[Soc-coordination] Status Report of ZFS on Linux Integration, Week 6

[Aron Xu]

Hi everyone,

This is the seventh report of ZFS on Linux Integration GSoC project.

In this week, I have pushed an updated version of spl-linux[1] package
which fixes linux-3.10 compatibility and added the binary modules and
udeb generation facilities. Also I have completed the initial version
of zfs-linux[1] package and uploaded it, now it is sitting in NEW[2].
The zfs-linux package has several selected upstream patches, also
includes linux-3.10 support and binary modules and udeb generation
facilities.

I have continued my discovery about partman-zfs , although there is no
progress on results, here are the findings: The reason partman-zfs
destroys the created volume is to take advantage of more zfs dataset
features, rather than using it as a purge volume manager like lvm,
while partman-zfs need to create a block device and partman-base can
pick up a new device in its $dev list, so that the whole process is
possible to go on. It then relies on the recorded device path to
extract correct $pool/$vol names, silently destroy the block device
and create a dataset with the same name.

LVM has similar problem and uses a help program to get the info of the
device file under /dev/ (and create a symlink under /dev/mapper), so
partman-lvm knows the names of volume groups and volumes internally.
This does not work for current implementation of partman-zfs because
when it destroys the block device, helper program can no longer
retrieve $pool/$vol names for remaining actions, while lvm never need
to face such situation since it never removes a volume or volume group
user creates.

This may be covered by combining the destroy action and re-create
action in the same step, but I haven't got time to try in this way
since I get the idea after a lengthy IRC talk with my mentor, I'll try
to do this next week.

[1]http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/spl-linux/news/20130729T090455Z.html
[2]http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git
[3]http://ftp-master.debian.org/new/zfs-linux_0.6.1-1.html


-- 
Regards,
Aron Xu