I believe we are referring to the same things. I JUST read about cache
flushing. ZFS does cache flushing and VirtualBox ignores cache flushes by
default.

Please, if you can, let me know the key settings you have used.

>From the documentation that I read, the command it said to issue is:

VBoxManage setextradata "VM name"
> "VBoxInternal/Devices/ahci/0/LUN#[x]/Config/IgnoreFlush" 0
>

Where [x] is the disk value


On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:37 AM, Boyd Waters <waters.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was able to destroy ZFS pools by trying to access them from inside
> VirtualBox. Until I read the detailed documentation, and set the disk
> buffer options correctly. I will dig into my notes and post the key setting
> to this thread when I find it.
>
> But I've used ZFS for many years without ECC RAM with no trouble. It isn't
> the best way to,go, but it isn't the lack of ECC that's killing a ZFS pool.
> It's the hypervisor hardware emulation and buffering.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Apr 1, 2014, at 5:24 PM, Jason Belec <jasonbe...@belecmartin.com>
> wrote:
>
> I think Bayard has hit on some very interesting points, part of what I was
> alluding to, but very well presented here.
>
> Jason
> Sent from my iPhone 5S
>
> On Apr 1, 2014, at 7:14 PM, Bayard Bell <buffer.g.overf...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Could you explain how you're using VirtualBox and why you'd use a type 2
> hypervisor in this context?
>
> Here's a scenario where you really have to mind with hypervisors: ZFS
> tells a virtualised controller that it needs to sync a buffer, and the
> controller tells ZFS that all's well while perhaps requesting an async
> flush. ZFS thinks it's done all the I/Os to roll a TXG to stable storage,
> but in the mean time something else crashes and whoosh go your buffers.
>
> I'm not sure it's come across particularly well in this thread, but ZFS
> doesn't and can't cope with hardware that's so unreliable that it tells
> lies about basic things, like whether your writes have made it to stable
> storage, or doesn't mind the shop, as is the case with non-ECC memory. It's
> one thing when you have a device reading back something that doesn't match
> the checksum, but it gets uglier when you've got a single I/O path and a
> controller that seems to write the wrong bits in stride (I've seen this) or
> when the problems are even closer to home (and again I emphasise RAM). You
> may not have problems right away. You may have problems where you can't
> tell the difference, like flipping bits in data buffers that have no other
> integrity checks. But you can run into complex failure scenarios where ZFS
> has to cash in on guarantees that were rather more approximate than what it
> was told, and then it may not be a case of having some bits flipped in
> photos or MP3s but no longer being able to import your pool or having
> someone who knows how to operate zdb do some additional TXG rollback to get
> your data back after losing some updates.
>
> I don't know if you're running ZFS in a VM or running VMs on top of ZFS,
> but either way, you probably want to Google for "data loss" "VirtualBox"
> and whatever device you're emulating and see whether there are known
> issues. You can find issue reports out there on VirtualBox data loss, but
> working through bug reports can be challenging.
>
> Cheers,
> Bayard
>
> On 1 April 2014 16:34, Eric Jaw <naisa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, April 1, 2014 7:04:39 AM UTC-4, jasonbelec wrote:
>>>
>>> ZFS is lots of parts, in most cases lots of cheap unreliable parts,
>>> refurbished parts, yadda yadda, as posted on this thread and many, many
>>> others, any issues are probably not ZFS but the parts of the whole. Yes, it
>>> could be ZFS, after you confirm that all the parts ate pristine, maybe.
>>>
>>
>> I don't think it's ZFS. ZFS is pretty solid. In my specific case, I'm
>> trying to figure out why VirtualBox is creating these issues. I'm pretty
>> sure that's the root cause, but I don't know why yet. So I'm just
>> speculating at this point. Of course, I want to get my ZFS up and running
>> so I can move on to what I really need to do, so it's easy to jump on a
>> conclusion about something that I haven't thought of in my position. Hope
>> you can understand
>>
>>
>>>
>>> My oldest system running ZFS is an Mac Mini Intel Core Duo with 3GB RAM
>>> (not ECC) it is the home server for music, tv shows, movies, and some
>>> interim backups. The mini has been modded for ESATA and has 6 drives
