svn commit: r356758 - in head/usr.sbin/bsdinstall: . scripts

[Warner Losh]

[ redirected to arch@ ]

For the arch@ list: Recently ZFS was made the first (default) choice in
bsdinstall instead of a UFS. A discussion started on the src lists, but
belongs here.

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 3:02 PM Pedro Giffuni <pfg at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 15/01/2020 16:41, Ed Maste wrote:
> > On Wed, 15 Jan 2020 at 16:10, Eugene Grosbein <eugen at grosbein.net>
> wrote:
> >> There are multiple scenarios there ZFS may be sub-optimal at least:
> small i386 virtual guests
> >> or 32-bit only hardware like AMD Geode, or big amd64 SSD-only systems
> with bhyve and multiple guests
> >> that need lots of memory and should not fight with ZFS for RAM etc.
>

We support those, but they shouldn't drive the defaults. It's super easy to
just install UFS on those systems. For virtualizations like this, most of
the time people use jails because it's more efficient on systems that are
tight on memory, so I'm not sure it's a case that should drive the default
decisions...


> > That may well be the case, but our defaults should represent the
> > configuration that's desirable to the largest set of users, and IMO
> > that's ZFS in most cases today.
>

Agreed. ZFS vs UFS is still an install-time choice.


> There is also the policy of not making copyleft code mandatory
> (technically, CDDL is weak copyleft).
>

Nothing makes it mandatory. It's still optional for people that wish to
avoid it.


> If ZFS is disabled in the build, the installer should gracefully disable
> it too.
>

True, but we're not talking about that issue. It's orthogonal, so let's not
get distracted.


> > It might be that we should default to UFS on i386 and ZFS on amd64?
>

It's not i386 vs amd64 that's the issue. It's the total amount of RAM. ZFS
is perfectly happy with i386 installs with enough RAM. We'd catch most
sub-optimal cases if we'd offer it only for systems with > ~2-4GB.

Warner