Want to install FreeBSD - need advice on Writable filesystems?

[Miroslav Lachman]

samankaya at netscape.net wrote:
[...]

> Matt, thanks for the WikiPedia alert I discovered that just before writing to the mailing list taking its advice: "research thoroughly before using a filesystem between OS's"
> 
> I however a little disappointed that I cannot use UFS to 'bounce' files between BSD and Solaris. Matt, you also mention ZFS rel 13! Is this teh version that comes with Solaris? We maybe back at square 1 with the UFS BSD/Solaris adaptation again :-(

ZFS version 13 is the version used in latest FreeBSD (8-CURRENT and 
7-STABLE). If you will use this version, you can read & write to it from 
FreeBSD and Solaris / OpenSolaris.

> I guess in my situation really the alternative seems to be backing things up onto external ext3 hard drive and reading that information into BSD..... or using NFS which at the moment isn't the best option as it would be a bit tedious to boot up a VM every time I wanted to swap between Solaris and BSD!
> 
> "These days, virtual machines make it much, much easier. " yes that is true if one has the hardware and software to run them. Unfortunately I am on a Pentium IV with only 1GB or RAM which won't even support ZFS file system well, which is why I'm so apprehensive to install ZFS with my Solaris build in the first place and why I revert to the old UFS file system.
> 
> Hmm..... the only way maybe just to install Sun's Virual Box with 'virtual' BSD for the transferring of files between the hardware installed BSD and Solaris running NFS server? Ouch!
> 
> Not sure if there are any free Hypervisors out there? VMware and Citrix you have to pay for and even Sun's xVM I think too :-(
> 
> What do you guys think is my best solution here? Probably what I've already covered right?

If you need some hypervisor, VMware provides ESXi for free and Citrix 
has XenServer for free too.

Miroslav Lachman