User directory on ZFS

[Draeconis]

I've been running ZFS on my Mac Pro across 4 HDDs for quite a while now (thank you so much!)

I've only had a couple of issues, so I'd thought I'd share the solutions here, since this fantastic project helped make ZFS on OS X a reality :)

I moved my entire user profile across to the ZFS array a while ago. a couple of issues cropped up around this;

Steam doesn't like being on a case-sensitive partition, so I had to create a symbolic link in Application Support back to HFS+ (just linked back to the same folder on the original user profile still on my boot drive).

After a while, logins would crash and relaunch the login window, stating that my user account 'couldn't log in right now'. To fix this, I renamed my original profile on my boot partition to *.old, created a symbolic link in the /Users directory, but importantly manually changed the folder path for the user account back to /Users/[username] rather than /Volumes/[zfs drive]/[username], so it looked directly at the symbolic link rather than the destination. This solves my system hanging when trying to log in; I imagine this is caused by my boot partition being on an SSD and my user account being on an HDD; the boot partition is ready to log into an account that can't be accessed because the ZFS array hasn't finished spinning up yet. But if I call the ZFS array from the boot partition from a symbolic link, this seems to work.

If you guys have any comments or hints of your own please let me know :)

[Jason Belec]

All good, your boot issue is as expected. But that must be a relatively slow HD or perhaps how your pool was constructed. However working, is working. I have SSD for OS X, all user data on ZFS pool comprised of RAIDZ across 4 drives with compression on (default value) and copies = 2. User space is always ready after boot, no waiting, but it used to be an issue when I had OS X and ZFS on a single HD. ;)

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Jason Belec

Sent from my iPad

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[Daniel Bethe]

Hi there Draeconis.  I'm glad you're having a good time.

All of this is documented in the FAQ.  I just clarified the login portion just a tiny bit.

https://code.google.com/p/maczfs/wiki/FAQ#Can_I_boot_from_ZFS?__Can_I_convert_totally_from_HFS+_to_ZFS?

You say that you renamed your profile.  What is a profile?  Do you mean a home directory?  I don't follow that part.

So you say that if your home directory is a symlink located on HFS+, pointing to a directory on ZFS, the autologin will pause for long enough to load your home directory?  I hadn't heard of that.  You're sure?  To the list: Has anyone corroborated that?

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From: Draeconis <lucidi...@gmail.com>
To: zfs-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013, 16:11
Subject: [zfs-macos] User directory on ZFS

[Shawn KOPPENHOEFER]

Draeconis <luciditymusic@...> writes:

>
>
> I've been running ZFS on my Mac Pro across 4 HDDs for )
>

Hello... I'm tempted to jove my Users' profiles to a ZFS drive...
Do i understand that the Library/ folder is AOK under zfs??..
I thought to have read that this
was/is a no-no??

Shawn


P.s. Have you experimented with Network HomeDirecttories and/or
PortableHomeDirectories
on zfs pools?... No gotchas? I 'm on the edge of buying a 4bay icyBox,
ZFS-ing 4x4TB drives
and serving all my users on 10.8.4 from the macMiniServer.
Am i crazy?

[Dave Cottlehuber]

On 6 August 2013 21:58, Shawn KOPPENHOEFER <Sh...@shawnkoppenhoefer.com> wrote:
> Draeconis <luciditymusic@...> writes:
>
>>
>>
>> I've been running ZFS on my Mac Pro across 4 HDDs for )
>>
>
> Hello... I'm tempted to jove my Users' profiles to a ZFS drive...
> Do i understand that the Library/ folder is AOK under zfs??..
> I thought to have read that this
> was/is a no-no??
>
> Shawn

Most of my apps were happy, but not all.

- some text editors with very high cpu usage (guess is due to a
different/missing API for changed file notifications)
- various apps couldn't handle case-sensitive filesystems

test, ymmv etc.

A+
Dave

[Daniel Bethe]

There are some exceptions, like Steam being case sensitive.  And there's the potential for logging in before your zpool is fully loaded.  I'm pretty sure these are fairly documented in the FAQ but let me know if they're not.

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From: Dave Cottlehuber <d...@jsonified.com>
To: zfs-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 6 August 2013, 15:37
Subject: Re: [zfs-macos] Re: User directory on ZFS

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[Graham Perrin]

On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 21:58:24 UTC+1, Daniel Bethe wrote:

There are some exceptions, like Steam being case sensitive.  And there's the potential for logging in before your zpool is fully loaded.  I'm pretty sure these are fairly documented in the FAQ but let me know if they're not.

Maybe add Google Drive to the FAQ .

People *might* find more obscure issues (affecting the list of system log queries in Console; Lingon; Last.fm Scrobbler AudioScrobbler.bundle; and so on) but I wouldn't expect the FAQ to include obscurities. 

Thanks