Submitted by Sun today released Solaris 10 6/06, which provides a host of improvements; most notably, this is the first release to support ZFS. Download it from Sun’s Solaris website. A short summary of the new features is also available. Other new features besides ZFS: UDP and TCP/IP improvements, PCI Express support on x86 (including hotplugging), predictive self healing for x64 systems, and much more.
I’d love to give this a whirl when I get back to my lab. Impressions, anyone?
From what I hear hardware support is spotty. Similar to Linux in ’95. So check to make sure your stuff is supported before you start. Otherwise, I agree with you, Solaris sure looks amazing.
Hardware support is vastly better than where Linux was in ’95, though still not up to what Linux is currently.
… it’s quite useless. With zfsroot it’s got something Linux does not have -yet (Fuse is comin along nicely).
Anyway – Solaris 10 as a server OS is ok – for a desktop OS there are many. many pieces missing and many things are outdated. Old Gnome 2.6 and Mozilla 1.7 does not impress me at all.
NexantaOS – Solaris kernel plus GNU userland – is a very interesting project but unfortunately a very small community.
hmm i guess if you only use Solaris as a toy, its useless without all the bells and wistles, but people that use there system as a tool, will still find lots of uses for ZFS, you can still store all your data on ZFS users home directories, databases, web documents just fine even though it doesn’t support root on ZFS.
ZFS makes its incredibily simple to upgrade your system and keep the data that is on a ZFS pool. Just install/update as usual, and then
zpool import
it will list the pool availible, then zpool import poolname ; done
Good things come to those who wait, I’m sure ZFS Mountroot is coming soon. Maybe you should read the document I linked to to see what you can do with ZFS despite not having ZFS root.
Yes Gnome 2.6, and Mozilla are outdated, and suck. If you want Gnome 2.14.x and firefox, then use the latest Nevada release of Solaris. It might also be possible to update Gnome and Mozilla/Firefox by using JDS vermillion from the Open Solaris site.
Hm, that’s alpha software. I’m not planning on using this even if it’s from SUN.
Yes Gnome 2.6, and Mozilla are outdated, and suck.
I think that’s rather subjective to say. Some users may dislike those versions, certainly, but it’s not like users of Debian stable can say much worse about their versions of software
Seriously, if it does the job, many people are perfectly content. Just like people still running Windows 3.1. If it does what they need, who are you to say “it sucks”? The more accurate thing to say would be, “I dislike using GNOME 2.6 and the version of Mozilla shipped with Solaris 10. I wish newer versions were included.”
No it is not subjective. Using Solaris as my desktop for many years, Gnome 2.6 looked and worked a treat when it first came out. Now for me, the old libraries were a daily problem, and it wasn’t “doing the job”. Thanks to the work of Sun’s desktop team, people can now use the much more stable 2.14 verion of Gnome. Having used both I can truly say that 2.6 sucks big time compared to the latest version. If you or any other one else only require Gnome 2.6 or Windows 3.1, then all the best.
No it is not subjective.
Yes, your opinion, and mine, are subjective things. As much as we would all like to believe that are opinions are facts, they are not.
Up until about an hour ago the download links for SPARC did not work. This was mentioned in one of the blog entries on blogs.sun.com. For those who do not have DVD drives, Solaris 10 6/06 requires 5 CD’s for installation. Of course you can always use lofiadm to save burning time and CD’s.
Can’t wait to use ZFS with Zones as described in this document:
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0506/819-6186.pdf
The SDLC issue has been resolved– we had a software configuration error, which has now been fixed. Sorry about that!
Self healing looks like a great feature !
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/demos/selfheal/
ZFS is no longer a Solaris-only feature. It’s available, though not in a 1.x release, from the FUSE group for Linux.
FYI. Not that ZFS is important in particular, but certainly a nice addition to the computing tools available.
Why would you want to run ZFS in userspace? The latency must be terrible.
Because that’s the only way Linux will see ZFS, short of a license change by Sun, and having some compatability is better than having none.
Edited 2006-06-26 20:03
“Because that’s the only way Linux will see ZFS, short of a license change by Sun”
Or Linux could change its licensing.
“Or Linux could change its licensing.”
Unlikely. Unlike Linux, Solaris copyrights, all or most of it is retained by a single entity and there has been some talks about moving into GPLv3
http://www.computerwire.com/industries/research/?pid=99BC40E4-089B-…
My point was that the original poster made it sound as if Sun were exclusively at fault. They’re not. Either side could change their licensing to be compatible with the other.
Sun is exclusively at fault. Linux has been out there and GPL for a decade. Sun had every chance to choose a compatible open source license had they wanted to. Unfortunately, Sun didn’t want to be compatible and wrote their own. So yes, it is exclusively Sun at fault here.
This, by the way, is not saying anything against Sun’s license, it’s simply pointing out that Sun deliberately chose to be incompatible.
Sun is exclusively at fault. Linux has been out there and GPL for a decade. Sun had every chance to choose a compatible open source license had they wanted to. Unfortunately, Sun didn’t want to be compatible and wrote their own. So yes, it is exclusively Sun at fault here.
Wait a second…. Isn’t this a piece of Sun’s technology we are talking about here. If Linux wants features it has to be more open about it’s licensing. CDDL has no problems interacting with any other license except GPL.
This, by the way, is not saying anything against Sun’s license, it’s simply pointing out that Sun deliberately chose to be incompatible.
Sun’s CDDL is almost compatible with most licenses it is GPL that is not compatible with other licenses. Think about the manyn projects like Mozill for example that had to dual license to keep the GPL zealots happy.
Wait a second…. Isn’t this a piece of Sun’s technology we are talking about here. If Linux wants features it has to be more open about it’s licensing. CDDL has no problems interacting with any other license except GPL.
