Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Neal Pollack

On 11/03/08 13:18, Philip Brown wrote:

Ok, I think I understand.  You're going to be told
that ZFS send isn't a backup (and for these purposes
I definately agree),  ...



Hmph. well, even for 'replication' type purposes, what I'm talking about is 
quite useful.
Picture two remote systems, which happen to have "mostly identical" data. 
Perhaps they were manually synced at one time with tar, or something.
Now the company wants to bring them both into full sync... but first analyze 
the small differences that may be present.
  


um, /usr/bin/rsync ?
but agreed, not for huge amounts of data...

In that scenario, it would then be very useful, to be able to do the following:

hostA# zfs snapshot /zfs/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
hostA# zfs send /zfs/[EMAIL PROTECTED] | ssh hostB zfs receive /zfs/[EMAIL 
PROTECTED]

hostB# diff -r /zfs/prod /zfs/prod/.zfs/snapshots/A >/tmp/prod.diffs


One could otherwise find "files that are different", with rsync -avn. But doing it with 
zfs in this way, "adds value", by allowing you to locally compare old and new files on 
the same machine, without having to do some ghastly manual copy of each different file, to a new 
place, and doing the compare there.
  


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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Philip Brown
> Ok, I think I understand.  You're going to be told
> that ZFS send isn't a backup (and for these purposes
> I definately agree),  ...

Hmph. well, even for 'replication' type purposes, what I'm talking about is 
quite useful.
Picture two remote systems, which happen to have "mostly identical" data. 
Perhaps they were manually synced at one time with tar, or something.
Now the company wants to bring them both into full sync... but first analyze 
the small differences that may be present.

In that scenario, it would then be very useful, to be able to do the following:

hostA# zfs snapshot /zfs/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
hostA# zfs send /zfs/[EMAIL PROTECTED] | ssh hostB zfs receive /zfs/[EMAIL 
PROTECTED]

hostB# diff -r /zfs/prod /zfs/prod/.zfs/snapshots/A >/tmp/prod.diffs


One could otherwise find "files that are different", with rsync -avn. But doing 
it with zfs in this way, "adds value", by allowing you to locally compare old 
and new files on the same machine, without having to do some ghastly manual 
copy of each different file, to a new place, and doing the compare there.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Ross
Ok, I think I understand.  You're going to be told that ZFS send isn't a backup 
(and for these purposes I definately agree), but if we ignore that this sounds 
like you're talking about restoring a snapshot from an external media, and then 
running a clone off that.

Clone's are already supported, but restoring a deleted snapshot isn't.  Can 
anybody comment on whether that would even be possible?  It's an intriguing 
idea if so.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Philip Brown
>   If
> I'm interpreting correctly, you're talking about a
> couple of features, neither of which is in ZFS yet,
...
> 1.  The ability to restore individual files from a
> snapshot, in the same way an entire snapshot is
> restored - simply using the blocks that are already
> stored.
> 
> 2.  The ability to store (and restore from) snapshots
> on external media.

Those sound useful. particularly the ability to restore a single file, even if 
it was only from a "full" send instead of a snapshot.  But I dont think that's 
what I'm asking for :-)



Lemme try again.

Lets say that you have a mega-source tree, in one huge zfs filesystem.
(lets say, the entire ON distribution or something :-)
Lets say that you had a full zfs send done, Nov 1st.
then, between then, and today, there were "assorted things done" to the source 
tree. Major things. 
Things that people suddenly realized were "bad". But they werent sure exactly 
how/why. They just knew things worked nov 1st, but are broken now. Pretend 
there's no such thing as tags, etc.
So: they want to get things up and running, maybe even only in read-only mode, 
from the nov 1st full send. 
But they also want to take a look at the changes.  And they want to do it in a 
very space-efficient manner.

