On May 7, 2019, at 1:02 AM, Michelle Sullivan <miche...@sorbs.net> wrote:
On 07 May 2019, at 10:53, Paul Mather <p...@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:
On May 6, 2019, at 10:14 AM, Michelle Sullivan <miche...@sorbs.net>
wrote:
My issue here (and not really what the blog is about) FreeBSD is
defaulting to it.
You've said this at least twice now in this thread so I'm assuming
you're asserting it to be true.
As of FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE (and all earlier releases), FreeBSD does NOT
default to ZFS.
The images distributed by freebsd.org, e.g., Vagrant boxes, ARM images,
EC2 instances, etc., contain disk images where FreeBSD resides on UFS.
For example, here's what you end up with when you launch a 12.0-RELEASE
instance using defaults on AWS (us-east-1 region: ami-03b0f822e17669866):
root@freebsd:/usr/home/ec2-user # gpart show
=> 3 20971509 ada0 GPT (10G)
3 123 1 freebsd-boot (62K)
126 20971386 2 freebsd-ufs (10G)
And this is what you get when you "vagrant up" the
freebsd/FreeBSD-12.0-RELEASE box:
root@freebsd:/home/vagrant # gpart show
=> 3 65013755 ada0 GPT (31G)
3 123 1 freebsd-boot (62K)
126 2097152 2 freebsd-swap (1.0G)
2097278 62914560 3 freebsd-ufs (30G)
65011838 1920 - free - (960K)
When you install from the 12.0-RELEASE ISO, the first option listed
during the partitioning stage is "Auto (UFS) Guided Disk Setup". The
last option listed---after "Open a shell and partition by hand" is "Auto
(ZFS) Guided Root-on-ZFS". In other words, you have to skip over UFS
and manual partitioning to select the ZFS install option.
So, I don't see what evidence there is that FreeBSD is defaulting to
ZFS. It hasn't up to now. Will FreeBSD 13 default to ZFS?
Umm.. well I install by memory stick images and I had a 10.2 and an 11.0
both of which had root on zfs as the default.. I had to manually change
them. I haven’t looked at anything later... so did something change? Am
I in cloud cookoo land?
I don't know about that, but you may well be misremembering. I just pulled
down the 10.2 and 11.0 installers from
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases and in both
cases the choices listed in the "Partitioning" step are the same as in the
current 12.0 installer: "Auto (UFS) Guided Disk Setup" is listed first and
selected by default. "Auto (ZFS) Guided Root-on-ZFS" is listed last (you
have to skip past other options such as manually partitioning by hand to
select it).
I'm confident in saying that ZFS is (or was) not the default partitioning
option in either 10.2 or 11.0 as officially released by FreeBSD.
Did you use a custom installer you made yourself when installing 10.2 or
11.0?
FreeBSD used to be targeted at enterprise and devs (which is where I
found it)... however the last few years have been a big push into the
consumer (compete with Linux) market.. so you have an OS that concerns
itself with the desktop and upgrade after upgrade after upgrade (not
just patching security issues, but upgrades as well.. just like windows
and OSX)... I get it.. the money is in the keeping of the user base..
but then you install a file system which is dangerous on a single disk
by default... dangerous because it’s trusted and “can’t fail” .. until
it goes titsup.com and then the entire drive is lost and all the data
on it.. it’s the double standard... advocate you need ECC ram,
multiple vdevs etc, then single drive it.. sorry.. which one is it?
Gaaaaaarrrrrrrgggghhhhhhh!
As people have pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it's false to claim
that ZFS is unsafe on consumer hardware. It's no less safe than UFS on
single-disk setups.
Because anecdote is not evidence, I will refrain from saying, "I've lost
far more data on UFS than I have on ZFS (especially when SUJ was shaking
out its bugs)..." >;-)
What I will agree with is that, probably due to its relative youth, ZFS
has less forensics/data recovery tools than UFS. I'm sure this will
improve as time goes on. (I even posted a link to an article describing
someone adding ZFS support to a forensics toolkit earlier in this
thread.)
The problem I see with that statement is that the zfs dev mailing lists
constantly and consistently following the line of, the data is always
right there is no need for a “fsck” (which I actually get) but it’s used
to shut down every thread... the irony is I’m now installing windows 7
and SP1 on a usb stick (well it’s actually installed, but sp1 isn’t
finished yet) so I can install a zfs data recovery tool which reports to
be able to “walk the data” to retrieve all the files... the irony eh...
install windows7 on a usb stick to recover a FreeBSD installed zfs
filesystem... will let you know if the tool works, but as it was
recommended by a dev I’m hopeful... have another array (with zfs I might
add) loaded and ready to go... if the data recovery is successful I’ll
blow away the original machine and work out what OS and drive setup will
be safe for the data in the future. I might even put FreeBSD and zfs
back on it, but if I do it won’t be in the current Zraid2 config.
There is no more irony in installing a data recovery tool to recover a
trashed ZFS pool than there is in installing one to recover a trashed UFS
file system. No file system is bulletproof, which is why everyone I know
recommends a backup/disaster recovery strategy commensurate with the value
you place on your data. There WILL be some combination of events that will
lead to irretrievable data loss. Your extraordinary sequence of mishaps
apparently met the threshold for ZFS on your setup.
I don't see how any of this leads to the conclusion that ZFS is "dangerous"
to use as a file system. What I believe is dangerous is relying on a
post-mortem crash data recovery methodology as a substitute for a backup
strategy for data that, in hindsight, is considered important enough to
keep. No matter how resilient ZFS or UFS may be, they are no substitute
for backups when it comes to data you care about. (File system resiliency
will not protect you, e.g., from Ransomware or other malicious or
accidental acts of data destruction.)
Cheers,
Paul.
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