James, Perhaps the takeaway here is that MacZFS (and arguably ZFS in general) is really not a great fit for the casual user. ZFS is very powerful once you take the time to really get familiar with it, but it does require a fair amount of research to get started, and it gives you lots of ways to shoot yourself in the foot. And as you found out yourself, there are a fair number of caveats and behavioral oddities when running ZFS on a Mac. If you want something that "just works" without digging into the details and that gives you behavior just as you would expect it from other file systems, it's probably not for you (at least not for anything other than experimentation).
I know that the MacZFS page likes to give a somewhat different impression, but in my opinion encouraging non-technical users to install it is really doing a disservice both to said users and to the community as a whole. Daniel On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 9:59 AM, James Hoyt <djnati...@gmail.com> wrote: > I did status as you can see from my original post.. I didn't know > scrub and clean. I did my research only on MacZFS because I thought > that's only where it mattered. I didn't trust info on other sites > because I didn't think it was relevant to how Mac ZFS operated. > > Please show me where I could have found the scrub command on > maczfs.org because it is not there. I see nothing about clean either. > > I'm openly stating I don't know it and it's not stated on the wiki or > FAQ or getting started section on maczfs.org. There is no refusal > going on. > > On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Jason Belec > <jasonbe...@belecmartin.com> wrote: > > Sorry you feel that way. We have had a lot of people in your situation. > You seem to have skipped over the basics. > > > > Zpool scub murr > > > > Zpool status murr > > > > > > This command is on every ZFS site. Your openly stating you don't know it > and refuse to look it up. I wish you the best. > > > > > > Jason > > Sent from my iPhone 5S > > > >> On May 20, 2014, at 12:09 PM, James Hoyt <djnati...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > >> You have completely lost me at this point. You were rather > >> condescending and not helpful. I was hoping for instructions on how to > >> clean and scrub and saw none of that. At least point me to some proper > >> links. I also don't know what a 4k drive is. > >> > >> I carefully followed and read ALL the instructions and FAQ and Getting > >> Started guide on maczfs.org. Please don't speak to me like I didn't do > >> my research or follow the proper instructions. > >> > >> - James > >> > >>> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 9:24 AM, Jason Belec < > jasonbe...@belecmartin.com> wrote: > >>> OK, one thing, any indexing under that version of ZFS is going to kill > performance. Long standing issue. > >>> > >>> No backups? Did you bump your noggin? With your current setup you have > improved your chances if your scrubbing regularly and if you only lose a > drive at anyone time. And adding backup will drastically increase your > chances. > >>> > >>> Not understanding ZFS is a BIG reason to stop and re-evaluate your > priorities. It's amazing tech IF used properly. > >>> > >>> For what it sounds like you want from ZFS you should use mirrors. You > can do 2 mirrors of 2 drives each stripped under ZFS. This will increase > the safety of your data. Even that should have a back up drive you move key > files or better yet 'snapshots' onto. > >>> > >>> BUT you are going to have to understand ZFS to have any hope of not > drowning in a pool of tears at some point. > >>> > >>> The new ZFS is under development but far more functional. Eliminating > many of the old version issues listed numerous times throughout the forum. > Either way you should ALWAYS understand the tech you rely on. Period. > >>> > >>> Please start learning with the word 'scrub' then the word 'snapshot' > and how to swap a failed drive and do it all. Before committing your > valuable data. Drives fail. Repeat. Drives fail. Data must be restored at > some point. ZFS is magical if you have planned ahead. I have recovered data > assumed totally lost, YMMV. > >>> > >>> As for those drives are they 4k? If so you formatted your pool > incorrectly. I don't have any of those so I don't have notes. Should be a > simple Google search to find out. And the wiki has the instructions on 4k > drive setup. > >>> > >>> Doing things right is what the wiki tries to help people with. The > forum allows you to search for other peoples heartbreak to help prevent > your own. The wizards tracking this stuff have done a wonderful job. > >>> > >>> Hope this gets you rolling. I'd still check your cables as well. > Normally I attach a drive, build a pool, test a lot, destroy pool. Add > another drive. Repeat. Better safe than sorry. Manufacturers are not safe > guarding your data. > >>> > >>> Jason > >>> Sent from my iPhone 5S > >>> > >>>> On May 20, 2014, at 9:37 AM, James Hoyt <djnati...