Alan Cox on the Inclusion of Sun's ZFS in the Kernel
After rumors in May of Suns ZFS filesystem being included in the kernel, kernel developer Alan Cox has now refuted the claims pointing to Sun's licensing policy.
A developer called Fred had pointed out the ZFS support for Grub was now GPL'd. The code could be used to add ZFS support to the kernel.
Alan Cox refuted this option arguing that any further implementation would contravene Sun's licensing policy. Cox had repeatedly asked Sun for permission to use the code, but without receiving a reply. He concluded on the Linux kernel mailing list that Sun wanted to appear to be open, but was not handing ZFS to Linus Torvalds as the filesystem was the only argument for continuing to use Solaris in data centers.
Boot loader expert H. Peter Anvin added that GRUB only supported a rudimentary ZFS read only driver. Kernel developer Christoph Hellwig considers even read only support for ZFS to be a benefit for the kernel. On the list he offered to provide mentoring support for its implementation, if somebody is prepared to implement the project.
Thanks to its competent volume management, Sun's ZFS is regarded as a sophisticated filesystem and it can handle large volumes of data thanks to 128 bit pointers. If needed, the filesystem can be dynamically scaled; it identifies and removes filesystem errors without major performance hits and supports freezing and cloning of sectors. Most of ZFS is still under the Sun Open Source License CDDL.
Comments
comments powered by DisqusIssue 210/2018
Buy this issue as a PDF
News
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 Released
The latest release is focused on hybrid cloud.
-
Microsoft Releases a Linux-Based OS
The company is building a new IoT environment powered by Linux.
-
Solomon Hykes Leaves Docker
In a surprise move, Solomon Hykes, the creator of Docker has left the company.
-
Red Hat Celebrates 25th Anniversary with a New Code Portal
The company announces a GitHub page with links to source code for all its projects
-
Gnome 3.28 Released
The latest GNOME rolls out with better contact management and new features for handling virtual machines.
-
Install Firefox in a Snap on Linux
Mozilla has picked the Snap package system to deliver its application to Linux users.
-
OpenStack Queens Released
The new release comes with new features for mission critical workloads.
-
Kali Linux Comes to Windows
The Kali Linux developers even managed to run full blown XFCE desktop via WSL.
-
Ubuntu to Start Collecting Some Data with Ubuntu 18.04
It will be an ‘opt-out’ feature.
-
CNCF Illuminates Serverless Vision
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation announces a paper describing their model for a serverless ecosystem.
Alan cox and the inclusion of sun zfs in the kernel