Apple Looking To Port ZFS for Mac OS X?

[miketcool]

Oh man!

This just occurred to me in a Turpenoid induced dream....

Terrabyte iPods running RAID ZFS Filesystems tomorrow!

I can't wait for ZFS iPods!

 

[gnasher729]

One thing I noted from the Wikipedia page was that ZFS is case-sensitive. Would Apple switch to a case-sensitive filing system at this juncture? Would people care?

Case sensitivity is actually a very, very minor detail in a file system. All the file system has to do: Remember a file name as it was given by a user (a case sensitive file system _must_ do this, a case insensitive file system will do it), check whether two file names are the same or not, and lookup a file with a given name. There is actually very little code involved to handle case sensitivity; less than hundred lines of code to be changed if it is designed properly, plus a rather large table mapping uppercase to lowercase for Unicode. So if Apple has the source code for a case-sensitive ZFS, modifying it to work case-insensitive isn't too much work.

Things like sorting files in alphabetical order are done elsewhere anyway. For example, if you switch the preferred language on your Macintosh to a different language, then the order in which files are displayed in a "File Open" dialog has to change. You wouldn't want to change the way files are stored on your harddisk because the user changes their preferred language (what if you have three users logged in at the same time, using three different languages? )

 

[bousozoku]

You are correct, as I understand it. Filesystems don't concern themselves with the content of file data, only the access to it.

Generally, that's true but IBM's OS/400 has historically had a database for a file system and it did care about the content, piece by piece.

 

[guifa]

Case sensitivity is actually a very, very minor detail in a file system. All the file system has to do: Remember a file name as it was given by a user (a case sensitive file system _must_ do this, a case insensitive file system will do it), check whether two file names are the same or not, and lookup a file with a given name. There is actually very little code involved to handle case sensitivity; less than hundred lines of code to be changed if it is designed properly, plus a rather large table mapping uppercase to lowercase for Unicode. So if Apple has the source code for a case-sensitive ZFS, modifying it to work case-insensitive isn't too much work.

Things like sorting files in alphabetical order are done elsewhere anyway. For example, if you switch the preferred language on your Macintosh to a different language, then the order in which files are displayed in a "File Open" dialog has to change. You wouldn't want to change the way files are stored on your harddisk because the user changes their preferred language (what if you have three users logged in at the same time, using three different languages? )

Well, Apple could base things off of a meta data similar to the Info.plist for Application packages. Store ALL documents, say, in their lowercase forms, but include a tag such as userTypedName and then display that, but do the rest of your operations on the (internally) stored lower case name. Cf Address Book which is displayed as "Address Book", although it's actual file name is "Address Book.app" but in Spanish is displayed "Agenda", and in other languages displayed accordingly. Just switch CFBundleName with user-inputted name.

 

[backdraft]

Maybe Apple plans on supporting ppc, sparc, along w/ that old x86 ISA... Who knows they might buy SUN.

Or maybe its just so OS X is that much more portable. The whole endian thing...

 

[kalisphoenix]

Either way, I'm curious about the benefits of Solaris over OS X. (And/or the anticipated benefits of the NEXT version of Solaris vs. Leopard.)

Well, the only benefit of Solaris over OS X that comes to my mind is that, if you find a SunBLADE or some similar machine lying abandoned in a dumpster, Solaris will run on it whereas OS X will not.

There is absolutely not one single facet of its existence in which it beats out OS X, as far as end users are concerned.

It scales very well to high numbers of processors (ie, 64 or 128 or more processors), but no Macs have that many processors. And Apple's not likely to go in the direction of high-end servers. It might become more important if per-core CPU power continues to plateau and we continue stuffing more cores in things.

In general, Linux and FreeBSD both seem to outperform it in both speed and stability, and both have far superior hardware support. The exception is, of course, high-end servers to which Linux and FreeBSD developers are not often granted access (much less the inordinately expensive amounts of time needed to test an OS on that equipment).

So in general, if you're interested in Solaris, buy a used UltraSPARC workstation off eBay for ~$100 and install it. And expect to be completely underwhelmed. Rumors of its superiority (and even its adequacy) are greatly exaggerated, for most people. There's a nifty little Debian-esque apt-get type application to install open source software over a network, but otherwise it's largely a pain in the ass.

I like Solaris. It's a fine OS, but in my opinion it is incapable of keeping up with Linux or FreeBSD on the low-end server front and is no match for Windows or OS X on the home user front. For workstations, well, Linux and even IRIX seem to have it beat on most fronts. And the cost of their machines make a visit to the Apple store seem like a dollar store. All in all, Sun is a goddamned mess.