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> Thanks for the detailed reply. > >>>> > >>>> The slow performance is only when I'm using the RAID array so I assume > >>>> without it connected means I can't use it means there is no slow > >>>> performance. I would love instructions on how to scrub/clean the pool. > >>>> Does it do a data wipe? > >>>> > >>>> I was trying to think of a good backup solution. I have over 3 TBs of > >>>> music in FLAC (lots of which I've paid for) and was hoping RAIDZ would > >>>> take away the need for backups. I was thinking of buying a 4 TB drive > >>>> and moving all my data on that and storing the drive offsite or > >>>> something (in case of burglary, fires, etc). Having a single drive > >>>> fail safe seems secure enough for me so I don't think incremental > >>>> backups are needed. > >>>> > >>>> As for running the latest beta ZFS, I didn't because the FAQ warned me > >>>> not to. What are the differences? Would I have to format and rebuild > >>>> the array? > >>>> > >>>> The drives I have are four 3 TB Hitachi HDS723030BLE640. > >>>> > >>>> I started navigating around my computer again, and the slowdown seems > >>>> to be when going into folders with over 1000 files (for anything more > >>>> it will take 1-3 minutes to just list the files in the directory). > >>>> Also when I'm saving images from Firefox (no virtual machine running) > >>>> it takes awhile to navigate the folder structure and sometimes not all > >>>> the folders show, but they do in the Finder. So I wonder if this is an > >>>> issue with programs not getting along with ZFS but the finder being > >>>> fine with it. > >>>> > >>>> Other things to note, I did disable Spotlight on the drive to make > >>>> sure that isn't running, but I do have QuickSilver. Originally, I had > >>>> QuickSilver indexing the drive, but the computer was practically > >>>> unusable when it did that so I disabled that. > >>>> > >>>> I look forward to any advice you guys may have. > >>>> > >>>> Thanks, > >>>> > >>>> James > >>>> > >>>>> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 6:14 AM, Jason Belec < > jasonbe...@belecmartin.com> wrote: > >>>>> OK, doesn't look like RAM, processor etc., are the issue.... Let's > work with that in mind for now. > >>>>> > >>>>> When the pool and the associated drives are not connected, is the > computer back to your expectation of normal? If so, you have one or more > bad cables, one or more bad drives, or a bit of both, perhaps a bad or not > quite capable power supply (solves 90% of all issues I come across). Maybe > even an issue with the motherboard. Simplest thing, have you run a scrub on > this pool? Clean? > >>>>> > >>>>> The type of drives you have is not an issue, the make and known > issues with said drives might be, but you didn't provide that info. > >>>>> > >>>>> Using a raidcard and macJournaled terms, thrown out will not help > you, your either ZFS or not. That said, you will not get the same speed > from ZFS as from other raid setups, but you will get peace of mind on data > integrity. I do hope you are also backing up data from the pool as well or > eventually you will be in tears like so many others. A little forum > searching under old and new versions of mac zfs will be helpful. > >>>>> > >>>>> Since your getting started, once this is resolved it might be better > to build/run this under the latest (yes its in development) Mac ZFS rather > than the old tired version. It is quite a bit different, modern and makes > many things a lot easier. (Insert legal disclaimer here) ;) > >>>>> > >>>>> Interesting aside: > >>>>> Dave mentioned an interesting point about wearing out SSDs, and I > must admit I've had two such occurrences but only with a hackintosh and > only with less than stellar drives. Seems that here around the mad science > lab Intel SSDs are the most reliable long term. I have two of their > originals still outlasting several other brands. > >>>>> > >>>>> -- > >>>>> Jason Belec > >>>>> Sent from my iPad > >>>>> > >>>>>> On May 19, 2014, at 10:05 AM, James Hoyt <djnati...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Thanks for all the replies guys =D > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Sorry for lack of information. I'm running a Hackintosh with a 256 > GB > >>>>>> SSD and I sometimes run Windows 8.1 in a virtual machine via VmWare > >>>>>> Fusion. The virtual image file is also located on the SSD. The only > >>>>>> files I have on my zpool are data files. I don't run an OS or VM > image > >>>>>> from it. I have 12 GBs of RAM and a four core i5 processor. On the > VM, > >>>>>> I dedicate 6 GBs of RAM and 2 cores to it. It should be noted that I > >>>>>> experience the slow down even when vmware is off it's just the > drives > >>>>>> act the slowest when the VM is running. > >>>>>> > >>>>>> As for how I created the zpool, I followed the Getting Started > guide with > >>>>>> > >>>>>> zpool create murr raidz disk3s2 disk1s2 disk2s2 disk4s2 > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Please help... I really hope I don't have to recreate it, but it's > >>>>>> looking that way. > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Would it be better if I bought a RAID card and use Mac OS Journaled? > >>>>>> Cost is an issue... the other issue is these are regular desktop > 7200 > >>>>>> RPM drives.. not NAS drives. > >>>>>> > >>>>>> Thanks, > >>>>>> > >>>>>> James > >>>>>> > >>>>>>> On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Jason Belec < > jasonbe...@belecmartin.com> wrote: > >>>>>>> Dave has posted some good info. Reminds me why I prefer > Virtualbox. ;) We do seem to need more detail though to really help the > original OP. > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>> Jason > >>>>>>> Sent from my iPhone 5S > >>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> On May 19, 2014, at 4:00 AM, Dave Cottlehuber <d...@jsonified.com> > wrote: > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> From: James Hoyt djnati...@gmail.com(mailto:djnati...