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Re: [LUG] Batch Converter

 

On 11/11/2018 18:17, Richard Brown wrote:
> I am running a 1tb laptop drive and also a 240gb ssd that has Ubuntu 
> installed on. Do I need to back this drive up as well please? Or can I 
> backup the laptop drive and then install ZFS on the 1tb. Is there a 
> point where the 240gb drive needs it as well?

So, hang on a sec. Your laptop has a 240Gb internal SSD running Ubuntu 
version unknown _and_ this random external 1Tb drive which is presumably 
plugged in via a USB adapter? The 1Tb drive has had anything important 
saved from it and is now free to nuke and use for whatever?

I'm hoping that your internal SSD is being backed up anyway but simply 
installing ZFS - technically, the kernel modules are already included in 
your kernel, you're just installing the userspace components to interact 
with them - is 'safe' to do. Well, as safe as running 'apt install 
$whatever' is normally. This isn't some super sketchy experimental thing 
that should only be tested in a VM for example.

In an _ideal_ world you'd be an experienced Linux ninja, ZFS would be 
easy to use, there wouldn't be complex licensing incompatibilities 
between the Solaris bits and Linux resulting in kernel taint and 
distribution legal hurdles, your laptop would have several redundant 
NVME drives and a massive ECC RAM cache for ARC and you'd already be 
running a distro setup to run an encrypted ZFS root filesystem.

Unfortunately in the real world absolutely none of those things are true 
and you'd be mad to even consider running ZFS as your root filesystem on 
that laptop. ZFS isn't even a good fit for the spare 1Tb drive to be 
honest - it's just a convenient blank disk to experiment safely with.

I kind of feel like we're opening a real can of worms here Mr Brown :]

Cheers
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