FreeBSD & Slackware shared ZFS partition?

[David Chmelik]

Are there any basic/simple tutorials/HOWTOs that might help setup shared
ZFS partition for FreeBSD & Slackware (current verisons of each)?

All I've seen is extremely complicated texts for extra-advanced usage. I
wish it was as simple as newfs/mkfs. All I need is journalling; not 100
fancy ZFS features (no compression; no snapshots, etc.)

I tried it years ago, but things have changed... last time I had to
research weeks/months, get help for hours, and it was an hours/days
project just to learn and install (trial & error)... after a few tries,
had to make ZFS on Slackware first (wouldn't work vice-versa) then setup
to use the set features on FreeBSD. If I recall correctly (IIRC) it
involved scrolling through a list of maybe 100 feature sets both
supported, then using the intersection.

It's like building & running your own filesystem (fs) OS in each; wish
it'd be simple enough to use with the given fs tools rather than running
an entire additional software for fs. But as long as *BSD & GNU/Linux
only have experimental (unsafe) write support of other's fs (UFS, EXT4)
ZFS is the only option?

Are list.freebsd.questions,mailing.freebsd.questions, etc., no longer
part of Usenet?

[Grant Taylor]

Post by David Chmelik
Are there any basic/simple tutorials/HOWTOs that might help setup
shared ZFS partition for FreeBSD & Slackware (current verisons
of each)?

First, what do you mean by "shared storage"?

Do you mean concurrent access, like a clustered file system?

Or simply a single block device / file system that each can access when
booted one at a time?

Post by David Chmelik
All I've seen is extremely complicated texts for extra-advanced
usage. I wish it was as simple as newfs/mkfs. All I need is
journalling; not 100 fancy ZFS features (no compression; no snapshots,
etc.)

Second, ZFS is not simply a file system. It is a file system, volume
management, RAID, and many more things.

Third, perhaps ZFS isn't the best choice for what you want.

To whit, what do you want to do? What is your use case? (Please
describe independent of any possible solution.)

Post by David Chmelik
I tried it years ago, but things have changed... last time I had to
research weeks/months, get help for hours, and it was an hours/days
project just to learn and install (trial & error)... after a few
tries, had to make ZFS on Slackware first (wouldn't work vice-versa)
then setup to use the set features on FreeBSD. If I recall correctly
(IIRC) it involved scrolling through a list of maybe 100 feature sets
both supported, then using the intersection.

Depending how many years ago you're talking about, the state of ZFS on
Linux, and possibly FreeBSD, was significantly different than it is now.
ZFS is a relatively new file system for Linux. As such, it's short
history (on Linux) has seen a LOT of change.

I think I've read that FreeBSD now uses ZFS on Linux as it's source of
ZFS. (This may be because FreeBSD ZFS efforts were pushed back into ZFS
on Linux and joint community development is happening there now.)

I am not at all surprised that you needed to use limit your ZFS pool to
features that both operating systems support.

Post by David Chmelik
It's like building & running your own filesystem (fs) OS in each;
wish it'd be simple enough to use with the given fs tools rather than
running an entire additional software for fs. But as long as *BSD &
GNU/Linux only have experimental (unsafe) write support of other's fs
(UFS, EXT4) ZFS is the only option?

I doubt that ZFS is the only option.

I would bet that both FreeBSD and Linux both support FAT-12 / FAT-16 /
FAT-32. ;-) But perhaps they won't do what you want.

I'd be somewhat surprised if FreeBSD can't read and write to NTFS. As
such, I expect that to be another option.

As previously stated, ZFS is it's own entirely different thing. This
means that none of the traditional tools work with ZFS. Just like none
of the traditional tools worked when TCP/IP was introduced to Unixes in
the '70s and '80s.

Post by David Chmelik
Are list.freebsd.questions,mailing.freebsd.questions, etc., no longer
part of Usenet?

I don't recognize them. I don't see them in my server's active file.

[David Chmelik]

Post by David Chmelik
Are there any basic/simple tutorials/HOWTOs that might help setup
shared ZFS partition for FreeBSD & Slackware (current verisons of
each)?

[...] Do you mean concurrent access, like a clustered file system?

