ZFSguru NAS fileserver project

danswartz said:
You don't actually need to export it - but when you try to to import it on the new box, you will need to say '-f' (for force).
Click to expand...

The only thing is that doesn't work, when I use zpool list it doesn't find any available pools, and using the name given to the pool also refuses to work. I can't think of any reason this should be, but such as the case. I was hoping that performing a proper export would solve my problem.
 
No1451 said:
The only thing is that doesn't work, when I use zpool list it doesn't find any available pools, and using the name given to the pool also refuses to work. I can't think of any reason this should be, but such as the case. I was hoping that performing a proper export would solve my problem.
Click to expand...

I had this very problem. Here was my thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1575034

It turned out Solaris doesn't recognize GPT partitions. You need to have formatted and partitioned the drives with GEOM in order to import the pool to a Solaris system. If your current pool was GPT partitioned using ZFSguru I am sorry to say you would have to migrate your data out and rebuild your pool with Geom.
 
Silenus said:
I had this very problem. Here was my thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1575034

It turned out Solaris doesn't recognize GPT partitions. You need to have formatted and partitioned the drives with GEOM in order to import the pool to a Solaris system. If your current pool was GPT partitioned using ZFSguru I am sorry to say you would have to migrate your data out and rebuild your pool with Geom.
Click to expand...

Ahhhhhhhh, that's the worst thing I've heard all day :eek:

Thanks for the heads up though:(

Edit: If I don't have sufficient storage to migrate my pool can I remove parts of my pool to do a portioned removal?
 
Tried to install OI on my i3 fileserver.
Came to the boot menu and then it dident get any longer.
I used an USB stick with the USB image on, maybe something went wrong....
Gona get an dvd and an dvd-rom for the server and try that :)
 
Well, the one dev is MIA, not replying to emails or anything else and hasn't posted in weeks, so I would assume it is dead :( Might want to try switching to OI or SE11 with napp-it.
 
I reg. on his site, (ZFSguru.com) but never got the e-mail with the password!!
oh well ....
 
georgio said:
I reg. on his site, (ZFSguru.com) but never got the e-mail with the password!!
oh well ....
Click to expand...

Never got the email either so couldn't post, gave up waiting and have now moved on to something else. I guess zfsguru is now a dead distribution, which is a shame but always the risk with one man band projects.

Even if he comes back, I think this episode just shows that it's a highly risky decision investing time (and even more so, data) in such projects.

Hope he's OK though.
 
ZFSguru.com seems to have fallen over in the last 24 hours. For those of us with curent installations of ZFSguru it poses a bit of a problem, in that some of the web pages (status in particular) contact the zfsguru.com server to check versions etc.

Fortunately, I managed to grab all the required files and system images from sub.mesa's site yesterday, and have set up a functional mirror for existing users :cool:

Instructions are at http://zfsguru.donovansbrain.co.uk. Basically, it involves changing the variables in PHP that point to the server to contact. I have made no other changes, and the system images and version information are untouched.

Using my mirror you can check web interface versions that you don't yet have installed and download system images as normal. You should be able to do a full install if you make the changes to the PHP file after booting from the LiveCD iso.

This is completely unofficial, Jason (sub.mesa) has not been contacted to inform him, I just grabbed the files as a precaution to ensure the future of my own install.

Paul
 
All this is sad, ZFSguru was amazing.

But the more important is Jason, I really hope he's fine.

Their is a contact phone # provided if you WHOIS the zfsguru.com domain. Look like he from UK. Maybe someone from UK could phone to see if he's fine..
 
Thanks pdonovan for putting up that mirror. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that Jason is ok. Maybe ZFSGuru will go back up tomorrow and that this is just a tiny hiccup. If not, I'm going to start looking at the source code to see if this project can be salvaged and turned into a community project (I was the guy who said he'd try to do this over on the ZFSGuru forum).
 
hysan said:
Thanks pdonovan for putting up that mirror. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that Jason is ok. Maybe ZFSGuru will go back up tomorrow and that this is just a tiny hiccup. If not, I'm going to start looking at the source code to see if this project can be salvaged and turned into a community project (I was the guy who said he'd try to do this over on the ZFSGuru forum).
Click to expand...

I would really appreciate this, ZFSGuru is a great addon
 
Thanks pdonovan. I copied the files to same server and pointed the variables to local path. Internet connection no longer required :D

It is sad, but this is life. I hope mesa is in good shape out there.
 
I am uploading a copy of zfsguru.com I did last weekend with wget as well as the last iso on my dropbox for everybody.
In august the domain name will expire ( zfsguru.com ) and I will try to secure it for our use.
I secured the name "zfsguru" on Google Code please hysan could you be the owner? I have no knowledge in programming at all.
http://code.google.com/p/zfsguru/

To be sure the project will not die I will upload it on various sites as well as torrenting/useneting it.

Now we need some kind of coding messiah or the return of Jason ...

ISO : http://db.tt/zrit6OF
Website : http://db.tt/roEbhPl

EDIT:
sourceforge seems a shitload better than google code and will accept the iso images.
I made a page, will upload to it. And maybe close the other project.
 