 

[ManchesterTrix]

So in general, if you're interested in Solaris, buy a used UltraSPARC workstation off eBay for ~$100 and install it

You don't even have to do that. If you have an x86 or x64 system lying around you can download Solaris for free from sun.com and play with it.

 

[kalisphoenix]

You don't even have to do that. If you have an x86 or x64 system lying around you can download Solaris for free from sun.com and play with it.

True, but it feels more fair to run Solaris on hardware designed to run it And I'm a bit of a box junkie, so any time I can get people to buy more worthless machines, I feel a little less insane

 

[whee900]

In 5 to 10 years, for all we know, new computers might be shipping with 5 terabyte storage systems. ZFS will be practical and needed in such a situation. The required memory storage capacity in the world is going to keep on rising, so we'll need more advanced file systems as we progress.

 

[ChrisA]

Well, the only benefit of Solaris over OS X that comes to my mind is that,

Really comparing Solaris with mac OSX is almost silly. They do different things.
Next silly question" Which is best a BMW two seater or a Ford F250 pickup?

Mac OSX is very has a very good "desktop". The absolute best. Solaris' is just plain horible. I know I've used it for years and years daily. If you want to edit video and still images Aple winsd hand down.

But if you want to run some equipment in a server room, Apple does not even make the right hardware. Can you imagine an enterprice class Oracle instalation running on any current Mac? Try as you want but you can't buy a 16-cpu Power Mac with triple redondant hot swap power supplies. Some of the nice features of Sun equipment is "Lights out managment" you can log in an "do stuff" even if the drives are crashed and the machine will not boot and then there is "self healing" where the OS is tolerent of failed hardware components andthe "boot around" where the OS will boot even with a few failed CPUs and dead RAM and a failed disk drive. Why care? typically an admin does not live inside the sever room and may be mailes away from it. Nice to be able to fix stuff remotly and if not at least diagnose it remotely. Some Sun hardware is et up to run of DC power that is typicaly available in telcom rooms. But really it come down to cost. Sun is very good at "compute power to volume ratio" You pay for rack pace by the inch per month.

The way to think about it is that Apple targets the home user and creative profesional and tries to make the desktop experiance as nice as possable while Sun targets the profesional system admin and seems to care less if there is a nice point and click user interace.

It's really to bad Silicone Graphicswent downhil. I used to know an SGI sales rep who said he could take an SGI loaner machine into a Mac-only graphics shop and quickly get all those "Photoshoppers" saying "I want one". IRIX was nicer then OX9 and the hardware left Apple in the dust by like a factor of 10. But no more.

 

[ChrisA]

You don't even have to do that. If you have an x86 or x64 system lying around you can download Solaris for free from sun.com and play with it.

Yes, Solaris is now Open Source. It it's free. I had Solaris running on a Dual 3Ghz Xeon with 4GB RAM and two ultr320 disks with a top-end nVidia graphics card. I used this for sofware devalopment. It was faster then anyhting Apple sells but of couse also much more limited in what it could do. Recently I switched to Linux on this hardware. Linux is more like "Darwin" or BSD A much simpler system to deal with than Solaris.

 

[Rocketman]

Apple is an early adopter of "bleeding edge" technologies. ZFS is an an alleged quantum leap. Further, it is an alleged "enterprise class" technology.

Apple wants to further penetrate enterprise class markets.

Sun owns them now.

Apple would do well to sell to the periphery of that market until it has a true enterprise class server.

Mean time, it should sell X-serve 4U systems to wintel zealot power users via TV commercials. Nobody buys unneeded capacity better than TV addicted Americans.

Apple could use their money, and the X-serve team could use it best of all.

Not convinced? Let me be the marketing manager for the effort

BTW porting ZFS will take about a week. It already runs and is debugged under a UNIX. Adding a fancy interface will take another month (v1.0 BFD).

Rocketman

 

[daveL]

BTW porting ZFS will take about a week. It already runs and is debugged under a UNIX. Adding a fancy interface will take another month (v1.0 BFD).

Rocketman

Ummm ... ZFS is 98% kernel code. Solaris comes from a AT&T System V R4 code base. OS X is a splice of FreeBSD and the Mach micro kernel. The port is far more than trivial. Anything that has to do with kernel primitives will be different. When you say "Unix" you are really talking about Unix user land (shell, common posix Unix commands), not the Unix kernel, which is unique to every major Unix vendor to varying degrees.

Kernel: Solaris != HPUX != AIX != xxxBSD != Linux != etc.

 

[sjk]

A VFS is already used in OS X. Have I missed something along the road?

Maybe we both have. Still hoping bousozoku will clarify what (s)he meant by VFS.