@gmail.com) > >>>>>>>> Reply: zfs-macos@googlegroups.com zfs-macos@googlegroups.com > (mailto:zfs-macos@googlegroups.com) > >>>>>>>> Date: 19. Mai 2014 at 02:27:36 > >>>>>>>> To: zfs-macos@googlegroups.com zfs-macos@googlegroups.com(mailto: > zfs-macos@googlegroups.com) > >>>>>>>> Subject: [zfs-macos] RAIDZ1 running slow =( > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> So I setup a MacZFS RaidZ rather easily and was happy with > myself. I had four 3 TB internal SATA drives in a zpool giving me around 9 > TB of space. > >>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> jamess-imac:~ sangie$ zpool status murr > >>>>>>>>> pool: murr > >>>>>>>>> state: ONLINE > >>>>>>>>> scrub: none requested > >>>>>>>>> config: > >>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM > >>>>>>>>> murr ONLINE 0 0 0 > >>>>>>>>> raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0 > >>>>>>>>> disk3s2 ONLINE 0 0 0 > >>>>>>>>> disk1s2 ONLINE 0 0 0 > >>>>>>>>> disk2s2 ONLINE 0 0 0 > >>>>>>>>> disk4s2 ONLINE 0 0 0 > >>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> errors: No known data errors > >>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> So I Filled it up with about 5 GBs of data, mainly images and > FLAC/music files and everything just drags on it. It takes a long time for > files to be listed in finder and when I try to save an image from Firefox, > it will just grind and grind while I try to navigate to a folder. I have > vmware Fusion setup on my SSD (my main Mac drive) and doing anything on my > zpool from Windows (like using MediaMonkey to organize FLAC files on it) > uses up 100% of the CPU, freezing up my computer until the moves are done, > even when moving around 30 files. > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> It’s not clear from this what your actual physical / virtual > setup is. Are you booting to OSX, and running Windows in a VM? Is the > entire VM then living on the raidz pool? > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> Is my zpool okay? What's going on? Is this type of slowness > normal or do I have a bad drive? How will MacZFS report to me if a drive in > the array goes bad? I installed SMARTReporter Lite and it shows all drives > as green. If I have some drives on SATA II and others on SATA III would > that affect anything? > >>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> If you want me to run any tests on it, I will do so gladly. Just > let me know. > >>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>> Thanks! > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> I’ve seen precisely this sort of behaviour with vmware fusion > when: > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> 1. my SSD was getting worn down (really, I trashed it in 1 year, > it was the default apple one coming with early 2011 MBP) > >>>>>>>> 2. the host OS & VM doesn’t have sufficient memory to run > correctly without swapping > >>>>>>>> 3. the additional memory within the VM is pulled from a disk swap > file, which is by default in the same disk location as the VM itself > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> Anything less than 8GB of RAM is likely to be tight, VMs will of > course make this more complicated. Some notes on > http://artykul8.com/2012/06/vmware-performance-enhancing/ may help. > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> I found that my SSDs were being worn out with constant running of > VMs; I use them heavily in my work. The solution I found was to get max RAM > in my laptop + imac (16 vs 32 respectively), make a zfs based ramdisk with > lz4 compression, and copy the entire VM into the ramdisk before running it. > The copy phase only takes a few seconds from SSD, and it gives me a very > nice way to “roll back” to the previous image when required. I can > comfortably run Windows in a 20GiB ramdisk that fits inside a 10GiB zpool > with compression, even on the 16GiB laptop, and allocating 2GiB of ram for > the VM itself (10 + 2 for virtualisation & leave 4 for all of OSX stuff). > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> Here’s the zsh functions I use for this. > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> # create a 1GiB ramdisk > >>>>>>>> ramdisk-1g () { > >>>>>>>> ramdisk-create 2097152 > >>>>>>>> } > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> # the generic function for the specific one above > >>>>>>>> ramdisk-create () { > >>>>>>>> diskutil eject /Volumes/ramdisk > /dev/null 2>&1 > >>>>>>>> diskutil erasevolume HFS+ 'ramdisk' `hdiutil attach -nomount > ram://$1` > >>>>>>>> cd /ramdisk > >>>>>>>> } > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> # make a zpool backed ramdisk instead of the HFS+ ones above. > Main advantage is compression. I get at least 2x more “disk” for RAM with > this approach. > >>>>>>>> zdisk () { > >>>>>>>> sudo zpool create -O compression=lz4 -fm /zram zram `hdiutil > attach -nomount ram://20971520` > >>>>>>>> sudo chown -R $USER /zram > >>>>>>>> cd /zram > >>>>>>>> } > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> # self explanatory > >>>>>>>> zdisk-destroy () { > >>>>>>>> sudo zpool export -f zram > >>>>>>>> } > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> — > >>>>>>>> Dave Cottlehuber > >>>>>>>> d...@jsonified.com > >>>>>>>> Sent from my Couch > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> -- > >>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>> --- > >>>>>>>> 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/78gD-0OzKMQ/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. > >>>>> > >>>>> -- > >>>>> > >>>>> --- > >>>>> 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/78gD-0OzKMQ/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. > >>> > >>> -- > >>> > >>> --- > >>> 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/78gD-0OzKMQ/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. > > > > -- > > > > --- > > 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/78gD-0OzKMQ/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. > -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "zfs-macos" group. 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