> > Hi. I have a spare off the shelf consumer PC and was thinking about loading > > Solaris on it for a development box since I use Studio @work and like it > > better than gcc. I was thinking maybe it isn't so smart to use ZFS since it > > has only one drive. If ZFS detects something bad it might kernel panic and > > lose the whole system right? I realize UFS /might/ be ignorant of any > > corruption but it might be more usable and go happily on it's way without > > noticing? Except then I have to size all the partitions and lose out on > > compression etc. Any suggestions thankfully received. > > Suppose you start getting checksum errors. Then you *do* want to notice.
I'm not convinced. I understand the theoretical value of ZFS but it introduces a whole new layer of problems other filesystems don't have. Even if it's right in theory it doesn't always make things better in reality. I like the features it provides and not having to size filesystems like in the old days is great, but ZFS can and does have bugs and like anything else is not perfect. Aside from Microsoft which used to be guaranteed to corrupt filesystems I haven't ever had corruption that caused me any problems. Certainly there must have been corruptions because of software bugs and crappy hardware but they had no visible effect and that is good enough for me in this situation I asked about. I feel this issue is a little overblown given most of the world runs on other enterprise filesystems and the world hasn't come to and end yet. ZFS is an important step in the right direction but it doesn't mean you can't live without it's error detection. We lived without it until now. What I find hard to live without is the management features it gives you which is why I have a dilemna. In this specific use case I would rather have a system that's still bootable and runs as best it can than an unbootable system that has detected an integrity problem especially at this point in ZFS's life. If ZFS would not panic the kernel and give the option to fail or mark file(s) bad, I would like it more. But having the ability manage the disk with one pool and the other nice features like compression plus the fact it works nicely on good hardware make it hard to go back once you made the jump. Choices, choices. > > Even if your system does crash, at least you now have an opportunity to > > recognize there is a problem, and think about your backups, rather than > > allowing the corruption to proliferate. This isn't a production box as I said it's an unused PC with a single drive, and I don't have anybody's bank accounts on it. I can rsync whatever I work on that day to a backup server. It won't be a disaster if UFS suddenly becomes unreliable and I lose a file or two, or if a drive fails, but it would be very annoying if ZFS barfed on a technicality and I had to reinstall the whole OS because of a kernel panic and an unbootable system. _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