>>> connected. The pool is 2 RaidZ of 3 mirrored with copies set at 2. Been
>>> running since ZFS was released from Apple builds. Lost 3 drives, eventually
>>> traced to a new cable that cracked at the connector which when hot enough
>>> expanded lifting 2 pins free of their connector counter parts resulting in
>>> errors. Visually almost impossible to see. I replaced port multipliers,
>>> Esata cards, RAM, mini's, power supply, reinstalled OS, reinstalled ZFS,
>>> restored ZFS data from backup, finally to find the bad connector end one
>>> because it was hot and felt 'funny'.
>>>
>>> Frustrating, yes, educational also. The happy news is, all the data was
>>> fine, wife would have torn me to shreds if photos were missing, music was
>>> corrupt, etc., etc.. And this was on the old out of date but stable ZFS
>>> version we Mac users have been hugging onto for dear life. YMMV
>>>
>>> Never had RAM as the issue, here in the mad science lab across 10
>>> rotating systems or in any client location - pick your decade. However I
>>> don't use cheap RAM either, and I only have 2 Systems requiring ECC
>>> currently that don't even connect to ZFS as they are both XServers with
>>> other lives.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jason Belec
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>> On Apr 1, 2014, at 12:13 AM, Daniel Becker <razz...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mar 31, 2014, at 7:41 PM, Eric Jaw <nais...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I started using ZFS about a few weeks ago, so a lot of it is still new
>>> to me. I'm actually not completely certain about "proper procedure" for
>>> repairing a pool. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to clear the errors after
>>> the scrub, before or after (little things). I'm not sure if it even
>>> matters. When I restarted the VM, the checksum counts cleared on its own.
>>>
>>>
>>> The counts are not maintained across reboots.
>>>
>>>
>>> On the first scrub it repaired roughly 1.65MB. None on the second scub.
>>> Even after the scrub there were still 43 data errors. I was expecting they
>>> were going to go away.
>>>
>>>
>>> errors: 43 data errors, use '-v' for a list
>>>
>>>
>>> What this means is that in these 43 cases, the system was not able to
>>> correct the error (i.e., both drives in a mirror returned bad data).
>>>
>>>
>>> This is an excellent question. They're in 'Normal' mode. I remember
>>> looking in to this before and decided normal mode should be fine. I might
>>> be wrong. So thanks for bringing this up. I'll have to check it out again.
>>>
>>>
>>> The reason I was asking is that these symptoms would also be consistent
>>> with something outside the VM writing to the disks behind the VM’s back;
>>> that’s unlikely to happen accidentally with disk images, but raw disks are
>>> visible to the host OS as such, so it may be as simple as Windows deciding
>>> that it should initialize the “unformatted” (really, formatted with an
>>> unknown filesystem) devices. Or it could be a raid controller that stores
>>> its array metadata in the last sector of the array’s disks.
>>>
>>>
>>> memtest86 and memtest86+ for 18 hours came out okay. I'm on my third
>>> scrub and the number or errors has remained at 43. Checksum errors continue
>>> to pile up as the pool is getting scrubbed.
>>>
>>> I'm just as flustered about this. Thanks again for the input.
>>>
>>>
>>> Given that you’re seeing a fairly large number of errors in your scrubs,
>>> the fact that memtest86 doesn’t find anything at all very strongly suggests
>>> that this is not actually a memory issue.
>>>
>>>  --
>>
>> ---
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "zfs-macos" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to zfs-macos+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>
>
>  --
>
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "zfs-macos" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to zfs-macos+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>  --
>
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "zfs-macos" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to zfs-macos+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
>  --
>
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the
> Google Groups "zfs-macos" group.
> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/zfs-macos/qguq6LCf1QQ/unsubscribe.
> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to
> zfs-macos+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"zfs-macos" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to zfs-macos+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to