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pjp
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 Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 9:58 pm Post subject: LLNL ZFS, Grub 2 |
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ZFS On Linux With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
| Quote: | | Last year I benchmarked the official KQ Infotech ZFS implementation for Linux but that port is no longer active. There is also ZFS-FUSE, but that has not been too performance-friendly and FUSE remains widely criticized. Lastly, there is the fledging LLNL ZFS port for Linux. The "ZFS On Linux" port from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is what is being benchmarked here. It is basically the only serious ZFS implementation for Linux unless you count FUSE. |
GRUB 2.00 Boot-Loader Release Is Imminent | Quote: | | GRUB 2 is a complete rewrite compared to GRUB Legacy and has been in development for more than a decade without seeing a GRUB 1.00 release. Among the many new features to GRUB2 is Btrfs file-system support, ZFS support |
I'll have to test these out.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:07 am Post subject: |
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I believe GRUB 2 has been the bootloader for several other distros for quite some time.
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:22 am Post subject: |
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I guess I hadn't paid any attention to Grub in quite a while. Work on Solaris, and I've not been doing much with Linux (trying to get Centos/RH to be a functional VM environment seems a little like flagellation).
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BonezTheGoon
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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My exposure to GRUB2 has all been negative thus far. Granted the vast majority of that can easily be characterized by "It's new and different, and I don't yet know what I am doing" however another rather large helping of "It's thinking for me, and doing things I don't want it to do!" as well.
Personally a lot of these "sensing" apps are more trouble than they are worth for my tastes. I don't think having the technology around and getting polished is a bad thing, especially for those specific circumstances that require something more dynamic -- but in general I think static solutions are still the "better fit" in the majority of cases.
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:31 pm Post subject: |
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Is the documentation decent, or non-existent? And by documentation, I mean how to work around the "thinking for you" part, etc.
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sts
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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I use grub2 a lot, having been using it for a long time, and it works well but I don't use any of the autogeneration scripts. I still write my configs by hand. Basically because I don't understand the output of the autogen scripts.
ZFS is cool but only useful on servers and I'm not about to try out this beta-looking version on anything important. If you want ZFS on your server FreeBSD is probably still the way to go. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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I disagree it is only useful on servers. Certainly it has a lot of benefits FOR servers. I'm thinking of using it for the portage tree, and taking advantage of snapshots. beta would be just fine, and the portage tree is a perfectly good test for it. Minimal impact if lost.
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sts
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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None of our tooling is set up to take advantage of its features, you'd have to manage things manually...
Also remember that Apple invested in ZFS for OSX pretty heavily and then just dropped it and stuck with dumb ol' HFS+. I'm not sure most users will get anything out of it. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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I believe Apple dumped it due to licensing issues, so that's hardly a reason to dismiss it as "not useful to users." In fact, it actually argues that it is highly useful to the average user.
| Quote: | | Sun's Jeff Bonwick confirmed that Apple and Sun weren't able to reach a mutually agreeable licensing deal, though he could not disclose any specific details. |
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-on-mac-os-x-project-over-licensing-issues/
As for the portage thing, I don't anticipate any issues. Portage needn't know about snapshots, at least not for my intended usage.
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BonezTheGoon
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | Is the documentation decent, or non-existent? And by documentation, I mean how to work around the "thinking for you" part, etc. |
Well it sounds like sts can answer that better than I can, I've only been somewhat exposed when dealing with occasional Ubuntu machines at work and didn't find the "by hand" options that sts is mentioning. Care to enlighten us sts?!?!? I'd love it!
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Mardok45
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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| I was using Grub2 for my senior practicum in an attempt to get a unified network-booting environment for PC's, Macintosh's, and PowerPC's. It was way too much work, but I know it can be done. |
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sts
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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| BonezTheGoon wrote: | | pjp wrote: | | Is the documentation decent, or non-existent? And by documentation, I mean how to work around the "thinking for you" part, etc. |
Well it sounds like sts can answer that better than I can, I've only been somewhat exposed when dealing with occasional Ubuntu machines at work and didn't find the "by hand" options that sts is mentioning. Care to enlighten us sts?!?!? I'd love it! |
Oops, sorry wasn't paying attention. So Grub2 is more flexible and can do cooler stuff. I have a USB stick that is Fat32 and I mostly use like a regular USB stick but I also installed grub2 on it and I can drop a LiveCD image on the USB stick and boot from it easily. It is pretty handy though some distros have fucked up LiveCD images that don't work properly...
