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I have blogged about this before, go get it here ,it is out of beta now. OpenSolaris kernel, GNU userland (most of Ubuntu’s packages).

I have mentioned before that Ian Murdock, the chap who started Debian, has joined Sun to work on Project Indiana. This is basically a binary distro using the OpenSolaris codebase and including a load of free software that folk have come to expect from a linux distro. This may work, but it’s not great now and the binary distros of Solaris, called Developer Preview and Community are dire.

In the great tradition of Debian + YOUR_FAVOURITE_KERNEL (a la Gnu/Hurd Gnu/FreeBSD and GNU/NetBSD) comes Nexenta. I use it and like it, ZFS + Samba were my goals I have that now, but I am looking forward to the new in-kernel CIFS server, expect benchmarks after I move house.

Posted by tom under Nexenta & OpenSolaris | No Comments »

I have blogged about Nexenta before, Solaris kernel with Ubuntu userland. It is great if you are familiar with Debian/Ubuntu and want to play with the features in the solaris kernel (DTrace and ZFS got me excited). I was complaining that the www.gnusolaris.org site was quiet and then saw www.nexenta.com , their commercial offering (looks neat, but I prefer free). Turns out there is some work going on for a full release of Nexenta (GnuSolaris is a cool name but both are registered trademarks apparently, and it should probably be called Gnu/SunOS anyhow), see the Launchpad page.

If you want to experiment, this is your best bet (the homepage only has alpha7 from ages ago on there). I think this is exciting stuff and so does the new Debian project leader .

Come on Nexenta, go 1.0.

Posted by tom under Nexenta & OpenSolaris | No Comments »

No silent data corruption because of a checksum on each block, copy on write means no fsck EVER (it does not even have one), no RAID5 write hole, add disks to the pool on the fly, put volumes there as well as filesystems and export them via iSCSI or NFS, quotas, compression and it is easy to use. Check it out here, or watch this video

It is so easy to use, here is my command line session when adding 4 disks to my array. Took me perhaps 5 minutes and its worth noting that there was no pause between issuing each command as its all pretty much instant. I had to import the pool at the beginning as I had just installed OpenSolaris developer edition to see if it was any better than Nexenta (it was not). The spacing of the output is a little off, but hopefully its still understandable.

# zfs list
no datasets available
# zpool import Toms
cannot import ‘Toms’: pool may be in use from other system
use ‘-f’ to import anyway
# zpool import -f Toms
# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
Toms 1.33T 9.84G 40.4K none
Toms/500G 723G 9.84G 723G /share/500G
Toms/Notes 25.9G 9.84G 25.9G /share/Notes
Toms/files 25.6G 9.84G 25.6G /share/files
Toms/share 532G 9.84G 46.4K /share
Toms/share/SetupFiles 72.2G 9.84G 72.2G /share/SetupFiles
Toms/share/TalkingBooks 139G 9.84G 139G /share/TalkingBooks
Toms/share/Tunes 57.5G 9.84G 57.5G /share/Tunes
Toms/share/Videos 263G 9.84G 263G /share/Videos
Toms/share/apps 159M 9.84G 159M /share/apps
Toms/share/downloads 26.9K 9.84G 26.9K /share/downloads
Toms/xbox 50.7G 9.84G 50.7G /share/xbox
# zpool status
pool: Toms
state: ONLINE
status: The pool is formatted using an older on-disk format. The pool can
still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Upgrade the pool using ‘zpool upgrade’. Once this is done, the
pool will no longer be accessible on older software versions.
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
Toms ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

# zpool add Toms raidz c2t4d0 c2t5d0 c2t6d0 c2t7d0
invalid vdev specification
use ‘-f’ to override the following errors:
/dev/dsk/c2t4d0s0 is part of exported or potentially active ZFS pool
mypool. Please see zpool(1M).
# zpool add -f Toms raidz c2t4d0 c2t5d0 c2t6d0 c2t7d0
# zpool status
pool: Toms
state: ONLINE
status: The pool is formatted using an older on-disk format. The pool can
still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Upgrade the pool using ‘zpool upgrade’. Once this is done, the
pool will no longer be accessible on older software versions.
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
Toms ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t3d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t1d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t4d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t5d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t6d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t7d0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors
# zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
Toms 1.33T 888G 40.4K none
Toms/500G 723G 888G 723G /share/500G
Toms/Notes 25.9G 888G 25.9G /share/Notes
Toms/files 25.6G 888G 25.6G /share/files
Toms/share 532G 888G 46.4K /share
Toms/share/SetupFiles 72.2G 888G 72.2G /share/SetupFiles
Toms/share/TalkingBooks 139G 888G 139G /share/TalkingBooks
Toms/share/Tunes 57.5G 888G 57.5G /share/Tunes
Toms/share/Videos 263G 888G 263G /share/Videos
Toms/share/apps 159M 888G 159M /share/apps
Toms/share/downloads 26.9K 888G 26.9K /share/downloads
Toms/xbox 50.7G 888G 50.7G /share/xbox
# zpool upgrade Toms
This system is currently running ZFS pool version 8.

Successfully upgraded ‘Toms’ from version 7 to version 8

Posted by tom under Nexenta & ZFS & OpenSolaris | No Comments »

I love the SunOS kernel. ZFS, Dtrace, Zones all make it desirable. But OpenSolaris is a code repository, not a distribution and you have to go elsewhere if you want a free distro. Nexenta looked the most promising, but then went quiet for a while (at least on their webpage) after shifting their focus to a smaller package set they called Nexenta Core Platform. I was very pleased to see an offer of collaboration from the Debian project leader in their forums and now Nexenta.com has released a new NAS package (not free though) and at the same time Suns “Project Nevada” seems to be bearing fruit after hiring Ian Murdock (the chap who started Debian)

OpenSolaris Developer/Community editions pale in comparision to Ubuntu for range of packages and usability, perhaps Nevada can sort it out. I am hopeful that Nexenta get it together and be the GNU/Solaris distro I really want (see here for some screencasts by Martin Man showing how cool it already is).

Posted by tom under Nexenta & ZFS & Ubuntu & OpenSolaris | No Comments »