I found the info on installing ZFS in read/write mode, but its suggested that its a bit unstable and leads to crashes, probably when the disks loose sync, that happens about once every two months with my HWRaid array.

You'll have to test how stable it is to decide whether its worth adding to the install image.

Still hope there's some way to use the nvraid, though

I've not the skills to port dmraid from Linux to Mac (at least at the moment).

I don't know if you really take care of "Uncached read 256k" but its ... wow.

I will make a lot of tests with ZFS and see if it's really stable or unstable.

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Mac OS X 10.6.3 • 2.8 GHz Intel Core I7 860 • ASUS P7P55D • 2 GB 2 Ghz DDR3 • ATI RADEON XFX 4890 1GB • 2 x Hitachi 160 GB Serial-ATA • PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112 • LaCie Desktop Harddrive 750 GB USB

They are crazy high speeds for the uncached read, Does the whole system seem more responsive??
If you find its stable enough like three, four days uptime then I will be up for it.

Everthings installing so well on this install, just can't get the extension caches to keep all the kexts i want in them.

I always have to use -f at boot or the usbwireless stick, will not be mounted at start. If I unplug it then plug it back it works. but only using -f, makes it load already mounted.

But things look really promising with zfs I hope its stable.

Maybe if others read these posts somebody will know a bit about how to port dmraid to the mac.

Actually I can't install Leopard on this zfs RAID.
Mac OS Installer can't detect it. I'm trying to install Leo via Pacifist. But I think I will not be able to boot on it ...
So I can't say if the system is more responsive or not.

But I'm on it.

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Mac OS X 10.6.3 • 2.8 GHz Intel Core I7 860 • ASUS P7P55D • 2 GB 2 Ghz DDR3 • ATI RADEON XFX 4890 1GB • 2 x Hitachi 160 GB Serial-ATA • PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112 • LaCie Desktop Harddrive 750 GB USB

Sounds good, I eagerly await your findings

Good Luck

At http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/zfs/wiki/issues we can see :

Features in the Works

Bootable ZFS
Encrypted ZFS [ more info.. ]
Gzip support
Browsing .zfs snapshots

Grrr ...

I've understood why Mac OS Installer don't show the ZFS RAID.

Contrary to software Raid with Diskutil, creating a RAID with ZFS don't create an associated device node ...

I created one with mknod, like this "mknod b /dev/disk4 9 0" but I don't know how to attach the RAID ZFS to it ... Don't even know if it's possible ...

EDIT: In fact it seems to be possible with the following command "zfs create -V 50G "POOL"/mywol"

But this command is not implemented in MacOS and Linux ... only in Solaris.

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Mac OS X 10.6.3 • 2.8 GHz Intel Core I7 860 • ASUS P7P55D • 2 GB 2 Ghz DDR3 • ATI RADEON XFX 4890 1GB • 2 x Hitachi 160 GB Serial-ATA • PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112 • LaCie Desktop Harddrive 750 GB USB

I read your comments on installing raid via partitions rather than disks and was wondering if you thought it could be faster this way in raid 0 ? I thought if you could partition exactly the surface pallet size , you would have a different read arm for each partition, this might gain you a little speed. ( Only for multi pallet HD). I hope your getting a bit further in your zfs implement. If you find anyway to speed up the system using partitions please keep us informed.

Good Luck

I'm actually trying this :

1 - Create 2 partitions on one of the two disks intended to be used in RAID.

BOOT 1G with the following folders:
---> "/usr/standalone", "/Library/Preferences", "/System/Library/Extensions", "/System/LIbrary/CoreServices" and "/mach_kernel"

RAID 147,9 G

2 - Create a software RAID array with partition RAID 147,9 G and RAID1 148.9G.

3 - Install Leopard on the newly created RAID

4 - Make BOOT partition bootable.

5 - At boot type "-v rd=diskX" (which is the RAID array) and then add it in com.apple.Boot.plist

If it works the more annoying thing will be that /Volumes/Boot/System/Library/Extensions and /Volumes/RAID/System/Library/Extensions must be the same everytime.
(if you change a kext in RAID you must change it in BOOT too because the kexts loaded at boot will be those on BOOT ... not RAID !), same thing for the kernel.

EDIT : I found this ---> http://www.opensolaris.org/os/commun...fsboot-manual/
Maybe I can do this with Mac OS ? ... I'm on it.

For the ZFS implementation we must wait for a new release because booting from a ZFS partition is not implemented in the MacOS version.

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Mac OS X 10.6.3 • 2.8 GHz Intel Core I7 860 • ASUS P7P55D • 2 GB 2 Ghz DDR3 • ATI RADEON XFX 4890 1GB • 2 x Hitachi 160 GB Serial-ATA • PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112 • LaCie Desktop Harddrive 750 GB USB

It works !

Disk Speed Bench X

- Non RAID Volume "/Volumes/Leopard"

Elapsed time 8.116926 secs; transfer speed (66142147bytes/sec)

- RAID Volume "/Volumes/RAID"

Elapsed time 3.432911 secs; transfer speed (156389410bytes/sec)

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Mac OS X 10.6.3 • 2.8 GHz Intel Core I7 860 • ASUS P7P55D • 2 GB 2 Ghz DDR3 • ATI RADEON XFX 4890 1GB • 2 x Hitachi 160 GB Serial-ATA • PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112 • LaCie Desktop Harddrive 750 GB USB

thats great, does that mean you can boot off the zfs file system using the Darwin efi bootloader?
If yes then this is a great find. You should cut and paste the commands you used and make a guide.
I looked into the nforce raid drivers and found them for Linux, would these be any use in osx I imagine they
would be somewhat the same.

I'll get some drives out of an old pc I have and give the zfs raid a go, hopefully you get a chance to do a guide
soon, as I'm not sure which of the above solaris commands I need to use, and how much I need to change them.
I presume we get an install running first then make the zfs raid then copy the install to it then make it bootable.
do we need any zfs kexts or are the standard soft raid ones fine?

Eagerly waiting a guide!