Re: ZFS status

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 at 10:45, Sad Clouds <cryintothebluesky%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> Hi, anyone knows the current status of ZFS for recently released
> NetBSD-9? There is a message on the console - "WARNING: ZFS on NetBSD
> is under development". OK, but what does this mean? There is a good
> chance it may lose/corrupt data, or it's pretty stable but watch out
> for minor issues?

I would say the latter - I'm using it on a couple of boxes and they
have had the usual selection of test cases - apps filling up file
systems, switching between zfs and legacy mount and back, the box
being rebooted with the disks on different ports, disks moved between
boxes, and at least one case with a disk from a set missing then added
back on next reboot. Not lost any data yet (though see note below on
disklabel partitions)

I've encountered two issues
- I have one box where zfs does not work - trying to mount a new
filesystem or existing one copied from another machine just panics
- If you make a zfs filesystem on a disklabel partition (eg wd0f) and
the disk moves zfs does not seem to be able to find it again. If you
run MAKEDEV for the affected device into a new directory and point zfs
at that then it picks up the disk. This gave me something of a scare.
zfs best practice is to use raw devices, so this shouldn't be an issue
for most people

David