It would be REALLY REALLY NICE, to be able to take a full send of /zfs/srctree, 
and restore it to /zfs/[EMAIL PROTECTED], or something like that.
Given that [making up numbers] out of 1 million src files, only 1000 have 
changed, it would be "really nice", to have those 999,000 files that have NOT 
changed, not be doubly allocated in both /zfs/srctree and /zfs/[EMAIL 
PROTECTED] They will be actually hardlinked/snapshot-duped/whatever the 
terminology is.

I guess you might refer to what I'm talking about, as taking a synthetic 
snapshot. Kinda like veritas backup, etc. can "synthesize" full dumps, from a 
sequence of full+ incrementals, and then write out a "real" full dump, onto a 
single tape, as if a "full dump" happened on the date of a particular 
incremental.

Except that in what I 'm talking about for zfs, it would be synthesizing a zfs 
snapshot of a filesystem, that was made for the full zsend (even though the 
original "snapshot" has since been deleted)
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Ross Smith
>> If the file still existed, would this be a case of redirecting the
>> file's top level block (dnode?) to the one from the snapshot?  If the
>> file had been deleted, could you just copy that one block?
>>
>> Is it that simple, or is there a level of interaction between files
>> and snapshots that I've missed (I've glanced through the tech specs,
>> but I'm a long way from fully understanding them).
>>
>
> It is as simple as a cp, or drag-n-drop in Nautilus.  The snapshot is
> read-only, so
> there is no need to cp, as long as you don't want to modify it or destroy
> the snapshot.
> -- richard

But that's missing the point here, which was that we want to restore
this file without having to copy the entire thing back.

Doing a cp or a drag-n-drop creates a new copy of the file, taking
time to restore, and allocating extra blocks.  Not a problem for small
files, but not ideal if you're say using ZFS to store virtual
machines, and want to roll back a single 20GB file from a 400GB
filesystem.

My question was whether it's technically feasible to roll back a
single file using the approach used for restoring snapshots, making it
an almost instantaneous operation?

ie:  If a snapshot exists that contains the file you want, you know
that all the relevant blocks are already on disk.  You don't want to
copy all of the blocks, but since ZFS follows a tree structure,
couldn't you restore the file by just restoring the one master block
for that file?

I'm just thinking that if it's technically feasible, I might raise an
RFE for this.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Richard Elling
Ross Smith wrote:
>> Snapshots are not replacements for traditional backup/restore features.
>> If you need the latter, use what is currently available on the market.
>> -- richard
>> 
>
> I'd actually say snapshots do a better job in some circumstances.
> Certainly they're being used that way by the desktop team:
> http://blogs.sun.com/erwann/entry/zfs_on_the_desktop_zfs
>   

Yes, this is one of the intended uses of snapshots.  But snapshots do
not replace backup/restore systems.

> None of this is stuff I'm after personally btw.  This was just my
> attempt to interpret the request of the OP.
>
> Although having said that, the ability to restore single files as fast
> as you can restore a whole snapshot would be a nice feature.  Is that
> something that would be possible?
>   
> Say you had a ZFS filesystem containing a 20GB file, with a recent
> snapshot.  Is it technically feasible to restore that file by itself
> in the same way a whole filesystem is rolled back with "zfs restore"?
>   

cp

> If the file still existed, would this be a case of redirecting the
> file's top level block (dnode?) to the one from the snapshot?  If the
> file had been deleted, could you just copy that one block?
>
> Is it that simple, or is there a level of interaction between files
> and snapshots that I've missed (I've glanced through the tech specs,
> but I'm a long way from fully understanding them).
>   

It is as simple as a cp, or drag-n-drop in Nautilus.  The snapshot is 
read-only, so
there is no need to cp, as long as you don't want to modify it or 
destroy the snapshot.
 -- richard

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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Ross Smith
> Snapshots are not replacements for traditional backup/restore features.
> If you need the latter, use what is currently available on the market.
> -- richard

I'd actually say snapshots do a better job in some circumstances.
Certainly they're being used that way by the desktop team:
http://blogs.sun.com/erwann/entry/zfs_on_the_desktop_zfs

None of this is stuff I'm after personally btw.  This was just my
attempt to interpret the request of the OP.

