Compressed partition or block device?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 04:11:16PM -0400, Jamon Camisso wrote:
> There is a ZFS port that runs in kernel space, which is actively
> maintained by Brian Behlendorf (of Apache, Mozilla fame). If someone was
> going to port ZFS to Linux, he's one of the few I'd expect to be able to
> do it correctly.
> 
> It works well since it is a port of ZFS proper. Consider this /sites/git
> directory that I use on an EXT4 filesystem, it is 479MB:
> 
> git at zeus:pts/10:/git % du -sh /sites/git
> 479M    /sites/pwp
> 
> Now look at the same files (copied over with rsync) on a ZFS volume:
> 
> git at zeus:pts/10:/BACKUPS/git % zfs get compressratio BACKUPS/git
> NAME         PROPERTY       VALUE  SOURCE
> BACKUPS/git  compressratio  1.24x  -
> 
> git at zeus:pts/10:/BACKUPS/git % du -sh /BACKUPS/git
> 352M    /BACKUPS/git
> 
> That's a 127mb savings.
> 
> You can even use disk image files as your zpool devices, so you don't
> need to use an entire disk or partition if you just want to try things out.
> 
> http://zfsonlinux.org/

But again that is filesystem compression, not block device compression
(which is what was requested).

Also the ZFS lincese isn't compatible with the GPL, and hence while you
can play with ZFS on your own system, you can't distribute it.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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