Don't know what that is. Not concurrent.

Or simply a single block device / file system that each can access when
booted one at a time?

Yes.

[...] To whit, what do you want to do? What is your use case? (Please
describe independent of any possible solution.)

My own (single-user) PC/workstation dual-boot, as programmer/scientist
also doing more 'user' things: access my user-type data (/home,) that
mostly/all doesn't affect running operating system (OS) distribution
(distro) or graphical user interface (GUI, at least not pure command-
line, which I boot to)... in case might affect GUI (as for command-line:
already configured shells separately or to work fine... isn't a big
deal, as can boot recovery discs or universal serial bus, USB, flash
drives) I have backups and eventually would mainly/only use GUI only on
one OS; other only to learn/program/develop in (command-line only)
regularly/occasionally. Eventually I'd mainly use one (leaning to *BSD
which I started with in college and only switched for drivers 15+ years
ago for hardware I no longer use) then later maybe run other in Xen or
setup (not for security) like QubesOS (lets you run programs in emulator/
virtual-machine (emu/VM) main (host) OS' X/etc. from GUI of OS installed
(guest) inside main, without being inset in emu/VM window... just X
window, not requiring press to select in & out)... sadly that didn't
become popular at all for other distros, because apparently not so many
people want to do many things from various OSes right in one as if same
GUI/X server.

Of course, I'm not going to run QubesOS for that, as any GNU/Linux newer
than Slackware has problems for me: GUI-boot (sometimes with critical
bugs when altered to boot command-line,) systemd, dependency Hell,
configuration of (sort of as sometimes said) 'giving the user more rope
than they need to hang themselves,' etc., i.e., no longer strictly Unix[-
like] (more inspired by Apple/Windows.)

Post by David Chmelik
[...] > [...]

I think I've read that FreeBSD now uses ZFS on Linux as it's source of
ZFS. (This may be because FreeBSD ZFS efforts were pushed back into ZFS
on Linux and joint community development is happening there now.)

I know they plan to but apparently don't seem to yet. It might make
things easier.

[...] >> [...] > [...]
I would bet that both FreeBSD and Linux both support FAT-12 / FAT-16 /
FAT-32. ;-) But perhaps they won't do what you want.

This isn't 1990; I mentioned journalling...!

I'd be somewhat surprised if FreeBSD can't read and write to NTFS. As
such, I expect that to be another option.

I wouldn't say so; obvious? Different file-name characters (also causing
critical shell problems; ) no user/permission information (so probably
also harder to do backups & restores right,) maybe poor/no journalling,
etc. It'd be an absolute, horrible, unusable mess!

[...] >> [...] > [...]

Maybe I used a few other default ZFS features (other than excluding
compression, because I want to be able to directly look into fs, and
excluding snapshots: space issue) but don't recall. Every similar fs
either starts using, the other team(s) mostly doesn't seem enthusiastic
about. In the past, *BSD had XFS, which apparently only was to attract
GNU/Linux users then remove XFS; *BSD doesn't want BTRFS either; the
Linux kernel is probably stuck on old versions of UFS/FFS still even read-
only (safely... same with Unix and EXT*)... I don't know about
alternatives or any new fs. Just last time, after some advice, it was
concluded ZFS was only option (should've been obvious.) I wonder if any
fs are part of POSIX standard or are either/all team(s) just don't want
to adhere to it as much as I thought...

[Henrik Carlqvist]

Post by David Chmelik

Post by David Chmelik
Are there any basic/simple tutorials/HOWTOs that might help setup
shared ZFS partition for FreeBSD & Slackware (current verisons of
each)?

[...] Do you mean concurrent access, like a clustered file system?

Don't know what that is. Not concurrent.

There are file systems like ocfs2 which allows two or more machines at
the same time to have the same file system mounted. Of course you will
then also need hardware which allows this like a SCSI bus with two
different controllers in separate machines or firbre channel.

Another way to accomplish part of the same thing is to have some
networked file system like NFS and I think that NFS would be useful for
you as it is well supported in both Slackware and FreeBSD.

