ETA for ZFS v. 13 Merge From HEAD ?

[Chris Ruiz]

On Mar 16, 2009, at 1:09 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Pegasus Mc Cleaft  
> <ken at mthelicon.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi Adrian,
>>
>>  I am not sure, but I didnt think ZFS 13 was ever going to be  
>> merged into
>> 7-stable. I thought the kernel memory requirements were to great  
>> (just going
>> back in my memory on that one). Also, I think there are still a few  
>> bugs
>> left with the zil being enabled (and/or prefetch) causing lockups  
>> on machine
>> with a lot of IO. I know I have hit that bug a few times on my  
>> machine when
>> using various torrent clients when they want to preallocate large  
>> amounts of
>> diskspace.
>>
>>  I personally cant wait until a later version of ZFS is imported that
>> supports encryption. I can finally say good-bye to our GEOM ELI USB  
>> drives
>> for backups!! Never the less, I am quite thankfull to thoes  
>> involved in
>> porting V13 to FreeBSD. Its a wonderfull improvement and my FS of  
>> choice
>> when installing on new machines (especially zfs boot)
>
>
> I think that you're touching on two entirely separate points here...  
> What it
> takes to upgrade ZFS in -STABLE and what it takes to bring ZFS  
> modules in to
> FreeBSD.
>
> I sincerely hope that ZFSv13 is planned for -STABLE.  Last we left  
> this
> issue, testing and a few kernel improvements were in the way.  None  
> of the
> kernel improvements were going to change the API, so the project was  
> doable
> in -STABLE.  That said, time marches on, 8.0-RELEASE draws ever  
> nearer.
> When we were still several years out on 8.0 and ZFS was causing me  
> more
> problems, I was much more keen to push for the port.  I would still  
> welcome
> it with open arms, but I'm not convinced that anyone is going to  
> push it
> forward.
>
> The issue of encryption (along with many other issues) is tied to the
> ability of FreeBSD to compile and use ZFS modules.  Just like netgraph
> modules extend the function of netgraph.ko and geom modules extend  
> the base
> geom function, ZFS is designed (in Solaris, at least) to take  
> modules.  ZFS
> encryption is a module.  I'm not clear on compression --- it would  
> make
> sense that it is a module, but it seemingly got copied into FreeBSD  
> as a
> core feature (and it may also be so in solaris).
>
> Anyways... is there any plans to allow for ZFS modules in FreeBSD?

AFAIK ZFS v13 requires changes to the kernel that would break the ABI,  
which is not allowed to change in a STABLE branch.  With 8.0 coming  
within the next 6 months, I doubt that 7 will see a new version of ZFS.

There are no problems running ZFS v13 with zil and prefetch enabled  
and I have not had any predictable out of kernel memory panics.  For  
me, ZFS on CURRENT really is *that* much better.

Also, OpenSolaris has yet to integrate ZFS on disk encryption into  
their source.  The code is currently under review: http://opensolaris.org/os/project/zfs-crypto/ 
  .  OpenSolaris uses ZFS v14 now and on disk encryption will probably  
be synced to a newer version of ZFS, meaning that this would require  
another code sync with OpenSolaris.

Chris