Hi guys,
After a little discussion with Ricardo Correia (ZFS-FUSE,
http://www.wizy.org) and Tom Riddle (Sun Labs) and a little internal test (thanks Nicolas and Sven @
http://www.powerlinux.fr) and found some problems here and there while we went.
We seem to have gotten somewhere with bringing in at least the very first, basic Power Architecture support for ZFS, at least under Linux.
Ricardo has kindly provided a snapshot which should compile just fine for anyone with FUSE support on their system.
http://www.wizy.org/files/zfs-fuse-ppc-test.tar.bz2
So, in the time honoured fashion, I would like to see if any of you guys can compile and mount a simple ZFS filesystem to see if the thing is working. If there's some success, a lot of 'ztest' data would come in really handy. If anyone wants to work on packaging for Debian, or perhaps an ebuild for the Efika overlay on Gentoo, that would also be very much appreciated. Of course it is dependant on what system you use and how much can be achieved..
This is the very first steps now, but it should bring Power Architecture one of the best filesystems on the planet. As FUSE filesystems ostensibly run in userspace, there is a lot of room for optimisation which cannot be done inside a kernel - it has been said that the Sun LZJB compression routine is vectorisable, and certainly any Power-specific code would be a boon.
Note that this is all focussing on 32-bit old-school (603e/G3/G4) Power systems. There is no use of 64-bit functionality - if someone wants to modify them to support G5 or POWER4/5/6 processors and fix up a way to compile the filesystem properly here, that would be much appreciated, and I guess the same goes for the IBM/AMCC processor lines.
Please do not break it for the Pegasos/Efika/PowerBook community though :)
Thanks for your time, and happy compiling :)