OpenZFS ZFS-OSX (osx.zfs-20130930.dmg): testing

[Graham Perrin]

Follow-up to <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/maczfs-devel/9s7tI3wuuyk/EsnibcpoUXUJ> (osx.zfs-20130929.dmg) and spun off from <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/maczfs-devel/afg0R2jITKc/rEHtOytByZ8J> 

Tested today:

a) pre-release golden master seeded build 13A598 of OS X 10.9

b) ZFS-OSX and a variety of other third party software

c) a busy ZFS home directory, Core Storage for encryption, sshd. 

I spent a few hours testing. Two significant test sessions followed by rollbacks with ZEVO on Mountain Lion. In both cases, for me the combination of a+b+c was unusable. 

Note that my test environment is _very_ heavily oriented to revealing symptoms of: 

* issues with third party software in general

* issues that affect performance

– so I plead with readers to not generalise from these early results. The results are significant to me, but not conclusive for development purposes. 

I'll probably test again (with something greater than 20130930) and/or share more information after Apple releases Mavericks. 

----

With a clean installation of an OS, the story should be very different :-)

Would anyone like to share their Mountain Lion Core Storage + encryption + ZFS-OSX home directory success stories?

Thanks

Graham

[George]

Really appreciate your testing this Graham!  What kind of 3rd party software problems did you experience?  Did you run into performance issues?  Panics?  What really were the top few takeaways from this experience aside from the general judgement of needing another update or seeing a different experience with a fresh OS install? 

[Graham Perrin]

Hi George

Use of 13A598 is subject to a confidentiality agreement … whilst Apple's software is only part of the a+b+c combination that was unusable for me, I think it's appropriate to treat the three as a whole – to not discuss any detail. My apologies for any resulting frustration; and let's not assume a bug in Mavericks or ZFS-OSX. Now, in the absence of details about my most recent test sessions …

… the sweetest overview is probably a comparison with my previous session <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/maczfs-devel/9s7tI3wuuyk/EsnibcpoUXUJ>, when the pool that's my encrypted home directory was imported *but not used as a home directory* (I browsed its content minimally for a very short period, whilst logged in as a different administrator whose home directory is on HFS Plus). 

On 2013-09-29 with no attempt to log in to the home directory that's stored on ZFS: 

* nothing adverse.

On 2013-10-05 before attempting to log in to that home directory: 

* nothing adverse. 

Essentially: 

* problems began after login. 

[Graham Perrin]

Whilst remaining tight-lipped about the software (a+b) I can offer some information about the home directory (c). 

Reported by Disk Utility: 

Capacity ................ 614.18 GB (614,180,323,328 Bytes)

Available ................ 83.76 GB  (83,760,422,912 Bytes)

Used .................... 451.96 GB (451,963,846,656 Bytes)

Number of files ... 4,829,994

Additional details at <https://www.wuala.com/grahamperrin/public/2013/10/06/a/> – there'll be more later.