duncan.young@pobox.com> Subject: Re: Boot from ZFS X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: duncan.young@pobox.com List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:43:17 -0000 Be carefull, I've just had a 6 disk raidz array die. Complete failure which required restore from backup (the controler card which had access to 4 of the disks, lost one disk, then a second (at which point the machine paniced, Upon reboot the raidz array was useless (Metadata corrupted)). I'm also getting reasonably frequent machine lockups (panics) in the zfs code. I'm going to start collecting crash dumps see if anyone can help in the next week or two. I guess what I'm trying to say is, that you can still lose everything on an entire pool, so backups are still essential, an a couple of smaller pools is probably preferable to one big pool (restore time is less). zfs is not %100 (yet?). The lack of any type of fsck still causes me concern. Duncan PS I do think zfs is great, but it's not perfect. If I can boot directly off zfs, I would make sure I had an offline replication of the boot disk, in case of failure. On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:24:30 am Ollivier Robert wrote: > According to Steve Bertrand: > > "In the latest code, it's possible to boot directly from ZFS, no longer > > requiring a small non-ZFS boot partition. "No you can use only ZFS and > > just enjoy it," he stated." > > > > ...if not, where can I find information on the best procedure to do so? > > This code is not yet committed to CURRENT, it is currently in a P4 branch. > Doug Rabson is also doing some work on it according to p4 changes.