Last edited:
Well zfsguru.com is back. But I'll keep trying to save sub.mesa's work as if something really happened to him ( I hope not ) then somedays the site will shut down...
 
For anyone who copied the files from my mirror, I've just fixed an error in the zfsguru_services.txt file that meant ZFSguru wouldn't parse it properly. When I edited the paths to the service torrent files I forgot to update the length of the strings. PHP serialize format isn't meant to be edited by hand!

It's fixed now.
 
THE JEW (RaVeN) said:
Here's to hoping he's okay.
Click to expand...

Fingers crossed he is OK.

THE JEW (RaVeN) said:
Nice to see the community pull together to keep this thing alive.
Click to expand...

It's great to see, but realistically I think all people are doing right now is keeping it on life support for those already using zfsguru (a move that is only necessary because of a rather bizarre dependency by the distribution on a website).

Anyone about to consider installing zfsguru would be best advised to find an alternative.

If people want to keep zfsguru truly alive they will IMHO need to fork it and maintain the project going forward - preferably as a group effort rather than individually - as it's sadly apparent the current sole maintainer is either unwilling - or possibly unable - to continue.
 
Hmmm, what knowledge is needed to continue developing ZFSGuru? I know it runs PHP, but is there any C development involved?
 
olavgg said:
Hmmm, what knowledge is needed to continue developing ZFSGuru? I know it runs PHP, but is there any C development involved?
Click to expand...

I'll begin looking at the source code and begin documenting it tomorrow but from what I've seen, it uses a combination of PHP and shell scripts. You can just download the source from the main website (currently up: http://zfsguru.com/download) and do a ls -R to see all of the files.
 
xDezor said:
Please come back! :(
Click to expand...

but this is kind of silly. i doubt jason is missing because he is ticked at anyone. whatever happened, i think folks should assume the project is dead and either move on, or (as a few have proposed), try to fork the project.
 
If I create on FreeBSD a ZFS RaidZ2, using the gnop method, after I trashed the gnop and rebuilt the pool, will the array be whole-disk or use an underlying format option?

I want to create the cleanest array possible for Solaris.
 
danswartz said:
but this is kind of silly. i doubt jason is missing because he is ticked at anyone. whatever happened, i think folks should assume the project is dead and either move on, or (as a few have proposed), try to fork the project.
Click to expand...

Indeed, even if Jason did decide to come back (assuming - and hoping - he is able to) there's no saying he won't disappear again further down the road leaving the project high and dry again.

Unless a group of developers - rather than another individual to avoid a repeat of the current situation - are willing to fork the project, it really is time to move on even if Jason does resurface.
 
Darknight670 said:
If I create on FreeBSD a ZFS RaidZ2, using the gnop method, after I trashed the gnop and rebuilt the pool, will the array be whole-disk or use an underlying format option?

I want to create the cleanest array possible for Solaris.
Click to expand...

Not quite sure what you mean by "rebuilt the pool". Once you have created the pool you can import it directly into Solaris.

I believe that if you format the disks with the GEOM format option there will be no underlying partitions on the drive, i.e. ZFS will use the whole disk. Here is the procedure I've used successfully several times (off the top of my head)

In ZFSGuru:
Format each disk using the GEOM option (do NOT use the GPT option as Solaris won't recognize the disks)

Create the raidz2 using 4K sector override (which does the gnop trick).

In Solaris:
Import the pool

Upgrade the zpool and zfs versions to the desired levels (you have to do this in a specific order, I think zpool first then zfs)
 
Mmmhh... GNOP only create a "virtaul" drive. SO after I delete the nop the ZFS pool is "pure" aka full ZFS , no underlying formating?
 
MilhouseVH said:
Indeed, even if Jason did decide to come back (assuming - and hoping - he is able to) there's no saying he won't disappear again further down the road leaving the project high and dry again.
Click to expand...

The same thing worries me about moving to napp-it. AFAIK that's a single person development effort. Nevermind the long term future of the various open solaris forks. Open solaris was a faily niche OS before Oracle took over...:p

I've learnt enough about FreeBSD to be able to maintain and upgrade my ZFSguru NAS. I have already rebuilt the kernel, added AFP and TimeMachine support, Transmission and pyTivo. My other option is to have another look at FreeNAS 8 as it seems to have picked up steam in the last couple of months.

Paul
 
MilhouseVH said:
Indeed, even if Jason did decide to come back (assuming - and hoping - he is able to) there's no saying he won't disappear again further down the road leaving the project high and dry again.

Unless a group of developers - rather than another individual to avoid a repeat of the current situation - are willing to fork the project, it really is time to move on even if Jason does resurface.
Click to expand...

The problem is that most people who are able to code something like this are also able to (and probably prefer to) use zfs command line, stripped distro + custom kernel etc, so they don't need/want a GUI.

What's needed to keep this project alive/maintained? I probably have the background to do it, but I'm not sure about the time I can devote to it. Are people looking for new features or what?
 
