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openzfs
zfs
C2013–2026
openzfs / zfs

zfs

OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
226Distinct people
423Mentions
4Explicit recommenders
12.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I will soon prepare some scripts to do that, but I first want to confirm the core ideas and design something that I will only have to do once, and the discussion on…

csdvrx used a recommendation phrase. 4 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:02:44 AM UTC.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year423 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-03-29 20:43:14 UTC to 2026-10-12 18:23:23 UTC.

0204060802013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 17 mentions; 0 submissions, 17 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 25 mentions; 3 submissions, 22 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 32 mentions; 4 submissions, 28 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 29 mentions; 9 submissions, 20 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 50 mentions; 14 submissions, 36 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 29 mentions; 8 submissions, 21 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 31 mentions; 3 submissions, 28 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 86 mentions; 13 submissions, 73 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 40 mentions; 6 submissions, 34 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 59 mentions; 7 submissions, 52 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 3 submissions, 7 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC17017
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC321
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC25322
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC32428
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC29920
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC501436
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC29821
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC31328
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC861373
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC40634
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC59752
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1037

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
OpenZFS is an advanced file system and volume manager which was originally developed for Solaris and is now maintained by the OpenZFS community. This repository contains the code for running OpenZFS on Linux and FreeBSD. Official Resources Documentation - for using and developing this repo ZoL site - Linux release info & links Mailing lists OpenZFS site - for conference videos and info on other platforms (illumos, OSX, Windows, etc) Installation Full documentation for installing OpenZFS on your favorite operating system can be found at the Getting Started Page. Contribute & Develop We have a separate document with contribution guidelines. We have a Code of Conduct. Release OpenZFS is released under a CDDL license. For more details see the NOTICE, LICENSE and COPYRIGHT files; UCRL-CODE-235197 Supported Kernels and Distributions Linux Given the wide variety of Linux environments, we prioritize development and testing on stable, supported kernels and distributions. Kernel (kernel.org) All longterm kernels from kernel.org are supported. stable kernels are usually supported in the next OpenZFS release. Supported longterm kernels: 6.18, 6.12, 6.6, 6.1, 5.15, 5.10. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) All RHEL (and compatible systems: AlmaLinux OS, Rocky Linux, etc) on the full or maintenance support tracks are supported. Supported RHEL releases: 8.10, 9.7, 10.1. Ubuntu All Ubuntu LTS releases are supported. Supported Ubuntu releases: 26.04 “Resolute”, 24.04 “Noble”, 22.04 “Jammy”. Debian All Debian stable and LTS releases are supported. Supported Debian releases: 13 “Trixie”, 12 “Bookworm”, 11 “Bullseye”. Other Distributions Generally, if a distribution is following an LTS kernel, it should work well with OpenZFS. FreeBSD All FreeBSD releases receiving security support are supported by OpenZFS. Supported FreeBSD releases: 15.1, 14.4.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

25 sources
otterley·Dec 29, 2016
We have encountered a reproducible panic and deadlocks when a containerized process gets terminated by the kernel for exceeding its memory limit: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/5535 We're strongly considering using something else until this gets addressed. The problem is, we don't know what, because every other CoW implementation also has issues. * dm-thinp: Slow, wastes disk space * OverlayFS: No SELinux support * aufs: Not in mainline or CentOS kernel; rename(2) not implemented correctly; slow writes
In ZFS Root Filesystem on AWS
rincebrain·Dec 25, 2016
Currently ZoL and FBSD also support not-mutually-overlapping subsets of feature flags - IIRC the multi_vdev_crash_dump FBSD/illumos flag isn't supported on Linux[1] even in git, and FBSD doesn't support userobj_accounting or large_dnode from ZoL git master[2][3]. [1] - https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/2438 [2] - https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/3500 [3] - https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/pull/3542
In Cohabiting FreeBSD and Gentoo Linux on a Common ZFS Pool
dhess·Aug 25, 2016
FYI for those running ZFS on Linux or FreeNAS (and maybe FreeBSD, as well): The nice zfs built-in autoreplace functionality doesn't work on Linux or FreeNAS. You need some scripting/external tooling to do the equivalent. See https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/2449 https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/zol-hotspa... I've had a few drives fail on my ZFS for Linux fileserver and wondered why my hot spares weren't automatically kicking in, and this is why. On Linux, if you don't use the zed script that's referenced in that Github issue above and just replace a failing drive manually, a hot spare is worse than useless, because you need to remove the hot spare from the array before you can use it with a manual replace operation.
In FreeNAS: Open Source Storage Operating System
Zancarius·Jul 21, 2016
I ran into a bug [1] that appeared to be a deadlock triggered by rsync of a relatively modest directory with tons of small files. The only thing that fixed it was `spl_taskq_thread_dynamic=0` to stop the dynamic spawning of ZFS-related kernel threads. Rather than a memory management issue, it'd stall the copy and peg my CPUs indefinitely. I suspect it's fixed in 0.7.0 based on some of the other related bugs I've run into since, but I've been reluctant to upgrade as of yet. Otherwise, ZFS on a home file server has been great. [1] https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/3808
In Native encryption added to ZFS on Linux
jlgaddis·Jul 20, 2016
Slightly off-topic but if anyone has any resources on performing a clean (preferably, Ubuntu or Arch) Linux "root on ZFS" installation, please share. I followed the instructions for Ubuntu 16.04 on the github.com/zfsonlinux wiki [0] a while back and (encountered a few little issues along the way but) got it working, although I experienced some MAJOR performance problems so something wasn't quite right (exact same hardware is blazing fast when running FreeBSD). I can't imagine it was just "how things are" with regard to the current state of ZFS on Linux (or Ubuntu specifically) -- it was like someone hit the laptop's "pause" button a couple of times per minute. [0]: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-16.04-Root-on-...
In Native encryption added to ZFS on Linux
josteink·Jul 5, 2016
> I don't have GBs of free memory for ZFS Only ZFS dedup uses goobles of RAM, and use of that is discouraged anyway. > I don't have GB of RAM, CPU and HD space to build everything from ports, and most importantly, no need. Last I checked, Debian now supports ZFS in form of a source DKMS package. No need to maintain your own setup. If you go with Ubuntu instead, which provides binary ZFS packages, you can also use it as a rootfs to get full advantage of its capabilities[1]. That said, I've decided to just stick with btrfs, because it's in the mainline Linux kernel, and works well enough for my needs with absolutely zero hassle. FreeBSD is nice though. No harm in trying it out to widen your horizon :) [1] https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-16.04-Root-on-...
In BSD vs. Linux (2005)

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