Here are some explanations of ZFS features and benefits taken from the comments made on ArsTechnica ( which was the first to pick up the news )

Greetings here, l_b. I'm lux over there. That thread's died off since our posts, only mentioning this MacRumors thread. Mostly redundant, with the exceptions from people who've read before posting and bring something new to the topic.

 

[ktlx]

Either you have not used Solaris, or Solaris has improved greatly. I administrated a 2.0-2.4 system for a few years. The day I moved on was one of the happiest in my life.

I agree. Until Solaris 2.5.1, it was a horrible piece of junk. Even after that, I was never really happy with Solaris until Solaris 8 (i.e. Solaris 2.8). For quad processors and up, I don't think there is a better UNIX OS.

 

[Doctor Q]

Just to clarify, SunOS was originally based on BSD, but Sun Microsystems then moved to an AT&T SVR4 base while retaining much of the BSD code too. The /usr/bin directory on a Solaris 10 system has hundreds of commands, but /usr/ucb has over 100 more. Even the old BSD-style /etc/termcap file is still around.

But Solaris does give preference to the SVR4 ways of doing things, plus many that Sun itself invented.

 

[ktlx]

Just to clarify, SunOS was originally based on BSD, but Sun Microsystems then moved to an AT&T SVR4 base while retaining much of the BSD code too.

To be accurate, SunOS <= 4.x was BSD-based and SunOS 5.x is SVR4-based.

Type "uname -a" on any Solaris system and you'll see a response of "SunOS <hostname> 5.x".

 

[slooksterPSV]

Generally, that's true but IBM's OS/400 has historically had a database for a file system and it did care about the content, piece by piece.

Theoretically if the file system cared about the content wouldn't it be slow because it would have to check the content.???

 

[Doctor Q]

Theoretically if the file system cared about the content wouldn't it be slow because it would have to check the content.???

The speed of a filesystem is most limited by the speed of disk reads and writes, so much emphasis is placed on avoiding disk accesses wherever possible. A little extra CPU time in between disk activity should make relatively little difference.

 

[jhu]

There is absolutely not one single facet of its existence in which it beats out OS X, as far as end users are concerned.

the general user has absolutely what's under the hood of the aqua interface. you could taheoretcially replace darwin with windows nt, linux, sun os, openbsd, hurd, etc, and the end-user wouldn't know the difference.

 

[buysse]

endian-proof code

My partner and I just developed an app that uses 448-bit encryption, and struggled to make the WIN end work properly just BECAUSE of "big endian" - "little endian" issue. It added a lot of extra code that I felt wasn't REALLY needed... we may have to sepaprate the platforms as it matures.
I wish interoperabilty were the norm.

(Offtopic, but useful)

ntohl() and htonl() are your close, personal friends. The only thing that you have to do is wrap your storage (output stream, input stream) calls in these C library calls. The functions are "network-to-host-long (32-bit value)" and "host-to-network-long". They're part of the standard C library. They're also extremely highly optimized calls, usually implemented as macros when possible.

 

[GregA]

Would integrating ZFS into Mac OS X be very difficult? They seem to have added support for UFS and, if I remember correctly, FAT32 without much major renovation to the kernel (not that I would know, but it seemed easy enough). Would it be any harder to add ZFS to the Mac? If not, why couldn't this be done by the time 10.5 is released?

I would have thought this could be done independently of any major OS revision. The file system is already in production in another OS and the source is open - and as you note the UFS and FAT32 file systems reflect an underlying modular ability to choose file systems.

Unless, of course, they were planning on integrating ZFS significantly with some broader file system plans for the Mac OS - then all bets are off.

 

[Demoman]

I agree. Until Solaris 2.5.1, it was a horrible piece of junk. Even after that, I was never really happy with Solaris until Solaris 8 (i.e. Solaris 2.8). For quad processors and up, I don't think there is a better UNIX OS.

It is nice to know they finally exorcized the demons. Did they ever get rid of the SAF?

 

[learning_bird]

ZFS is now ready for prime time

Today, Sun as announced that Solaris ZFS 1.0 will be available in June as part of the next commercial release.

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2006-05/sunflash.20060502.5.xml?cid=155

 

[daveL]

Maybe we both have. Still hoping bousozoku will clarify what (s)he meant by VFS.

VFS means Virtual File System. It is an overarching file system framework that allows any specific file system to be treated as a plug-in beneath it. To an application, all file systems supported under VFS are accessed through its interface. Essentially, there's only one file system door into and out of the OS kernel, instead of a separate door for each file system supported (HFS+, NTFS, FAT32, HSFS, UFS, ...).

HTH