Although having said that, the ability to restore single files as fast
as you can restore a whole snapshot would be a nice feature.  Is that
something that would be possible?

Say you had a ZFS filesystem containing a 20GB file, with a recent
snapshot.  Is it technically feasible to restore that file by itself
in the same way a whole filesystem is rolled back with "zfs restore"?
If the file still existed, would this be a case of redirecting the
file's top level block (dnode?) to the one from the snapshot?  If the
file had been deleted, could you just copy that one block?

Is it that simple, or is there a level of interaction between files
and snapshots that I've missed (I've glanced through the tech specs,
but I'm a long way from fully understanding them).

Ross
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Richard Elling
Ross Smith wrote:
> Hi Darren,
>
> That's storing a dump of a snapshot on external media, but files
> within it are not directly accessible.  The work Tim et all are doing
> is actually putting a live ZFS filesystem on external media and
> sending snapshots to it.
>   

Cognitive disconnect, again.  Snapshots do not contain files, they contain
changed blocks.

> A live ZFS filesystem is far more useful (and reliable) than a dump,
> and having the ability to restore individual files from that would be
> even better.
>
> It still doesn't help the OP, but I think that's what he was after.
>   

Snapshots are not replacements for traditional backup/restore features.
If you need the latter, use what is currently available on the market.
 -- richard

> Ross
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Darren J Moffat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   
>> Ross wrote:
>> 
>>> Ok, I see where you're coming from now, but what you're talking about
>>> isn't zfs send / receive.  If I'm interpreting correctly, you're talking
>>> about a couple of features, neither of which is in ZFS yet, and I'd need the
>>> input of more technical people to know if they are possible.
>>>
>>> 1.  The ability to restore individual files from a snapshot, in the same
>>> way an entire snapshot is restored - simply using the blocks that are
>>> already stored.
>>>
>>> 2.  The ability to store (and restore from) snapshots on external media.
>>>   
>> What makes you say this doesn't work ?  Exactly what do you mean here
>> because this will work:
>>
>>$ zfs send [EMAIL PROTECTED] | dd of=/dev/tape
>>
>> Sure it might not be useful and I don't think that is what you mean here  so
>> can you expand on "sotre snapshots on external media.
>>
>> --
>> Darren J Moffat
>>
>> 
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Ross Smith
Hi Darren,

That's storing a dump of a snapshot on external media, but files
within it are not directly accessible.  The work Tim et all are doing
is actually putting a live ZFS filesystem on external media and
sending snapshots to it.

A live ZFS filesystem is far more useful (and reliable) than a dump,
and having the ability to restore individual files from that would be
even better.

It still doesn't help the OP, but I think that's what he was after.

Ross



On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Darren J Moffat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ross wrote:
>>
>> Ok, I see where you're coming from now, but what you're talking about
>> isn't zfs send / receive.  If I'm interpreting correctly, you're talking
>> about a couple of features, neither of which is in ZFS yet, and I'd need the
>> input of more technical people to know if they are possible.
>>
>> 1.  The ability to restore individual files from a snapshot, in the same
>> way an entire snapshot is restored - simply using the blocks that are
>> already stored.
>>
>> 2.  The ability to store (and restore from) snapshots on external media.
>
> What makes you say this doesn't work ?  Exactly what do you mean here
> because this will work:
>
>$ zfs send [EMAIL PROTECTED] | dd of=/dev/tape
>
> Sure it might not be useful and I don't think that is what you mean here  so
> can you expand on "sotre snapshots on external media.
>
> --
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>
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-11-03 Thread Darren J Moffat
Ross wrote:
> Ok, I see where you're coming from now, but what you're talking about isn't 
> zfs send / receive.  If I'm interpreting correctly, you're talking about a 
> couple of features, neither of which is in ZFS yet, and I'd need the input of 
> more technical people to know if they are possible.
> 
> 1.  The ability to restore individual files from a snapshot, in the same way 
> an entire snapshot is restored - simply using the blocks that are already 
> stored.
> 
> 2.  The ability to store (and restore from) snapshots on external media.

