[HN Gopher] RedoxFS is the default filesystem of Redox OS, inspi...
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RedoxFS is the default filesystem of Redox OS, inspired by ZFS
Author : doener
Score : 43 points
Date : 2025-09-25 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doc.redox-os.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (doc.redox-os.org)
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Why? Why not simply adopt btrfs?
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| Well they'd have to write their own driver anyway for one. If
| they were going to take an existing design and write a new
| driver, ZFS would be the better choice by far. Much longer and
| broader operational history and much better documentation.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| And you might not get sued by Oracle! RedoxOS seems to use
| the MIT license while OpenZFS is under the CDDL. Given
| Oracles litigious nature they'd have to make sure none of
| their code looked like OpenZFS code, even better make sure
| any of the developers had ever even looked at the ZFS code.
|
| Its much better to hope that OpenZFS decides to create a
| RedoxOS implementation themselves then to try and make a
| clean room ZFS implementation.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Why not use ext2 or fat16?
| craftkiller wrote:
| License is the obvious blocker, aside from all the technical
| issues[0]. Btrfs is GPL, RedoxOS is MIT, ZFS is CDDL. You can
| integrate CDDL into an MIT project without problems[1], but due
| to the viral nature of the GPL, integrating btrfs would have
| impacts on the rest of the project.
|
| What I'm wondering is what about HAMMER2? It's under a copyfree
| license and it is developed for a microkernel operating system
| (DragonflyBSD). Seems like a natural fit.
|
| [0] btrfs holds the distinction of being the _only_ filesystem
| that has lost all of my data, and it managed to do it twice!
| Corrupt my drive once, shame on you. Corrupt my drive twice,
| can 't corrupt my drive again.
|
| [1] further explanation: The CDDL is basically "the GPL but it
| only applies to the files under the CDDL, rather than the whole
| project". So the code for ZFS would remain under the CDDL and
| it would have all the restrictions that come with that, but the
| rest of the code base can remain under MIT. This is why FreeBSD
| can have ZFS fully integrated whereas on Linux ZFS is an out-
| of-tree module.
| jhack wrote:
| No transparent compression?
| seanw444 wrote:
| According to the bottom of their landing page [1], it's on the
| roadmap.
|
| [1] https://www.redox-os.org/
| Modified3019 wrote:
| According to this https://www.redox-os.org/faq/ Looks like
| snapshots are planned.
| cyboru wrote:
| > Redox had a read-only ZFS driver but it was abandoned because
| of the monolithic nature of ZFS that created problems with the
| Redox microkernel design.
|
| Curious about the details behind those compatibility problems.
| arghwhat wrote:
| If it relied on OpenZFS, then I wouldn't be too surprised.
|
| The whole ARC thing for example, sidestepping the general block
| cache, feels like a major hack resulting from how it was
| brutally extracted from Solaris at the time...
|
| The way zfs just doesn't "fit" was why I had hope for btrfs...
| ZFS is still great for a file server, but wouldn't use it on a
| general purpose machine.
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Redox is shaping up to be the most advanced OSS alternative to
| Linux apart from BSDs.
| snvzz wrote:
| You might not be aware of Genode[0].
|
| 0. https://genode.org/
| cayleyh wrote:
| "because of the monolithic nature of ZFS that created problems
| with the Redox microkernel design"
|
| Anyone have an idea what this actually means and what problems
| they were having in practice?
| snvzz wrote:
| >File/directory quantity limit up to 4 billion per 193TiB (2^32 -
| 1 = 4294967295)
|
| 32bit inodes? why?
|
| Other systems had to go through pains to migrate to 64bit. Why
| not skip that?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Ext4 and NTFS both have a 2^32-1 limit on number of files as
| well. Realistically, you never actually want to make tons of
| files, so I have a pretty hard time seeing this being an issue
| in practice.
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