ZFS for a desktop computer

[Doug Rabson]

On 10 Nov 2008, at 19:57, Joao Barros wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 6:43 PM, John Nielsen <lists at jnielsen.net>  
> wrote:
>> On Monday 10 November 2008 09:47:46 am Joao Barros wrote:
>>> On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 7:17 PM, John Nielsen <lists at jnielsen.net>  
>>> wrote:
>>>> There are patches available to allow [booting from ZFS]...
>>>
>>> Can you point out those patches? Thx
>>
>> I may have mis-spoken. I believe it is being worked on but I don't  
>> have
>> any pointers to specific code.
>>
>> What I had in mind was http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSOnRoot, which  
>> allows the
>> root partition to be on ZFS but still requires a small UFS /boot.
>
> Yes, there is an item in the wiki for zfsboot with a big finger
> pointing at Doug Rabson (cc'd) but I don't know the status of the
> task.
> I was using the /boot on small ufs partition method to boot my raidz
> but upgraded my machine and added a 1TB disk to the mix. I'll be
> booting from a usb pen with root on zfs.
> As soon as zfsboot works I'll ditch the usb pen.
>
> Doug, can you provide some status update on zfsboot? Do you need help
> on something?

I implemented zfsboot for simple disks and mirrors and also  
collections of simple disks and/or mirrors. This work is in pjd's  
perforce tree and will end up in current when that tree is ready to  
commit. If I manage to find some spare time before then, I hope to add  
raidz and raidz2 support to it. The key problem here as in so many  
other things is lack of time :(