Nice job missing the point, where did I say anything about Linux wanting the feature? All I did was correct someone who mistakenly thinks that the reason Linux couldn’t use OpenSolaris code has anything to do with Linux. It doesn’t, it has to do with Sun not wanting to share with Linux and choosing a license deliberately to prevent that from happening.
Sun’s CDDL is almost compatible with most licenses it is GPL that is not compatible with other licenses. Think about the manyn projects like Mozill for example that had to dual license to keep the GPL zealots happy.
Being almost compatible is the same as not compatible legally speaking. And again, we’re not talking about other licenses, we’re talking about someone saying that it’s Linux’s fault you can’t intermingle Solaris and Linux code. It isn’t, it’s Sun’s fault. Sun had every opportunity to pick a license which would make sharing easy, they didn’t. End of story.
And again, this says nothing about Sun’s license. It’s just silly to keep trying to say that it’s Linux being incompatible. Linux existed before pretty much every license you people throw out as being better than the GPL. The MPL, by the way, would be one of them. If you want to be compatible with Linux (and obviously Sun didn’t), Linux has been licensed under the GPL version 2 for over a decade. It’s not hard to figure out how you should license your code.
Sun has been a very big supporter of GPL, where it can use it. The problem for Sun was that GPLv2 was impossible to use to open source Solaris. It should be noted that is was the Open Solaris community not just Sun, debated which license to use. We will just have to wait for GPLv3 to see if Solaris and Linux kernels can have a compatible license.
Think about the manyn projects like Mozill for example that had to dual license to keep the GPL zealots happy.
It had nothing to do with “zealots”. Mozilla dual-licensed with GPL for the simple reason that the GPL is the most widely used open source license. It’s widely used because its been around for a very long time, and because it provides more protection for the authors than licenses like BSD and MIT. Playing ball with the world of GPL code is simply a pragmatic issue.
Sun chose not to do that, and its their prerogative, but blaming the GPL folks is silly. The GPL not only predates open-source Solaris, it predates Solaris period. That Sun chose not to interoperate with it is their business.
The GPL not only predates open-source Solaris, it predates Solaris period. That Sun chose not to interoperate with it is their business.
Wrong. The GPLv2 which linux uses was released in June 1991. I assume when you meant GPL you meant GPLv2. Solaris 1.0 in Feb 1991. SunOS on which Solaris based on has been available since 1989. Solaris 10 is SunOS 5.10.
Wrong. The GPLv2 which linux uses was released in June 1991. I assume when you meant GPL you meant GPLv2. Solaris 1.0 in Feb 1991. SunOS on which Solaris based on has been available since 1989. Solaris 10 is SunOS 5.10.
You should do more research. The very first version of Solaris was (drum roll please) 2.0 released in June 1992. Sun OS 4 was retroactively named Solaris 1 after Solaris 2 was released. So that would make the GPL version 2 older than Solaris. Sun OS 4 was released in September 1989 and the GPL version 1 was released in February 1989. So not only is the GPLv2 older than Solaris, v1 predates SunOS itself. You can find more information at these two links:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/solaris/versions/
http://www.science.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2/Q1.1.html
And please don’t try calling me a GPL or Linux fanatic again. I’m just pointing out inaccuracies. If you don’t want me to pipe in, don’t provide incorrect information.
You should do more research.
So should you.
The very first version of Solaris was (drum roll please) 2.0 released in June 1992. Sun OS 4 was retroactively named Solaris 1 after Solaris 2 was released. So that would make the GPL version 2 older than Solaris. Sun OS 4 was released in September 1989 and the GPL version 1 was released in February 1989. So not only is the GPLv2 older than Solaris, v1 predates SunOS itself. You can find more information at these two links:
The issue in question was Linux’s license which is GPLv2, which also happens the be the most popular GPL version.
Solaris is just the marketing name for SunOS + Additional software. So SunOS 4 + openwindows is still Solaris. A Rose was a Rose even before the english language was developed.
From your sources:
Solaris 1.x is a retroactive (marketing?) name for SunOS 4.1.x (x>=1), a version of UNIX that is BSD-like with some SVR4 features, along with OpenWindows 3.0.
SunOS version Solaris version Release date Supported platforms
4.1.1B 1.0 Feb. 91 sun4
If you don’t want me to pipe in, don’t provide incorrect information.
I think you should learn some basic comprehension skills before you post.
The issue in question was Linux’s license which is GPLv2, which also happens the be the most popular GPL version.
And which also was released before Solaris was. Trying to play semantic games and pretend that Solaris existed before the day Sun created it (which, was in 1992) is comical.
Solaris is just the marketing name for SunOS + Additional software. So SunOS 4 + openwindows is still Solaris. A Rose was a Rose even before the english language was developed.
So, according to your logic, Red Hat Linux was first released around 1993 since Red Hat Linux is just Linux + additional software.
But I see you’re going to try and split straws so it’s no point talking about it. You’d probably try and claim that OpenOffice’s first release date should be the same as StarOffice’s first release date too. Sorry, I don’t buy it, neither do most other reasonable people who are trying desperately to not be wrong.
“So, according to your logic, Red Hat Linux was first released around 1993 since Red Hat Linux is just Linux + additional software. ”
Are you idiot ?
All I did was correct someone who mistakenly thinks that the reason Linux couldn’t use OpenSolaris code has anything to do with Linux. It doesn’t, it has to do with Sun not wanting to share with Linux and choosing a license deliberately to prevent that from happening.
No the reason linux can’t use OpenSolaris code is because of the GPL. You don’t have any evidence to prove that Sun’s sole motivation for crafting the CDDL was to be incompatible with linux, Do you?
It isn’t, it’s Sun’s fault. Sun had every opportunity to pick a license which would make sharing easy, they didn’t. End of story.
How could it be Sun’s fault? The fact that you consider it a fault implies that you consider the only righteous thing to do in the world of open source is be compatible with the GPL.
I am sorry to shatter your illusions of linux grandeur. There is more to open source than linux. And Sun has proven that, look at dtrace and ZFS being ported to *BSDs and even FUSE/Linux.