Post by David Chmelik
My own (single-user) PC/workstation dual-boot, as programmer/scientist
also doing more 'user' things: access my user-type data (/home,) that
mostly/all doesn't affect running operating system (OS) distribution...

In lack of other common supported file system with journaling, why not
simply put your /home on an NFS server like a NAS or other unix server in
your network? On that server you can have features like journaling, RAID,
snapshots or whatever you want. The important thing is that NFS is a well
supported file system on all your clients.

regards Henrik

[David Chmelik]

Post by Henrik Carlqvist
In lack of other common supported file system with journaling, why not
simply put your /home on an NFS server like a NAS or other unix server
in your network? [...]

The common fs is ZFS; would rather learn that software than hardware that
will just make things even more complicated (absolutely not considering
ever not having my /home not in my PC.)

[Jens Schweikhardt]

In comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc David Chmelik <***@gmail.com> wrote:
...
# I wonder if any fs is part of the POSIX standard

No, file systems are not in the scope of POSIX.

Regards,

Jens

[John D Groenveld]

Post by David Chmelik
I tried it years ago, but things have changed... last time I had to
research weeks/months, get help for hours, and it was an hours/days
project just to learn and install (trial & error)... after a few tries,
had to make ZFS on Slackware first (wouldn't work vice-versa) then setup
to use the set features on FreeBSD. If I recall correctly (IIRC) it
involved scrolling through a list of maybe 100 feature sets both
supported, then using the intersection.

Look at the -d option to zpool create to disable all features:
<URL:https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=zpool&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE>

FreeBSD and Void Linux were able to import the pool.
John
***@acm.org

[DaveG]

Are list.freebsd.questions,mailing.freebsd.questions, etc., no longer part
of Usenet?

The mailing lists and their archives still exits and are living.
I have no idea if anyone is running them through a mail to
usenet gateway though.

A quick query on your search engine of choice would have found

https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

which has a link on the page to the archive.

If you want to do it through usenet, see if gmane carries the
lists and if so, add the gmane server to your newsreader.

[Chris Elvidge]

Post by DaveG

Are list.freebsd.questions,mailing.freebsd.questions, etc., no longer part
of Usenet?

The mailing lists and their archives still exits and are living.
I have no idea if anyone is running them through a mail to
usenet gateway though.
A quick query on your search engine of choice would have found
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
which has a link on the page to the archive.
If you want to do it through usenet, see if gmane carries the
lists and if so, add the gmane server to your newsreader.

Eternal September carries:
fa.freebsd.questions
list.freebsd.questions
lucky.freebsd.questions
lucky.freebsd.questions.digest
mailing.freebsd.questions
muc.lists.freebsd.questions

[David Chmelik]

Post by DaveG

Post by David Chmelik
Are list.freebsd.questions,mailing.freebsd.questions, etc., no longer
part of Usenet?

The mailing lists and their archives still exits and are living.
I have no idea if anyone is running them through a mail to usenet
gateway though.
[...] If you want to do it through usenet, see if gmane carries the
lists and if so, add the gmane server to your newsreader.

Yes; well, I'm half-asking FreeBSD newsgroups; half-asking
alt.os.linux.slackware (so can't use Gmane) because my original question
(not in this sub-thread) relates to dual-booting. Posts to list.* and/or
mailing.* never appear... maybe they're moderated, but I'm not a mailing-
list member?

Eternal September carries: fa.freebsd.questions list.freebsd.questions
lucky.freebsd.questions lucky.freebsd.questions.digest
mailing.freebsd.questions muc.lists.freebsd.questions

Apparently so, and list.freebsd-questions (I don't know what fa.*, muc.*
(or some others you mentioned; might be Solaris) might be; I don't use
those)... just my posts are never showing up for such FreeBSD newsgroups;
only comp.*...

I kind of want to restart the thread because I have new use cases now,
and it only really ever diverged to other topics like typical off-topic
alternative/unwanted suggestions, and discussion areas (though this sub-
thread is helpful) and one later case someone replied without reading any
earlier discussion, and again (surprisingly, because there are more PCs
than servers now, and not surprisingly, because of specific OSes) assumed
this was a server expert's question rather than workstation PC programmer
who forgot everything about ZFS.