What makes you say this doesn't work ?  Exactly what do you mean here 
because this will work:

$ zfs send [EMAIL PROTECTED] | dd of=/dev/tape

Sure it might not be useful and I don't think that is what you mean here 
  so can you expand on "sotre snapshots on external media.

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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-31 Thread Ross
Ok, I see where you're coming from now, but what you're talking about isn't zfs 
send / receive.  If I'm interpreting correctly, you're talking about a couple 
of features, neither of which is in ZFS yet, and I'd need the input of more 
technical people to know if they are possible.

1.  The ability to restore individual files from a snapshot, in the same way an 
entire snapshot is restored - simply using the blocks that are already stored.

2.  The ability to store (and restore from) snapshots on external media.

Now I know a few people are working on the ZFS automatic backup stuff, and are 
currently looking at a way to automatically send snapshots to external media.  
I suspect these two features would work well with that if there were a way to 
make them possible.

However, being able to restore at a block level from an external device is 
almost certainly going to have a lot of gotchas at the technical level.  I 
couldn't say whether that would even be feasible I'm afraid, and to the best of 
my knowledge, neither of these features are present in ZFS yet.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-31 Thread Philip Brown
> Ah, there is a cognitive disconnect... more below.
> 
> The cognitive disconnect is that snapshots are
> blocks, not files.
> Therefore, the snapshot may contain only changed
> portions of
> files and blocks from a single file may be spread
> across many
> different snapshots. 


I was referring to restoring TO a snapshot. However, I didnt mandate that the 
incomming stream WAS a snapshot :-}

Your point about snapshots being blocks, not files, is well taken. However, the 
limitation that receive of a "full send" can only be done to an automatically 
created new filesystem, is overly burdensome. 
Wouldnt it be more useful, if it had the capability to restore to a newly 
created snapshot of an existing zfs filesystem, rsync style?

Thanks for the ADM reference. I'll check that out.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-31 Thread Richard Elling
Ah, there is a cognitive disconnect... more below.

Philip Brown wrote:
>> relling wrote:
>> This question makes no sense to me.  Perhaps you can
>> rephrase?
>>
>> 
>
> To take a really obnoxious case:
> lets say I have a 1 gigabyte filesystem. It has 1.5 gigabytes of physical 
> disk allocated to it (so it is 66% full).
> It has 10x100meg files in it.
>
> "Something bad happens", and I need to do a restore. 
> The most recent zsend data, has all 10 files in it. 9 of them have not been 
> touched since the zsend was done.
>
> Now, since zfs has data integrity checks, yadda yadda yadda, it should be 
> able to determine relatively easily, "The file on the zfs send, is the exact 
> same file on disk". 
> So, when I do a zfs receive, it would be "really nice", if there were some 
> way for zfs to figure out, lets say, "recieve to a snapshot of the 
> filesystem; then take advantage of the fact that it is a snapshot, to NOT 
> write on disk, the 9 unaltered files that are in the snapshot; just allocate 
> for the altered one".
>
> it would be really nice for zfs to have the smarts to do this, WITHOUT having 
> to potentially throw a laaarge amount of extra hard disk space for snapshots. 
> I want the "snapshot" space to be allocated on TAPE, not hard disk, if you 
> see what I mean.
> If one 100meg file gets replace every 2 days, I wouldnt want to use snapshots 
> on the filesystem, if there was a disk space limitation.
>   

The cognitive disconnect is that snapshots are blocks, not files.
Therefore, the snapshot may contain only changed portions of
files and blocks from a single file may be spread across many
different snapshots.  Perhaps you are really looking for a more
traditional, file-oriented backup capability.