GPLs incompatibility with the CDDL also means that Sun can not port any linux code to Solaris. BTW GPL is incompatible with every license on the planet but it self. The same can’t be said about the CDDL.
And again, this says nothing about Sun’s license. It’s just silly to keep trying to say that it’s Linux being incompatible. Linux existed before pretty much every license you people throw out as being better than the GPL.
Spoken like a true Linux zealot. Lest you forget the BSD license existed before linux was even in college. And the CDDL is compatible with the BSD license.
The MPL, by the way, would be one of them. If you want to be compatible with Linux (and obviously Sun didn’t), Linux has been licensed under the GPL version 2 for over a decade. It’s not hard to figure out how you should license your code.
Sun can license it’s code any way it wants, so can any other project and many other projects have. It is not the holy grail to be compatible with linux, unless you are a linux zealot.
How could it be Sun’s fault? The fact that you consider it a fault implies that you consider the only righteous thing to do in the world of open source is be compatible with the GPL.
This seems to be quite complicated for you. It’s Sun’s fault because Sun knows what the conditions are if you want to share code with Linux. The fact that you can’t share code between Solaris and Linux is, thus, Sun’s fault. They chose how to license their product, they chose to license it incompatibly with Linux. The Linux camp had no control over the decision and Linux has been licensed under the GPL for over a decade. Who else’s fault could it possibly be that Solaris and Linux aren’t compatible?
Oh, and nice reading into what I’m saying, unfortunately you’re wrong. Someone on this thread said it’s just as much the Linux developer’s fault as it is Sun’s fault that Linux can’t use Solaris code. That is a rediculous theory. That is what I was responding to.
I am sorry to shatter your illusions of linux grandeur. There is more to open source than linux. And Sun has proven that, look at dtrace and ZFS being ported to *BSDs and even FUSE/Linux.
Wow, you have some serious paranoia issues, huh. All I did was point out that it’s no one but Sun’s fault that you can’t freely mix Linux and Solaris code. Anything beyond that you’re making up on your own.
GPLs incompatibility with the CDDL also means that Sun can not port any linux code to Solaris. BTW GPL is incompatible with every license on the planet but it self. The same can’t be said about the CDDL.
Since the GPL predates the CDDL it is not the GPL that is incompatible. And, again, all those other licenses that came into existance after the GPL are incompatible with the GPL, not the other way around. Notice that the BSD license which is older than the GPL is compatible. What is getting more and more obvious is that you have some bias against the GPL. I have never said anything more than that the GPL was there first, Linux was there before OpenSolaris, it was up to Sun to maintain compatibility if they wanted it, not the other way around.
Spoken like a true Linux zealot. Lest you forget the BSD license existed before linux was even in college. And the CDDL is compatible with the BSD license.
The GPL is compatible with the BSD license. So what? Now you’re starting to look like you have something against both the GPL and Linux.
Sun can license it’s code any way it wants, so can any other project and many other projects have. It is not the holy grail to be compatible with linux, unless you are a linux zealot.
Who said Sun can’t license it’s code any way it wants? I never did. I even said I wasn’t talking about the merits of the CDDL. I simply pointed out that the reason that you can’t mix Solaris and Linux code is because Sun chose to not allow it. They could have made their license compatible with the GPL. They didn’t. Whether that is a good or bad thing doesn’t matter. All I’m doing is pointing out the simple fact that Linux developers have nothing at all do with whether the GPL and CDDL are compatible. So if you want to blame someone for not being able to share Linux and Solaris code point your fingers at Sun.
Personally, I don’t care. I don’t find ZFS even remotely interesting, nor do I find Solaris particularly interesting, nor do I find Linux all that interesting.
This seems to be quite complicated for you. It’s Sun’s fault because Sun knows what the conditions are if you want to share code with Linux. The fact that you can’t share code between Solaris and Linux is, thus, Sun’s fault.
Never mind. The only person confused here is you.
Who said Sun can’t license it’s code any way it wants? I never did. I even said I wasn’t talking about the merits of the CDDL. I simply pointed out that the reason that you can’t mix Solaris and Linux code is because Sun chose to not allow it. They could have made their license compatible with the GPL. They didn’t. Whether that is a good or bad thing doesn’t matter. All I’m doing is pointing out the simple fact that Linux developers have nothing at all do with whether the GPL and CDDL are compatible. So if you want to blame someone for not being able to share Linux and Solaris code point your fingers at Sun.
That is much better.. Your use of the word fault is all I had an issue with. It is no one’s fault these two licenses are incompatible, the fact of the matter is they just are. Deal with it.
Personally, I don’t care. I don’t find ZFS even remotely interesting, nor do I find Solaris particularly interesting, nor do I find Linux all that interesting.
Sour grapes!
Can you calm down and look back to see how this started?
derekmorr said,
” My point was that the original poster made it sound as if Sun were exclusively at fault. They’re not. Either side could change their licensing to be compatible with the other.”
Perfectly reasonable.
He didn’t say anything about Linux/GPL “at fault” at all.
Up to this point, nobody’s really pointing finger at others, agree?
Then YOU jumped in and started with:
“Sun is exclusively at fault … So yes, it is exclusively Sun at fault here.”
Can’t you see how YOU ruined this otherwise non-flaming thread?
Can’t you see how YOU ruined this otherwise non-flaming thread?
No, what I see is someone posting something blatently untrue. Sun is exclusively at fault, they could have chosen to be compatible and they didn’t. What did the Linux developers have to do with Sun’s licensing decision? Oh, that’s right, nothing. So now you can claim the Linux developers are just as at fault for not being compatible when they’d been going along for a decade with the same license?
What’s shocking is this is a flame worthy topic. If you Sun fanboys didn’t get your panties in a bunch at the concept that Sun is “at fault” for making a choice (which so far no one has said is a bad choice) to not be compatible the discussion could just move on. Now you’re all trying to make it seem like it’s all the evil GPL’s fault that Linux can’t make use of ZFS. And that’s a load of crap.