Grub2's man pages are pretty basic and the manual is more comprehensive but still very very terse. I google for most problems but then you have the issue that a lot of the results are old and some are outdated.
So what you're supposed to do is set up your configuration in rule sets in /etc/grub.d/ (similar to how udev has rule sets in /etc/udev/rules.d/) and there is a tool called grub-mkconfig that goes through all of the files in that folder in numerical order and writes out a grub config file:
| Code: | | grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg |
I tried that, I screwed up some stuff and there was a bunch of extra stuff in my config that I didn't know what it did. So I just created the grub.cfg by hand like I have been doing for years:
| Code: | set timeout=5
set default=0
menuentry "Windows" {
chainloader (hd0,1)+1
}
menuentry "Arch" {
linux /vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
} |
Piece of cake. I actually have a slightly more complex setup with device mapper and LVM2 but I won't bore you with details. It is pretty similar to grub1, just different syntax and more functionality. Also grub2 can intuit more than grub1 did. This results in a completely plain grey/black boot screen, if you want to pretty it up you'll have to do some googling.
Your best resources probably are the Gentoo and Arch grub2 wiki pages. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 10:52 pm Post subject: |
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| sts wrote: | So what you're supposed to do is set up your configuration in rule sets in /etc/grub.d/ (similar to how udev has rule sets in /etc/udev/rules.d/) and there is a tool called grub-mkconfig that goes through all of the files in that folder in numerical order and writes out a grub config file:
| Code: | | grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg |
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That sounds like a solution looking for a problem.
Thanks, I'll check out the wiki pages you mentioned.
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 10:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Mardok45 wrote: | | I was using Grub2 for my senior practicum in an attempt to get a unified network-booting environment for PC's, Macintosh's, and PowerPC's. It was way too much work, but I know it can be done. |
Sounds cool. A lot depends on the need. I can't imagine many instances where network-booting would be overly useful for all hardware and all OSes.
Side note, I saw a VMWare environment which had a base (or few) Windows installs which could spin up dozens & dozens of desktops which booted to thin clients. Patch the base, the rest were, I belive, automatically updated next login. I was trying to get to something similar with KVM/Qemu, but I don't think the automation is there quite yet.
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sts
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| Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2012 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | Mardok45 wrote: | | I was using Grub2 for my senior practicum in an attempt to get a unified network-booting environment for PC's, Macintosh's, and PowerPC's. It was way too much work, but I know it can be done. |
Sounds cool. A lot depends on the need. I can't imagine many instances where network-booting would be overly useful for all hardware and all OSes.
Side note, I saw a VMWare environment which had a base (or few) Windows installs which could spin up dozens & dozens of desktops which booted to thin clients. Patch the base, the rest were, I belive, automatically updated next login. I was trying to get to something similar with KVM/Qemu, but I don't think the automation is there quite yet. |
Yeah, that's VMWare's VDI. (EDIT: Oops, called VMWare View now...)
Qemu was indispensable when I was troubleshooting Grub2 on a USB stick. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 12:06 am Post subject: |
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VMWare's renaming attempts seem to cause more harm than good.
vSphere? Ugh. VDI at least made sense compared to View. View would make more sense than vSphere.
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Mardok45
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| Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:00 am Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | Mardok45 wrote: | | I was using Grub2 for my senior practicum in an attempt to get a unified network-booting environment for PC's, Macintosh's, and PowerPC's. It was way too much work, but I know it can be done. |
Sounds cool. A lot depends on the need. I can't imagine many instances where network-booting would be overly useful for all hardware and all OSes. |
Mmmmmm, secure kernel boot?
Actually, I did it in an attempt to start my own business around paid support for various things like thin clients, reimaging, inventory, and other shit. But then I got a job offer somewhere else and that idea went down the drain really fast. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:55 am Post subject: |
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I didn't realize you could do secure kernel boot with Windows, and I assumed you included that by your description.
You could finish the project in your spare time and keep it on the back burner.
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