“According to published reports on the internet, Apple has actually seeded developers with a ZFS Read/Write Beta for Leopard. The new ZFS Read/Write beta enables full read/write capabilities to Apple’s Mac OS X (Leopard),” arn reports for MacRumors.
Full article here.
Aidan Malley reports for AppleInsider, “Sun’s recent ZFS will appear in a limited form as promised, those aware of its inner workings note. Despite Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’ protests to the contrary, the unique file system will appear as a non-default, read-only format out of the box with write support possibly arriving as a separate update in the future. Regardless of access, however, ZFS in Leopard will support some of the trademark features, such as instant and low-storage “snapshots” of a disk volume, and cloned copies that can be modified with only a small penalty in terms of disk space.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Seriously. This would definitely quench my unsatisfied taste buds after the disappointing Stevenote. Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful for everything Apple has done and is planning to do. They’re a great company with great and intelligent people and I’m proud to be an Apple customer through-and-through.
And even though Leopard is a guranteed purchase and – from what we’ve seen – has some very noteworthy enhancements and features, nothing in the Stevenote on Leopard was worth all the “Top Secret” feature hype that was brought on from the Macworld Stevenote.
I’m still holding out that there are some mind blowing features that weren’t quite ready to be shown and none of the developers are able to show.
But ZFS on an external drive for the explicit purpose of Time Machine use would definitely quench my thirst.
Zounds exziting.
(“I’m still holding out that there are some mind blowing features that weren’t quite ready to be shown and none of the developers are able to show.”
The Magic 8 Ball says, “Not bloody likely.”
But quite a few minor enhancements according to AI.)
From what I’ve heard ZFS isn’t ready for use as a file system like this, at least not by October, I suppose if they can get it to a stage they’re happy with then they’ll add it and we’ll be happy. If not they can add it later or in a subsequent release. No point getting everyone’s hopes up.
What in the hell does this have to do with the iPhone? I thought MDN only did iPhone news?
It’s not a “rumor”, its a fact!
This is great news for iPhone users. I’m not sure why but it is.
No news here. The release notes to the developers also repeat that 10.5.0 will ship with a read-only version of ZFS and that this is just a beta of the read/write capability. Bodes well for 10.5.1 though.
So if you get Leopard via new hardware, is it worth erasing the disk and reinstalling with ZFS as default?
I’m not sure, but I don’t think ZFS can be a bootable drive at this point in its developement.
Update: Apparently not bootable till later in 2007. That means 10.5.1 or .2 is a real possibility.
I wouldn’t put it past Apple to solve the boot issues of ZFS, particularly as there’s some time before Leopard is issued.
Indeed, as Jvpiter says, this is not a rumor. You can download the ZFS beta now from the ADC website, you don’t even need a paid for ADC membership, although obviously if you don’t have a developer seed of Leopard it won’t do you any good.
The fact that ZFS isn’t currently suitable for a boot drive needn’t be of any significance. Time Machine needs to use a different drive in order to properly back up files, so what’s the problem with having HFS+ for the boot drive and ZFS for the external mass storage ?
Furthermore, now that Apple provides a great solution for networked storage by plugging a USB hard drive into the new AirPort Base Station, you could have that drive formatted as ZFS too.
The interesting thing is that QuickTime in Leopard won’t need a Pro license key to display full screen – a very dated and lame restriction.
Just played an embedded mp3 in my browser with the QT plugin. Hitting the right widget to save it brought up a dialog box saying QT Pro needed. While paying for QT Pro is not a big issue for me, the fact that I could download the audio piece with a simple option-click made that restriction silly, if not stupid.
That and being able to change the region setting “on the fly” – if true – would help restore some luster to QT as a player.
Now, as to requiring Safari to set one’s preferred browser, or iChat to set one’s preferred IM client, I hope they’ll reconsider.
I have three external drives that I use for different purposes. Two of them are USB-only, and of course are not bootable under OS X. However, the third one is Firewire and as an external Firewire disc is bootable, I use it to backup my entire drive. Possibly Time Machine will solve the backup problem for me. However, that remains to be seen.
ZFS, at the moment, without possibly what Time Machine could do, would not be sufficient for my use, which is to have a disconnected, totally safe backup that was bootable, and only connected for the time it took to B/U.
> will appear as a non-default, read-only format out of the box
What? “Read-only”? How does one make use of a “read-only” file system? We’re supposed to buy hard drives with data already on it? Rumors need to at least make sense. If Leopard has a ZFS option, it will be non-default and read/write.
@ ken1w
Or you could have a drive with data on it that is already ZFS (say from another machine (no doubt Sun) that has written ZFS), and when you attach it to/install it in your Leopard Mac it can already READ it…?
Sure you haven’t bought it pre-loaded with data, but it is like saying that the MAC OS supports FAT/FAT32. It wont write to FAT/FAT32, but if you attach a FAT32 formatted disk or other storage media it can READ it!!!!
Sometimes the rumours do make sense if you look beyond your paradigm!
My 2 cents
Luke
having FAT/FAT32 read-only is useful because most people have a machine that can write data to FAT/FAT32 whereas nobody uses Sun. Solaris sucks.
And I don’t care about OpenSolaris or whatever. It is still Solaris and Solaris still sucks. This from someone who has to administer it and has used Sun since and including SunOS 4.1
Most people who would use Leopard would NOT have pre-existing data on a ZFS drive.
> Sure you haven’t bought it pre-loaded with data, but it is like saying that the MAC OS supports FAT/FAT32. It wont write to FAT/FAT32, but if you attach a FAT32 formatted disk or other storage media it can READ it!!!!
I think you’ve got that confused. Macs can read and write FAT. iPod shuffles are even formatted that way, whether it is used on Mac or PC.
As the previous poster says, how many people will have existing ZFS volumes? Not very useful… to the point where Apple will not make the capability available (unless it can also write to ZFS).
It seems that ZFS in still in the development stage. While it should be a good thing in the future, it’ll only be good when it’s READY. I’m willing to beta test an application or utility, but I’m certainly not going to play beta tester with my data!
Imagine if Apple suddenly switched Leopard to ZFS and it turned out to have some nasty side-effects? Data loss or corruption, for instance? That would NOT be a good thing.
Apple knows this. Apple releases solutions that work, not half-baked almost working promises.