> (I know there are solutions such as samfs for this, but. I'm looking for a 
> zfs solution, if possible, please?)
>   

ADM is the samfs equivalent for ZFS.
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/adm/
 -- richard

> and help with the other parts of my original email, would still be 
> appreciated :)
>   

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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-31 Thread Philip Brown
> So, when I do a zfs receive, it would be "really
> nice", if there were some way for zfs to figure out,
> lets say, "recieve to a snapshot of the filesystem;
> then take advantage of the fact that it is a
> snapshot, to NOT write on disk, the 9 unaltered files
> that are in the snapshot; just allocate for the
> altered one".


To follow up on my own question a bit :-)
I would presume that the mandate of "incrementals MUST have a common snapshot, 
with the target restoral zfs filesystem", are basically just a shortcut that 
somehow guarantees files are identical, without having to do actual calculation.

What about some kind of rsync-like capability, though? To have zfs receive, 
have the capability to judge sameness by,
"Well, the timestamp and filesizes are identical: treat them as identical!" 
without a common snapshot. And, for the truely paranoid, having a "binary 
compare" option, where it says, "hmm.. timestamp and filesizes are the same... 
they MIGHT be identical... lemme read from disk, and compare what I'm reading 
from the zfs send stream. If I find a difference, then write as a new file. 
Otherwise, just create [hardlink/whatever] in the destination receive snapshot, 
since they really are the same!"
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-31 Thread Philip Brown
> relling wrote:
> This question makes no sense to me.  Perhaps you can
> rephrase?
> 

To take a really obnoxious case:
lets say I have a 1 gigabyte filesystem. It has 1.5 gigabytes of physical disk 
allocated to it (so it is 66% full).
It has 10x100meg files in it.

"Something bad happens", and I need to do a restore. 
The most recent zsend data, has all 10 files in it. 9 of them have not been 
touched since the zsend was done.

Now, since zfs has data integrity checks, yadda yadda yadda, it should be able 
to determine relatively easily, "The file on the zfs send, is the exact same 
file on disk". 
So, when I do a zfs receive, it would be "really nice", if there were some way 
for zfs to figure out, lets say, "recieve to a snapshot of the filesystem; then 
take advantage of the fact that it is a snapshot, to NOT write on disk, the 9 
unaltered files that are in the snapshot; just allocate for the altered one".

it would be really nice for zfs to have the smarts to do this, WITHOUT having 
to potentially throw a laaarge amount of extra hard disk space for snapshots. I 
want the "snapshot" space to be allocated on TAPE, not hard disk, if you see 
what I mean.
If one 100meg file gets replace every 2 days, I wouldnt want to use snapshots 
on the filesystem, if there was a disk space limitation.

(I know there are solutions such as samfs for this, but. I'm looking for a zfs 
solution, if possible, please?)

and help with the other parts of my original email, would still be appreciated 
:)
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-31 Thread Ross
> >   2.2 do a receive of an earlier zfs send, to
> either a snapshot or a "child" filesystem, and be
> efficient about disk space used. ie: have the recieve
> understand, "hey, I have that file already,
> completely intact, so I'm not going to waste space by
> storing it again".
> >   

ZFS already does this.  You wouldn't send the entire snapshot again, you would 
just do an incremental send, of the changes between one snapshot and the next.

Of course, you're still asking for problems if you're trying to receive 
snapshots on a live system.  Yes, you could clone a previous snapshot and make 
that live, allowing you to receive later 'backups'.  But unless you make it a 
read only system you're going to have an almighty problem working out what has 
or has not changed between those two systems.

Basically, ZFS will happily keep track of the changes on your filesystem so you 
can send it to a remote backup, but as soon as you have both systems live, you 
have to track all the changes and keep them in sync yourself.

If this is what you really need to do, you might be better with AVS or some 
kind of distributed file system.
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Re: [zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-30 Thread Richard Elling
Philip Brown wrote:
> I've recently started down the road of production use for zfs, and am hitting 
> my head on some paradigm shifts. I'd like to clarify whether my understanding 
> is correct, and/or whether there are better ways of doing things.
> I have one question for replication, and one question for backups.
> These questions are all about Solaris 10 production release (U5, I believe) 
> not solarisexpress, etc.
>   

First, zfs send/recv is not a backup/restore solution.  You might be 
happier using
the available backup/restore solutions in the market.