This isn’t a matter of someone doing something wrong, Sun made a choice which had a consequence. And, in my opinion at least, it’s a perfectly reasonable choice. But don’t try and pin any consequences of that choice on some third party not involved.
sad … just sad
There is no fault here, they chose their license based upon the needs of their business. Perhaps there was non-sun code that they couldn’t release under the GPL
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that anyone was at fault.
I was merely pointing out the way things stand.
It’s not Sun’s fault that the GPL didn’t suit their needs for OpenSolaris, nor is it Sun’s fault that the GPL prevents the CDDL’d code form being used in Linux.
lol
Dear all-linux-contributors-since-1991,
Please confirm your assignment to me of copyright for any and all code modeifications you made to the ‘linux’ project in writing asap. This is neccesary so that I can relicense it under a license you never subscribed to, in order to aquire a FS implementation from Sun. As you are probably aware without this important action Linux will surely be losing market share to this widely adopted free OS from these Sun guys.
Regards, Linus.
haha, I see the irony here. I just hope this isn’t as big an issue when Linux goes to GPL v3.
I love using Linux and I love using Solaris. I also like the GPL v2 and I like CDDL. They both have their uses and their place. Sun faced a lot of issues with open sourcing Solaris. CDDL was implemented to get around those issues. This has been discussed to death when Open Solaris was initially released. I have no intention of chewing the proverbial “cud”.
I hope there comes a happy meeting point between these operating systems to share code and features. The end users are the real beneficiaries if this happens.
I like using ZFS and other Solaris features. A lot of them are very easy to use and implement. Zones, smf manifests come to mind along with ZFS. There is a learning curve attached to DTrace but it is well worth the effort as the gains are immense.
I like different operating systems mainly because I like to learn. I like to play around with different features and check out the results for myself. That was the spirit behing the Linux wave IMHO. Curiosity and desire to learn about how operating systems work. I hope the FOSS community never forgets this reason.
EDIT: Grammar mostly
Edited 2006-06-27 09:52
I don’t think that the Linux kernel will use the GPLv3
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/01/25/238257&from=rss
>Why would you want to run ZFS in userspace? The latency
>must be terrible.
As pointed out, compatibility is better than none. Licensing issues stand in the way of in-kernel ZFS for Linux at this time.
As for FUSE performance, it’s better than you might expect.
ZFS is an interesting and potentially useful file system, but it’s not all things to all people. I suspect a limited subset of users will have a legitimate use for it. To others, it will be a break from experience will offer no compelling features that are worth migration costs (time, mostly).
That said and all… thankfully Sun has finally delivered it. Good show, and about damn time after shouting at the heavens about it for nearly two years.
Edited 2006-06-26 20:12
I think it has applications in many areas. It’s a lot easier to manage than LVM and offers a lot more features (compressions, end-to-end data integrity, self-healing data). I know a lot of HPC centers are interested in it for that reason.
Also, it’s rather ironic that you’d dismiss ZFS as too different from existing filesystems. There’s such regular upheaval of Linux subsystems that I thought most Linux admins would be used to change by now.
>It’s a lot easier to manage than LVM and offers a lot
>more features (compressions, end-to-end data integrity,
>self-healing data). I know a lot of HPC centers are
>interested in it for that reason.
Someone who has been using LVM for years isn’t going to find it a lot easier to manage, was my point. Many features of ZFS are great – and there may be no parallel to them for some time (though some features, there are existing matches), and I am not denying that – at least, not now that Sun has actually delivered the product.
But are they worth the migration? Everyone who is interested in ZFS’ features will have to answer that for themselves. It’s not going to change the lives of those without large arrays of disks. Indications are it’s a good FS with good tools and storage abstraction, and that will only excite a select few end users.
>Also, it’s rather ironic that you’d dismiss ZFS as too
>different from existing filesystems.
If you could point out where I dismissed ZFS, be my guest. It seems you are seeing what you want to see.
>There’s such regular upheaval of Linux subsystems that
>I thought most Linux admins would be used to change by
>now.
Perhaps… or perhaps not. I’ve standardized on two file systems on Linux systems and have used them to good effect. SANs have their own software which is somewhat similar to ZFS’ disk management.
It’s not going to change the lives of those without large arrays of disks.
Spoken like a person who doesn’t understand ZFS’ snapshot and clone features. Think backups and home user. Two disks create a mirror. Snaphot important work with one command instantly.
Edited 2006-06-27 00:12
>The reason you won’t get the point is you are someone
>who has been trolling on Sun related post for years.
It would be convenient to label me that, wouldn’t it? But, it’s not the case. I just disagree with some of your ideas, and you don’t care for that.
> Spoken like a person who doesn’t understand ZFS’
> snapshot and clone features.
But I do. Useful features, but using the file system directly isn’t the only way to achieve similar functionality. I’ve yet to see how those operations affect performance, but we’ll leave that to another discussion, as I’ve not been able to test that in the real world since ZFS was just released.
For you, this may be the ultimate set of features. For me, well… I like to store my backup data off-site. People have different needs… see?
> Two disks create a mirror.
To quote YTMND… O RLY?
> Snaphot important work with one command instantly.
Handy, but not revolutionary. Nor unique. VMS and NTFS have similar functionality. Many other file systems could have this added into them as a future feature, it’s essentially a spin on revisioning.
> As their disks get bigger and bigger, they can easily
> add more storage to the pool and just grow it
> endlessly and “never” run out of disk space, never
> have to move a file again, never have to copy
> partitions. Just keep slapping drives willy nilly
> onto the system, and it gets bigger — just like RAM.
ZFS is not the only answer to that, though. But credit where it is due, it’s a very good and potentially the simplest implementation of the ideas.
>But it sure makes anyone who happens to be running Sol
>10 already a good reason to upgrade, even without ZFS
>root.