So I wrote an updated post to start over (with more clarification of the
beginning what I really want to do soon/next and what I don't know.)
This time it didn't say Eternal-September.org (ES) didn't have lists.* &
mailing.*, just didn't show up at all. I also tried aioe.org, which has
three-newsgroup-crosspost limit, but I'd guess either the FreeBSD Usenet
<-> listserv connection has ended or the moderators don't want questions
about dual-booting, at least from non-members. If that's the case, I
wish I could just get an invitation/verification email like you commonly/
mostly get on Gmane groups/listservs...

[tom]

On Wed, 13 May 2020 08:10:22 -0000 (UTC)

Post by David Chmelik
Are there any basic/simple tutorials/HOWTOs that might help setup
shared ZFS partition for FreeBSD & Slackware (current verisons of
each)?
All I've seen is extremely complicated texts for extra-advanced
usage. I wish it was as simple as newfs/mkfs. All I need is
journalling; not 100 fancy ZFS features (no compression; no
snapshots, etc.)
I tried it years ago, but things have changed... last time I had to
research weeks/months, get help for hours, and it was an hours/days
project just to learn and install (trial & error)... after a few
tries, had to make ZFS on Slackware first (wouldn't work vice-versa)
then setup to use the set features on FreeBSD. If I recall correctly
(IIRC) it involved scrolling through a list of maybe 100 feature sets
both supported, then using the intersection.
It's like building & running your own filesystem (fs) OS in each;
wish it'd be simple enough to use with the given fs tools rather than
running an entire additional software for fs. But as long as *BSD &
GNU/Linux only have experimental (unsafe) write support of other's fs
(UFS, EXT4) ZFS is the only option?
Are list.freebsd.questions,mailing.freebsd.questions, etc., no longer
part of Usenet?

Hi,

I think your going about it wrong. You don't store separate
operating systems in the same ZFS, but a separate ZFS within in same
ZPOOL. For example, your z filesystems should look something like this:
zpool
zpool:ROOT
zpool:ROOT:slackware141
zpool:ROOT:slackware142
zpool:ROOT:freebsd12
zpool:ROOT:beowulf
zpool:home
zpool:home:jdoe
zpool:home:alice
zpool:randomjunk

btw, zpool:ROOT should be marked non-mountable. In this configuration
you just select with a zfs-capable bootloader which zfs to mount as
your root filesystem, and then you can share home directories and other
datasets between the operating systems. It also allows you to rollback
any botched operating system upgrade and such. As for how compatible
ZFSonLinux and freebsd's zfs is I'm not sure and you'll have to test
for yourself.
--
_________________________________________
/ It is indeed desirable to be well \
| descended, but the glory belongs to our |
| ancestors. |
| |
\ -- Plutarch /
-----------------------------------------
\
\
/\ /\
//\\_//\\ ____
\_ _/ / /
/ * * \ /^^^]
\_\O/_/ [ ]
/ \_ [ /
\ \_ / /
[ [ / \/ _/
_[ [ \ /_/

[David Chmelik]

Post by tom
On Wed, 13 May 2020 08:10:22 -0000 (UTC)

Post by David Chmelik
Are there any basic/simple tutorials/HOWTOs that might help setup
shared ZFS partition for FreeBSD & Slackware (current verisons of
each)? [...]

[...] I think your going about it wrong. You don't store separate
operating systems in the same ZFS, but a separate ZFS within in same
zpool zpool:ROOT zpool:ROOT:slackware141 zpool:ROOT:slackware142
zpool:ROOT:freebsd12 zpool:ROOT:beowulf zpool:home zpool:home:jdoe
zpool:home:alice zpool:randomjunk

That does not really have to do with what I asked. Never said I'm
storing operating systems in ZFS; only a partition (user data,)
independent of those.

Post by tom
btw, zpool:ROOT should be marked non-mountable. In this configuration
you just select with a zfs-capable bootloader which zfs to mount as your
root filesystem, and then you can share home directories and other
datasets between the operating systems. It also allows you to rollback
any botched operating system upgrade and such. As for how compatible
ZFSonLinux and freebsd's zfs is I'm not sure and you'll have to test for
yourself.