> 1. For replication purposes: is it still true, that the target filesystem has 
> to be "offline" to receive even an incremental send? !!
> I find this difficult to understand; surely, it should be possible to 
> "receive" to a snapshot at least?
>   

sends are snapshots, so you are receiving a snapshot.  Snapshots are
read-only, by definition.  There are tricks you can play with clones, 
though.

> 2. for backup/restore purposes:a related question to the above, I suppose. 
> Let's say that I had "major" damage to a filesystem, which is an active NFS 
> share, or something otherwise constantly in use.
> Either of the following behaviours would be really nice (and both, would be 
> better still :-)
>
>   2.1 do a receive of an earlier zfs send, to either a snapshot, or a "child" 
> filesystem, and then
> somehow "promote" some, or ALL, of the files, to the main production 
> filesystem, without interrupting the active NFS share too badly
>   

I think you can do this, but it might need a staging file system.
You might find that scp or rsync is similarly effective.

>   2.2 do a receive of an earlier zfs send, to either a snapshot or a "child" 
> filesystem, and be efficient about disk space used. ie: have the recieve 
> understand, "hey, I have that file already, completely intact, so I'm not 
> going to waste space by storing it again".
>   

This question makes no sense to me.  Perhaps you can rephrase?

>  Related to the above, in the issue that even if i HAVE 2x the disk space 
> required by production purposes, to have a "restoral staging area" on the 
> machine... If it gets restored to a separate filesystem, I cant just do a 
> quick "unshare /zfs/foo ; zfs rename /zfs/foo /zfs/foo.old; zfs rename 
> /zfs/foo.restored /zfs/foo"  because that will break all the client NFS 
> handles, since it is a "new" filesystem, right?  Or is that incorrect?
>   

This should be possible, but you might find cp to be an alternative which
does not require blowing the NFS file handles.
 -- richard
> Suggestions on the above, and/or any related issues I havent thought of, 
> would be appreciated
>   

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[zfs-discuss] questions on zfs send,receive,backups

2008-10-30 Thread Philip Brown
I've recently started down the road of production use for zfs, and am hitting 
my head on some paradigm shifts. I'd like to clarify whether my understanding 
is correct, and/or whether there are better ways of doing things.
I have one question for replication, and one question for backups.
These questions are all about Solaris 10 production release (U5, I believe) not 
solarisexpress, etc.

1. For replication purposes: is it still true, that the target filesystem has 
to be "offline" to receive even an incremental send? !!
I find this difficult to understand; surely, it should be possible to "receive" 
to a snapshot at least?

2. for backup/restore purposes:a related question to the above, I suppose. 
Let's say that I had "major" damage to a filesystem, which is an active NFS 
share, or something otherwise constantly in use.
Either of the following behaviours would be really nice (and both, would be 
better still :-)

  2.1 do a receive of an earlier zfs send, to either a snapshot, or a "child" 
filesystem, and then
somehow "promote" some, or ALL, of the files, to the main production 
filesystem, without interrupting the active NFS share too badly

  2.2 do a receive of an earlier zfs send, to either a snapshot or a "child" 
filesystem, and be efficient about disk space used. ie: have the recieve 
understand, "hey, I have that file already, completely intact, so I'm not going 
to waste space by storing it again".

 Related to the above, in the issue that even if i HAVE 2x the disk space 
required by production purposes, to have a "restoral staging area" on the 
machine... If it gets restored to a separate filesystem, I cant just do a quick 
"unshare /zfs/foo ; zfs rename /zfs/foo /zfs/foo.old; zfs rename 
/zfs/foo.restored /zfs/foo"  because that will break all the client NFS 
handles, since it is a "new" filesystem, right?  Or is that incorrect?

Suggestions on the above, and/or any related issues I havent thought of, would 
be appreciated
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