I see it as more of a forklift upgrade situation. When it’s time for the forklift, it may be time for ZFS. But for new installs which will be accessing plenty of disks, by all means use ZFS if Sol10 is your platform of choice (maybe even if it isn’t, depending).
But I do. Useful features, but using the file system directly isn’t the only way to achieve similar functionality. I’ve yet to see how those operations affect performance, but we’ll leave that to another discussion, as I’ve not been able to test that in the real world since ZFS was just released.
ZFS has been a part of Solaris Express for a while… you could have installed it and used it if you had so wished.
For you, this may be the ultimate set of features. For me, well… I like to store my backup data off-site. People have different needs… see?
I am tired of your constant trolling on Sun related stories so I am going to stop feeding you. Ciao.
>ZFS has been a part of Solaris Express for a while…
>you could have installed it and used it if you had so
>wished.
Don’t be an idiot. ZFS was alpha/beta quality code, not a release version until just this week. What kind of fool would use an alpha/beta quality file system on a production server? I wouldn’t use Solaris in any other application, after all.
>I am tired of your constant trolling on Sun related
>stories so I am going to stop feeding you. Ciao.
You’d have to start, first.
Don’t be an idiot. ZFS was alpha/beta quality code, not a release version until just this week. What kind of fool would use an alpha/beta quality file system on a production server? I wouldn’t use Solaris in any other application, after all.
Funny, there are alot people using ZFS in production with no problems before this week. The quality of the code before it was release as part of Solaris was far from alpha/beta. The biggest change is that API for it has stablised and it is now supported under Solaris support agreements. It all depends what support you require.
I wouldn’t use Solaris in any other application, after all.
This statement does not make sense…. You dont use Solaris ?, or what application are you talking about.
Spoken like a person who doesn’t understand ZFS’ snapshot and clone features.
For those who are used to LVM, RAID and SAN hardware and software out there it isn’t exactly going to rock their world with something new. Integration into the filesystem might be slightly more convenient, but new features? Hardly. You hardly need it all integrated directly into the filesystem.
Think backups and home user.
I hardly see the home user as being a user of ZFS and Solaris.
Two disks create a mirror.
Wow. RAID anyone?
Snaphot important work with one command instantly.
I do that now. VMS did this, and anyone with LVM will be doing it in order to make these things called *off site backups*.
I hardly see the home user as being a user of ZFS and Solaris.
I have almost totally converted (bar a small ufs grub partition) to ZFS on my single disk laptop. With the features such as snapshots, compression, I (as apple has) can see are a huge bonus for a home user.
For those who are used to LVM, RAID and SAN hardware and software out there it isn’t exactly going to rock their world with something new. Integration into the filesystem might be slightly more convenient, but new features? Hardly. You hardly need it all integrated directly into the filesystem.
From this I can assume that you have never actually used ZFS.
I have almost totally converted (bar a small ufs grub partition) to ZFS on my single disk laptop.
Wow. So that makes you an average home user? Solaris is just not a home user OS.
(as apple has) can see are a huge bonus for a home user.
So Apple has ZFS integrated into OS X before the first release of Solaris to have it then (now that it’s actually out ;-))?
Last I looked this was a posting on an OpenSolaris mailing list where a Sun guy gets all excited, and other people chip in with their excitement that somebody might actually want to use their filesystem. There’s even some replies basically willing Apple to just move to OpenSolaris. For goodness sake, will somebody use our kernel?! He bizarrely gives out an Apple employee’s e-mail address, possibly in the hope of people lobbying him to use ZFS I shouldn’t wonder:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2006-April/002119…
I find this one funny:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2006-April/002121…
Interestingly, there is neither hyde nor hair of any confirmation or any hint whatsoever from any quarter that Apple will actually use ZFS. It merely seems to have been an enquiry, and I’m sure Chris Emura would have been pleased about it being slanted in this way and all the spam he probably got.
These Sun Apple collaborations are always touted and they never seem to come about. Sun always seems more enthusiastic than Apple does. Someone agrees with me:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2006-April/002127…
From this I can assume that you have never actually used ZFS.
This seems to be a typical response ;-). Sorry to burst your bubble, have done, and the only leap forwards is to have functionality that already exists for the vast majority of people integrated into the filesystem.
The point being made is it really isn’t going to change the lives of people already using LVM and RAID quite happily, or especially people already using some kind of SAN set up. It just isn’t worth the upheaval.
ZFS does have some fairly nice tools and might get some people to sit up and take notice who have large arrays of disks and some particular storage needs, but these are a select band of people who’ll have to make that decision for themselves. It’s a good filesystem with a good feature set and it may be good for many people, but it’s just not the jaw-dropping, killer feature that Sun and all their supporters like to pretend that it is, and have done for a couple of years.
Edited 2006-06-27 19:55
I found this comment by Andrew Morton on LKML to be interesting:
“””I mean, although ZFS is a rampant layering violation and we can do a lot of the things in there (without doing it all in the fs!) I don’t think we can do all of it.
We’re continuing to nurse along a few basically-15-year-old filesystems while we do have the brains, manpower and processes to implement a new, really great one.
It’s just this feeling I have
“””
Edited 2006-06-27 20:11
Here is one of the replies.
Date Fri, 9 Jun 2006 17:11:52 -0600
From Andreas Dilger <>
Subject Re: [RFC 0/13] extents and 48bit ext3
On Jun 09, 2006 15:15 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> We seem to be lagging behind “the industry” in some areas – handling large
> devices, high bandwidth IO, sophisticated on-disk data structures, advanced
> manageability, etc.
>
> I mean, although ZFS is a rampant layering violation and we can do a lot of
> the things in there (without doing it all in the fs!) I don’t think we can
> do all of it.
>
> We’re continuing to nurse along a few basically-15-year-old filesystems
> while we do have the brains, manpower and processes to implement a new,
> really great one.
