zfs VS mighty-snitch

https://openzfsonosx.org is a great starting place for general ZFS on Mac stuff.

I am imaging the following simple situation. I am using open ZFS on macOS (OpenZFS on OS X), and I have created a zpool with a single external USB drive. What command should I run when the drive is accidentally disconnected without properly exporting the pool?

This is completely wrong. ZFS works very well via O3X [0]. I ran my home folder off of ZFS on various Mac Pros for ~11 years. ZFS works well in Linux and FreeBSD as well.

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0: https://openzfsonosx.org/

This might be able to read the drive https://openzfsonosx.org/ But I don't know if Time Machine will jive with it.

After dabbling with early stuff from the sadly scrapped Apple effort, I started my full time Mac ZFS journey in 2011 with the then Z-410, which then became ZEVO which was 10.8 only, and then staying on that (and in turn 10.8 doho) on a Mac Pro 3,1 for a solid 4 years or so. I was really sad when that effort didn't pan out and the company got acquired and then the whole deal was killed, but O3X revived the torch and I moved directly onto that. I've carried my pool forward continuously the whole way, with snapshots and everything, all data scrubbed and known good with no more data rot. It's a damn shame events (software patents) conspired to keep that from becoming a universal native fs, but it's still a wonderful thing and Lundman's amazing consistent efforts have been fantastic. The main site at https://openzfsonosx.org/ has decently active forums for something niche.

Without Apple on board or a much bigger effort ZFS on the Mac will probably always have some real limitations particularly with the GUI. For one of my desktop systems I've migrated to running my home and data folders as HFS or APFS formatted iSCSI targets, so it's still on ZFS underneath but appears native to macOS (and that also means that the effective death of towers isn't a limit on storage). But this remains an incredible project IMO.

Also for anyone who wants some limited GUI interaction capability, there is a small project called ZetaWatch [0] which will put some ZFS control into a menubar widget.

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0: https://github.com/cbreak-black/ZetaWatch/

OpenZFS is available for MacOS and it's about as rock solid as you get in a file system. As a bonus, if you someday need to migrate the dataset to a server, you'll be able to import the zfs pool pretty easily.

Check out https://openzfsonosx.org/

Site ZFS on OSX seems down for the last few days...

>such as ZFS

FWIW, ZFS has actually been available on macOS for a long time in various iterations (MacZFS, Z-410/ZEVO, and now OpenZFS [0]). I ran it for around 11 years on a number of systems with almost all of my data on it (home folder, applications, /opt for MacPorts etc) and it was a tank. Fun project and well worth checking out. I'll always regret the various factors that meant Apple didn't adopt it as their native FS.

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0: https://openzfsonosx.org/

6 months in to my first pc build. had one other pc for past 2 years from letsbld.

the build is easy, but it will take a full day. it is also a bit nerve racking, but mostly that’s just inexperience. parts are all sturdy and snap together. i will be building every nvidia generation from now on.

i used to code on laptops, then game on a pc. now i have to ssds, one windows one linux. bios boot option is unborkable. it’s a great setup.

it’s nice to be able to play fortnite, compile the linux kernel[1], and do gamedev[2] all in a single session.

be aware ddr5 amd boards boot kind of slow. i’ve heard intel is faster.

if you can afford it, go god spec. otherwise spec down into your price range. letsbld and originpc have good configurators to choose parts. newegg prices will be 30% less.

check out fractal torrent cases and dh15 coolers! 4090 fe fits in the nano and 4090 pny fits in the compact.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/tree/master/kernel...

2. https://r2.nathants.workers.dev/jetpack_hand_animations.mp4

learning cloud is not necessarily using cloud for all things.

cloud adds legitimate new capabilities to every engineer.

if i’m on coffeeshop wifi with my low power laptop, and i need to do something intense like compile linux, i’m sol.

unless i know aws. then i can open a new terminal, spin up a massive spot instance for 19.27 minutes, get that done, then self destruct. [1]

being able to test lambda to s3 io, or ec2 to s3 io, with the same ease one uses grep and sed, is for great good. also it’s fun.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/blob/master/kernel...

you jest, but this is actually fine.

do this via mighty-snitch[1] on any postmarketos phone. any network request passing through the linux kernel gets filtered.

still hosed if it’s hardware level nonsense unfortunately.

the only reason i’m not daily driving postmarketos if lack of gpu acceleration for firefox. hopefully soon!

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch

i just built 6.2 for arm64. what timing!

https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch/releases

use a network snitch[1] on desktop and mobile. The original slogan says it all: makes the invisible visible. i’d love to use a disk snitch too, but no exist yet afaik.

it’s interesting to see firefox or any other legitimate app i’m using make many unsolicited requests to weird domains. it feels good to interactively deny those connections.

make sure that cloud[2], which includes git hosts[3], are untrusted. unencrypted data should never hit remote. keys should never leave local.

consider the tradeoffs with online interactions. engaging with other humans in public on github and hackernews is likely worth. engaging in impassioned op-ed debate with bots on engagement monetization platforms like twitter or youtube is likely not.

1. https://github.com/nathants/mighty-snitch

2. https://cryptomator.org/

3. https://github.com/nathants/git-remote-aws