Darknight670 said:
Mmmhh... GNOP only create a "virtaul" drive. SO after I delete the nop the ZFS pool is "pure" aka full ZFS , no underlying formating?
Click to expand...

Yes I believe that's correct. The only thing gnop does is fake out zfs so that it thinks it's dealing with disk devices that report a block size of 4k instead of 512b. So when 'zpool create' queries the block size it sets the 'ashift' parameter correctly for a 4k drive. I believe 4k block size is a fully supported feature of ZFS, it's just really hard to convince ZFS to actually use it. You wouldn't even need to use gnop if there were an option for the zpool command that allowed you to specify the block size directly (something I b!tched about in here recently). In fact another workaround for this is to use a hacked version of zpool that has the block size hard coded to 4k, however last I looked into it some people were questioning the reliability of the hack.

So even after you remove the gnop devices, the ashift parameter is still set correctly on disk, and it never changes after that, even if you upgrade the pool.
 
black0ut said:
The problem is that most people who are able to code something like this are also able to (and probably prefer to) use zfs command line, stripped distro + custom kernel etc, so they don't need/want a GUI.

What's needed to keep this project alive/maintained? I probably have the background to do it, but I'm not sure about the time I can devote to it. Are people looking for new features or what?
Click to expand...

These projects make ZFS pretty and convenient, but the truth is that the CLI itself is pretty easy to use. The drives that are created are directly importable into ZFS CLI (you are not locked to a certain tool). So, I if they become less useful, or are found to be bugged, moving back to CLI, or using another tool is always an option. That being said, a multi-developer approach could help the speed of development and longevity, but I do not worry about my data.
 
Well I finished looking through the source code of 0.1.7 and 0.1.8-p3 in my spare time and the structure is fairly straightforward. However, there are a few problems if the community decides to take over the project:

  1. There are no tests. At the moment, we only have Jason's word that everything has been tested thoroughly. Since I don't know PHP (had to just read through the PHP docs to find out how certain functions/keywords worked), I don't know if there are any bugs in his code. Adding new code (like additional services) won't be too risky, but trying to improve on his existing code will be difficult as we won't know what might break.
  2. Jason did mention that security wasn't built into the code yet and it's quite obvious from the source. Since he isn't using a PHP Framework, I assume that any sort of security backend will need to be built from scratch (again, not a PHP dev so I may be wrong about this).
  3. We will need a new ZFS guru (I mean a person) who can write shell scripts to add new functions to the frontend. All of the ZFS functions in the frontend (like making disks, pools, etc.) end up calling one of the scripts in the zfsguru/scripts folder. As mentioned by black0ut, chances are that the people who are most capable of doing this don't even need ZFSGuru anyway.

So those are probably the biggest obstacles outside of somehow finding PHP devs who can take over the project.

black0ut said:
What's needed to keep this project alive/maintained? I probably have the background to do it, but I'm not sure about the time I can devote to it. Are people looking for new features or what?
Click to expand...
This is just my assumption, but I believe the next few things that were going to be implemented were:

  1. Reintegrate the Samba, NFS, and iSCSI services. These were available in 0.1.7 but were taken out when Jason refactored the code in 0.1.8-p3. I assume it wouldn't be too hard to migrate the code over to the new framework he implemented but again, I must mention that there are no tests so there is no way of knowing if everything works correctly/safely.
  2. Package all of this up and release it as 0.1.8-final? I don't know how to check for the rest of the stuff listed in his changelog (http://zfsguru.com/zfsguru_changelog.html) so there may be some non-GUI related stuff that he needed to work on. Here is what was scheduled for 0.1.8:

Version 0.1.8 (not yet released)
  • Major rewrite of web-interface to new page structure; all pages rewritten.
  • Introduction of new services architecture allowing add-on services to be downloaded and installed.
  • Services and system images now may use either direct download or torrent download (new).
  • Caching of remote files make ZFSguru rely less on central server on continuous internet access.
  • Now allows choice between several memory profiles when performing automatic memory tuning.
  • Now creates a ZVOL SWAP device by default when performing Root-on-ZFS installation.
  • more to come..
Click to expand...

Anyway, not sure what else to mention so I guess we all discuss what to do next? Also, re: Darknight670 - I won't be able to take ownership of this project since I'm a Java/SQL/Python dev and only a novice ZFS user. Sooo not the right skillset for this project. Sorry =/
 
While napp-it is a one-person project too, the difference is that it is (basically) done already, and furthermore is just sitting on top as a web application, unlike zfsguru, which delves deeper into freebsd.
 
ZFS v28 has now been merged with FreeBSD 8-Stable. This project would really benefit being up to date.

For me the code seems easy enough, the most complex parts are in bash anyway. Though a rewrite of the web layer is needed. I really don't like that the project requires PHP and Apache. Python alone would be much better as Python is a strong typed language.

I will look more into ZFSGuru this weekend and decide if I really have the time to fork the project.
 
I think the biggest thing I want from a ZFS / freebsd system is the ability to run on a flash drive I dont really need a webui, and i rather do most work from cmd line anyway. I dont think anyone has made a nanoBSD install for ZFS without any webui.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top