>
> It’s just this feeling I have
I think many people share this feeling (me included), hence the linux
filesystem meeting next week… The problem is that even getting a
half-decent disk filesystem is many years of work, and large disks are
here before then. The ZFS code took 10 years to get to its current state,
I understand, so I don’t anticipate we will get there overnight.
The question is whether we can get to this state more easily by starting
on a known-good base (ext3) or by starting from scratch. My opinion is
strongly in the “start from a known-good base” camp, and make incremental
improvements to that base instead of discarding everything and starting
again.
I think the real frontier for future filesystem development is in the
ZFS direction where the filesystem can be robust in the face of data
errors without having a single fail-stop mode of error handling. While
ext2 and ext3 have been OK in this regard they can definitely be improved
without discarding the rest of the code and the millions of hours of
testing that has gone into it.
I’m not so strongly against ext4 that I won’t follow that route if needed,
but it essentially means that ext3 will be orphaned.
Cheers, Andreas
—
Andreas Dilger
Principal Software Engineer
Cluster File Systems, Inc.
Yeah, the whole thread is pretty interesting. My “only casually informed” opinion is that the 48bit and extents stuff should go into ext3, but that ext4 really should be forked off as an aggressive new project with more ambitious goals than ext3 could resonably have at this point.
A quote from a posting by Andrew Morton as a response to some real-world uses doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence.
For all of what Andrew Morton quotes as drawbacks in that posting, XFS (along with LVM etc.) currently passes with flying colours for up to the high-end kinds of usage that a lot of people need and currently use it for. It’ll be preferable for Linux in the long run to have stuff that’s a given at the filesystem level and below, possibly based on Reiser4 which Andrew still seems keen to see happen and possibly why he mentioned it, but that’s an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary step as whole. People just don’t move to something new because of a new filesystem. It’s something to move towards.
ZFS certainly deserves some credit for the debate, but thanks to all the ‘stuff’ that surrounded Reiser4 it was something that’s been rumbling on in Linux for some time. The penny needs to finally drop that ext3 has outlived itself, or the perpetual problem of what ‘version’ of ext3 you happen to be running this week. There is other work going on that is worthy of more attention.
Edited 2006-06-27 23:44
For those who are used to LVM, RAID and SAN hardware and software out there it isn’t exactly going to rock their world with something new. Integration into the filesystem might be slightly more convenient, but new features? Hardly. You hardly need it all integrated directly into the filesystem.
you are mistaken here. Veritas the #1 seller of LVM and highend filesystems are very scared have you noticed that they now offer VxVM and VxFS both free on low end systems is this is a coincidence? I don’t think so, licenses for both of these were $3,000 each.
The basic parts of ZFS that do Raid 1( mirror) and Raid 0 (concat) are interesting because they do checksumming of all data, from the OS to the hardisk and back. No other filesystem does this, and this ends silence data corrruption. Its bad enough when a drive or controller dies and takes your data. What really hurts is when a drive or controller is silently dieing corrupting your data as it degrades. Of course you are being dilligent and backing up your data. With any other filesystem. You would be backing up corrupt data and this could cost you data, that is possibilty irreplaceble because you backed up corrupt data.
Now lets look at what really has hardware storage companies rethinking there product line. ZFS does both raid 5 and raid 6. Well not quite they do something like it. RaidZ and RaidZ2. It has all the same features as raid 5 and 6. But writes are not Slow. Because ZFS uses a variable block size, all writes are full block writes. So no expensive battery backed up ram or nvram is needed to keep the write cache if there is a power failure.
if this wasn’t enough. There is more. ZFS has snapshots. Yes snapshots are nothing new, but the way ZFS does them is economy changing. Up till now snapshots required commercial software packages read $$,$$$ for the cheapest, or required you to take your storage off line. Or special hardware to accomplish, or both hardware and software. ZFS does it instaneously and for free as in no downtime, or extra costs.
For a complete comparison of ZFS vs. Linux lvm and raid features check out http://unixconsult.org/zfs_vs_lvm.html
If it was just these features it would change the enterprise storage world. ZFS does more. It creates a user interface that is simple enough that you can walk your grandmother through setting it up over the phone.
so no more studing 500 page manuals, and a phd in storage-ology needed to make it do your bidding as shown at http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-zfs-for-home.html
I could continue with even more features that change the world. But i will save those for later posts.
Now i will pgrade a few customers that has been waiting for ZFS filesystem for a while.
Even if UFS is an great filesystem today with logging enabled, ZFS will still be an better choice and according to tests it will also be faster than UFS.
I hope they solve the grub issues in x86 (broken error handling). It’s frustrating that grub say that I have not enough memory to load the selected target, when I have 640MB.
Yeah, cdroms, my rusty trusty sparcstation 5 is still at version 8 and without a dvd. What a terrific gift! It shall live yet for another generation of even higher functionality. Rather highlights the distinction between Apple and Sun.
Solaris still needs to catch up. Partially it is excellent – but partially it has very old cruft. For example their /bin/ksh is still ksh88 while Linux, FreeBSD, OSX/Darwin all use ksh93.
Solaris still needs to catch up. Partially it is excellent – but partially it has very old cruft. For example their /bin/ksh is still ksh88 while Linux, FreeBSD, OSX/Darwin all use ksh93.
There is already a project in progress to integrate ksh93. As for the rest of the software, there’s a reason it isn’t “bleeding edge.” SUN has a very long support cycle, and their customers want certain guarantees that updating or upgrading their system won’t break anything. They tend to take a view of “we ship it, we own it” when it comes to the core OS distribution. Things that are on the companion CD can be updated more frequently, but still have certain restrictions.
So, it isn’t accurate to say it has a lot of “old cruft.” Remember that Solaris is one of the last true UNIX operating systems left, and as such, there are many requirements that exist for it be certified under SUS (Single Unix Specification) that don’t exist for other operating systems (such as Linux).
