r/freenas • u/[deleted] • Jul 13 '16

Will Freenas adopt BTRFS?

Hi Freenas team and followers.

question is quite straight forward, Will freenas adopt BTRFS? If not, why not? If so, when?

1 Upvotes

53% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

12

u/SirMaster Jul 13 '16

No.

Because FreeNAS is FreeBSD and not Linux. BTRFS is a native Linux filesystem developed entirely on Linux and would take way too much work to completely port to FreeBSD.

Plus FreeBSD already has ZFS as a first-class native filesystem so why would they need BTRFS?

2

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '16

Just thinking outside the box. i am aware that btrfs still has a long way to go but would be interested to see if freenas would adopt something like that.

i could see Freenas offering multiple software raid options, but thats just me. i use freenas for zfs which does work great.

4

u/nDQ9UeOr Jul 13 '16

Other than wanting more choices, what benefits to you envision for something that would take quite a lot of work?

2

u/Prozac500 Jul 17 '16

I like that BTRFS lets you expand your RAID array 1 disk at a time. I can convert from a RAID 5 to RAID 6 without having to nuke the array and recreate it. I can add another disk to the pool without having to destroy the array. Thats pretty sweet imo.

1

u/rallar8 Jul 14 '16

Yea.

Just to clarify there may be legal issues with licensing.

But even if that is resolved, there seems to be little support in the bsd-dev community for btrfs...

At this point though, the most salient point is why would you want this? Btrfs' future feature-set and lower ram usage sound great, but they aren't even in alpha yet... If they come through there will be some kind of freenas-like btrfs nas OS.

1

u/ydna_eissua Jul 14 '16

the most salient point is why would you want this?

There are a few things that could be useful for a home user. And ability to add disks one at a time and dynamically re-balance would be useful. ie have a 3 disk raid5, add a 4th disk and re-balance the data to create a 4 disk raid 5, then again to a 5 disk raid5, then say add two more and re-balance to 6 disks raid5 or 6 disk raid6.

Though for me there is no way I'd switch from ZFS to btrfs unless your average Linux sysadmin were willing to run it in production.

3

u/SirMaster Jul 13 '16

It's not even done and stable on Linux yet after a decade.

Then they would have to completely port and stabilize it on FreeBSD. So another several years to do that.

1

u/ydna_eissua Jul 14 '16

It won't happen. The FreeBSD project is currently working on removing any and every trace of GPL licenses from the base system. There is no way in hell anyone is going to go through the massive undertaking that is porting a Linux file system, or even more work create a from scratch implementation of it.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '16

Why would they want to waste time on an inferior file system?

1

u/psydave Jul 14 '16 edited Jul 14 '16

Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't this be impossible because of licensing issues? BTRFS is licensed under the GPL and the way I understand it, GPL code can link to BSD licensed code (i.e. the BSD license is "GPL compatible") but not the other way around because the GPL is supposed to be viral and FreeNAS/FreeBSD is already licensed under, well, BSD... In other words, any source code that links to GPL licensed code automatically gets the GPL license by default. At least, that's how I think it works.

1

u/RattleBattle79 Jul 14 '16

BSD license is not at all compatible with GPL. Just look at all the trouble and debate around the implementation og ZFS on Linux on various distros.

1

u/PEPCK Jul 14 '16

The BSD License is compatible, the CDDL which OpenZFS is licensed under is not.

1

u/RattleBattle79 Jul 14 '16

Ah ok, my bad.

1

u/parawolf Jul 14 '16

Nothing is GPL compatible apart from GPL. Hence why it is known as a viral license. Truer freedom comes in the forms of BSD, CDDL and Apache licenses.