1. Status of NetBSD zfs port

NetBSD zfs port is work in progress and can easily panic your system.

ZFS currently works ony on i386 and amd64!!

2. Using NetBSD ZFS port

Installation

Use any -current build from i386 or amd64 architecture. All tools and modules should be built by default, now. There are 2 modules used for ZFS solaris.kmod and zfs.kmod. Solaris module provides solaris like interfaces to zfs on NetBSD. The second module is zfs and provides zfs file system functions.

Configuration

User need to

modload solaris
modload zfs

After loading modules user can create zpool(zfs version of volume manager) and manage zfs file systems on it.

zpool create {zpool name} {type} {device}

where type is:

mirror
raidz
raidz2
default is normal linear allocation

device is blod device on NetBSD /dev/sd0a for example.

zpool create tank mirror /dev/sd0a /dev/sd1a  creates mirrored zpool between 2 disk partitions.

With zpool created we can create zfs filesystems or zvols(zfs logical volume disks)

zfs create -V {size} tank/{zvol name} creates zvol with {zvol name} from ZPOOL called tank

Logical disk is created in

/dev/zvol/rdsk/{zpool name}/{zvol name} 

/dev/zvol/dsk/{zpool name}/{zvol name}

zfs create tank/{zfs name} create zfs filesystem on a zpool called tank

Administration

After creating ZVOLS and filesystem they are saved in a /etc/zfs/zpool.cache file and loaded after nextzfs module load.

3. Known Bugs

Show stoppers

amd64

i386

Both

vnode reclaiming deadlocks

Current code is quite a hack but it works until I will find some time to rework vnode reclaiming on NetBSD.

http://nxr.netbsd.org/xref/src/external/cddl/osnet/dist/uts/common/fs/zfs/zfs_vnops.c#4254

vnode fsync bug

I think that we are hitting this bug, too. I have some patches in the tree which fixes deadlod in vnode reclaim but after that I'm getting another deadlock in VOP_FSYNC.
kmem_cache_alloc/ aka pool_cache_get panicsdue to KM_NOSLEEP flag There are some problems in the NetBSD UVM subsytem when KM_NOSLEEP allocation can fail even if system has enough memory to use. I talked with ad@ about it and he said that there is one problem in uvm where some lock is held, KM_NOSLEEP allocation will fail.

Functional bugs

Snapshots
Permissions
Old code, we should update NetBSD zfs port to new code
More tasks can be found at http://nxr.netbsd.org/xref/src/external/cddl/osnet/TODO

External Documentation links

Nice zfs howto written for zfs + mac os x http://code.google.com/p/maczfs/wiki/GettingStarted