While this may be detrmiental to those who enjoy bleeding edge software, those of us that prefer well documented and stable systems enjoy it as it is.
> There is already a project in progress to integrate
> ksh93.
Are you referring to http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/ksh93-integration/?
Sun canceled half of that project. The only part “left” is to add ksh93 to a weired location where no one will find it.
Today is the year 2006. SUN HAD 13 YEARS to update their /bin/ksh shell. And did NOTHING. And even is refusing cooperation with the open source community to get /bin/ksh updated.
Today portability is a major issue and /bin/ksh makes portable shell scripts impossible. And backwards compatibility to a /bin/ksh which dumps core, has many bugs and was even abandoned by it’s authors is ridiculous.
Yes, Solaris is one of the last Unix versions. Maybe it’s time for customers to abandon the ship and switch over to a real open source operating system where a software update cycle doesn’t take 13 years.
I just say: Thirteen YEARS.
This cool example how Sun treats customers was brought to you by Sun service
Maybe you should reference “The New Kornshell Command and Programming Language” by Morris I. Bolsky and David G. Korn, starting on page 328 is the quick reference showing features for the korn shell. The areas that are highlighted in gray are those features that are only supported by versions later than 11/16/88. While there are some features that would be nice (such as printf), I don’t see them as show stoppers. Compared to the other guys I work with who use tcsh, I am “old skool” and use ksh.
I think you are making a mountain out of a molehill.
Today is the year 2006. SUN HAD 13 YEARS to update their /bin/ksh shell. And did NOTHING.
May be this point is lost on you. It is not Sun but Sun’s customers that dictate these things. If Sun changed every thing willy nilly like linux distros used to do, customers would be pissed.
Say some incompatibility in ksh93 breaks existing scripts because the customer updated thier OS, they call Sun support. Which is expensive for Sun. Sun and most vendors to enterprises usually announce major changes one or two release cycles in advance and put the new component in an alternate place so cusotmers can migrate thier old stuff off production.
I can garuntee Redhat won’t be updating RHEL AS ever time a minor version of some tool is released. That is why fedora exists.
Yes, Solaris is one of the last Unix versions. Maybe it’s time for customers to abandon the ship and switch over to a real open source operating system where a software update cycle doesn’t take 13 years.
I can bet that most Enterprise customers who have deployed linux aren’t running the latest linux 2.6.xx kernel. Most are probably in 2.4 or even 2.2.
I seriously doubt you have had any exposure to enterprises or data centers.
BTW there are still shops running extremely old Sun boxes in production, some even older than 13 years. Data centers and Enterprises don’t like change too often. They have billions riding on each change and can’t afford for things to go wrong.
> May be this point is lost on you. It is not Sun but
> Sun’s customers that dictate these things.
Now I am seriously angry. THERE ARE 106 requests (including people in the hook) in bugster, the Sun bug database with request to update /bin/ksh, the bug with the 4th highest rank with such a request
Compatibility is a good thing, but I think in the case of /bin/ksh Sun has chosen the dead end and seems to stick with this option.
I’ve been working in a datacenter for almost twenty years now and have to admit that while Solaris is nice it lacks something called “INTEROPERABILITY”. It is not possible to write a shell script on Linux or OSX and use it on Solaris when /bin/ksh is involved because there is a difference of almost 15 years in development between both ksh88 and today’s ksh93q+.
Interoperability has become a key factor in datacenter deployments and Sun is unable to deliver that, comparing to Linux which is almost the number one in interoperability thanks to the fact that they implement almost all protocol stacks, shells, standard APIs and other goodies.
Sticking the “Open” in front of “Solaris” did not change that either. So far Sun still owns us (the customers and the stockholders) the proof that their strategy has changed and now explicitly includes “interoperability”. Not only the kind “interoperability” of the past which included that each single feature needed to be paid for by customers – I mean “interoperability” which Sun implements BEFORE customers hit them. Features like ZFS are cool but this is still proprietary and do not include options for interoperability.
Sun still has to learn what “Open” really means. And I hope that Mr. Schwarz and his crew learn this lesson soon, otherwise the next round of layoffs will me harder.
And the apparent failure of the ksh93 integration project will be one of the topics of the next stockholders’ meeting. Something is seriously going wrong at Sun and this needs to be fixed.
Today is the year 2006. SUN HAD 13 YEARS to update their /bin/ksh shell. And did NOTHING. And even is refusing cooperation with the open source community to get /bin/ksh updated.
Today portability is a major issue and /bin/ksh makes portable shell scripts impossible. And backwards compatibility to a /bin/ksh which dumps core, has many bugs and was even abandoned by it’s authors is ridiculous.
Pardon, but this is hardly true. I really don’t like it when people post lies. SUN has not been “refusing” to update to their /bin/ksh shell. It was considered, and it was talked about. However, as a business they have the ultimate right to determine what happens based on what they believe to be their customer’s needs.
In this particular case, they believe that backwards compatability is a core customer need. As such, they are not replacing the base ksh (at this time, so far) with an incompatible version of ksh.
In addition, since the project has not yet been integrated, it is unreasonable to claim what will happen before everything has been decided.
Since you are not one of the contributors to the ksh integration project, I find it difficult to value your complaints.
Pardon, but this is hardly true. I really don’t like it when people post lies. SUN has not been “refusing” to update to their /bin/ksh shell. It was considered, and it was talked about. However, as a business they have the ultimate right to determine what happens based on what they believe to be their customer’s needs.
It was talked about: Yes
It was investigated: No
I don’t even dare to ask whether it was really considered. The issue was simply put aside with the comment that both shells are not “compatible” (and this accompanying commentary is from Henk Langeveld, the Sun engineer who was lobbying for the /bin/ksh upgrade for many years).
There was no project until 2006 which actually looked at the details and differences between ksh88 and ksh93, twelve years after the first request to update /bin/ksh.
