ZFS Boot Support from Installer

[Tim Judd]

On 8/14/09, Tim Gustafson <tjg at soe.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>> No one has gone near that stuff in years.  We don't even
>> have gmirror(8) creation support in there. Best not to use
>> sysinst.  The livefs image has all of the tools that you
>> need to bootstrap a system.
>
> That's a silly answer.  The way to get more people to use FreeBSD is to make
> the installation process as easy and complete as possible.  If bootstrapping
> a system using the livefs file system is possible, then there's no reason
> that the functionality couldn't or shouldn't be built into the installer.
>
> Yes, a higher-level sysadmin can do it...but the vast majority of people who
> administer servers for a living are not higher-level sysadmins.

And those who are unfamiliar with a system will likely use the default
filesystem an OS provides.  That's UFS2 for most people.

Especially since ZFS is still considered experimental, I find it
unreasonable to have the installer support something that isn't
considered permanent.

Also, since ZFS is a hog when it comes to system resources, works best
on amd64, and many other factors/tuning, you expect this all to be
available if someone wants to install to an embedded firewall?  Or to
some little special purpose system?

I don't use ZFS, UFS2 works fine for me.  I would find it ridiculous
to see ZFS support in the installer, but all GEOM should be supported.
 Especially the raid3 and mirror.

I think you're expecting the world...  Maybe a check is in order.


> Tim Gustafson
> Baskin School of Engineering
> UC Santa Cruz
> tjg at soe.ucsc.edu
> 831-459-5354