And again Sun has chosen the “minimum” path: They accept ksh93 in Solaris, but only as /bin/ksh93 and not as /bin/ksh. This is why I call this project a failure.
It fails I archive an improvement in interoperability which Solaris needs more than everything else.
The days where customers have Solaris/SPARC-ONLY installations are over and customers need a minimum level of interoperability, something which Sun is currently unable to deliver.
It was talked about: Yes
It was investigated: No
You have no proof of that, sorry.
I don’t even dare to ask whether it was really considered. The issue was simply put aside with the comment that both shells are not “compatible” (and this accompanying commentary is from Henk Langeveld, the Sun engineer who was lobbying for the /bin/ksh upgrade for many years).
There was nothing simple about it, and I know for certain that it was more than just “put aside.”
And again Sun has chosen the “minimum” path: They accept ksh93 in Solaris, but only as /bin/ksh93 and not as /bin/ksh. This is why I call this project a failure.
You seem to miss that SUN’s primary concern is that scripts written for Solaris that depend upon the current /bin/ksh MUST continue to work without failure. ksh93 IS NOT 100% backwards compatible with ksh88. Therefore, they chose not to put it there. You also failed to mention that there have been discussions about what it would take to make a version of ksh93 shipped with Solaris fully backwards compatible with the current version that is shipped.
Some people value new features over compatability. SUN values their customers being able to depend upon the software they ship. They have no desire to break customer scripts written for the current /bin/ksh. That is commendable and is something highly lacking in the Linux world.
You can view the project however you like, the fact that it will be integrated is a great thing and a step in the right direction. Whether you view it as a failure is up to you, I consider it a success.
It fails I archive an improvement in interoperability which Solaris needs more than everything else.
That’s rather subjective. Interoperability beyond what it already has today is not something I’m concerned about. Quite frankly, it’s almost laughable to be talking about Linux and interoperability. Linux doesn’t follow the UNIX standard, Linux is NOT Unix. The Linux world enjoys breaking people’s software with the excuse that source compatability is good enough, and if your software was open source it wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Customers like me want a reliable, efficient, and powerful system. We don’t want the mess that the Linux world currently is.
sun put in the research, development and testing for the SFS. It paid people and it put in resources. In my view Sun is under no obligation to relicense ZFS to GPL or anything else. I think Sun has been incredibly generous to allow free downloads and even free unsupported commercial use for solaris and excellent tools such as dtrace and zfs.
If the linux community don’t like it – why don’t they make their own ZFS?
>In my view Sun is under no obligation to relicense ZFS
>to GPL or anything else.
Perhaps you can point out where someone suggested otherwise? Or are you just “typing out loud?”
> If the linux community don’t like it – why don’t they
> make their own ZFS?
Probably because it’s not the ultimate answer to computing as we know it. It’s just a very classy file system with some good tools to manage it. Some great ideas in it, no question, but it will only strongly appeal to a select group of business cases.
On the other hand, I would hope that most of Sun’s customers would give it a fair shake and use it for new installs of large-scale storage, since it is there for the taking. Really, they’d be silly not to if the real-world reliability and performance are up to par with the feature set (and I suspect that they are).
Probably because it’s not the ultimate answer to computing as we know it. It’s just a very classy file system with some good tools to manage it. Some great ideas in it, no question, but it will only strongly appeal to a select group of business cases.
There’s a lot of truth in that. Specifically, especially today, while ZFS has many very nice features, it will only migrate up to the users via some gaudy flashing icons on the desktop and some kind of user education campaign.
To me the big value of ZFS for end users is simply storage management. As their disks get bigger and bigger, they can easily add more storage to the pool and just grow it endlessly and “never” run out of disk space, never have to move a file again, never have to copy partitions. Just keep slapping drives willy nilly onto the system, and it gets bigger — just like RAM.
The fact that on top of that you get all of the other wonderful services of ZFS is just gravy.
No one is going to swap OS’s solely for a file system.
But it sure makes anyone who happens to be running Sol 10 already a good reason to upgrade, even without ZFS root.
here is a link to a bunch of ZFS related links, incase anyone needs more info on ZFS and how to use it, and why its the most awesome Filesystem on the planet.
http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/06/interested-in-zfs.html
What is more interesting is snv 41, which is a huge jump from snv 40 in many terms. I have tried v 42a but nothing seem to be different than 41 though 42a was buggier.
I admire the stability of sun software, which never showed any crashes to me. Features are either work or don’t work; not that it didn’t work and take the whole system with it like in windows.
Super Excellent Job sun. I still hope you hurry up more to release 5.11 and to start competing on desktop front!
Is there a way to upgrade to this release without downloading all the CDs?
I’m currently running the january release on my UltraSparc.
If you know somebody that has a JumpStart server with Solaris 10 6/06 installed yes, otherwise no.
> Funny, there are alot people using ZFS in
> production with no problems before this week.
Good thing they don’t work for me, I guess. I’d have kicked their ass for using alpha/beta grade software in production environments.
> The quality of the code before it was release
Let’s let Sun be the judge of that. It just hit release, didn’t it… oh, yes it did.
> You dont use Solaris ?, or what application are you
> talking about.
I mean I would only use Solaris in a production server. No other taskset.
Good thing they don’t work for me, I guess. I’d have kicked their ass for using alpha/beta grade software in production environments.
Ah now you are getting personal or kinky?? You wouldn’t have a big enough boot. I guess you are still using Solaris 8 or earlier?
The quality of the code before it was release
Let’s let Sun be the judge of that. It just hit release, didn’t it… oh, yes it did.
Many within Sun consider Solaris Express as a “Release” , and they do not consider it alpha/beta. It comes down to the level of support you require.
I mean I would only use Solaris in a production server. No other taskset.
So you would not use Solaris for development or test environments? If so Why???
Go back through the comments, and take note that all the positive comments about Sun have been modded up to 5.
And this is different than the Linux zealots modding up comments they like how?