Rsync with space in the directory name

I was looking for a way to include a directory name with space using rsync. So I google it, found a brunch of suggestions, which turned out that NONE of them really works. As always, I ended up coming the solution on my own. Here is how I did it:

rsync -avr 'username@remotehost:/directory\ abc/' /directory\ abc/

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Running ZFS on Linux: Things you should know and be aware of

ZFS is the next generation file system. Unfortunately, it won’t be shipped with Linux because of legal/licensing issues. Fortunately, it is possible to install it (ZFS on Linux) in few commands. Since 2013, I have set up a number of Linux (CentOS/RHEL) servers with ZFS for use in a high traffic production environment. They include high-end commercial grade server (Xeon-based + ECC memory), gaming quality desktop (i7-based) and entry-level consumer grade computer (i3). In this article, I will discuss about what I have learned from my experience.

Warning on ZFS on Linux

ZFS on Linux is not a robust solution to implement ZFS on Linux because it has a very important (and impossible) requirement: The system will never get updated and rebooted. If you cannot meet this requirement (obviously), be prepare to spend tons of hours to fix the problem and get your data back. See how I fix the problem created by ZFS on Linux here. If you prefer rock solid and reliable way, you have to go with *BSD or Solaris.

Summary

Life is short. If you don’t want to waste your time to go through the entire article, here is my advice: Use FreeBSD (or *BSD) if possible. Using ZFS on Linux is like putting a giraffe in the wild Alaska. It is not going to work. However, we may want to stick with one operating system for server for various reasons. Therefore, I’ve come up some advice for you if you really want to run ZFS on Linux:

  • Use a commercial grade server when it is possible. A bare-bone entry-level Dell Power Edge T110 II (starting from US$300) is sufficient to run ZFS as a low traffic, light load, nightly backup server. Consumer grade computer is not recommended for use in ZFS/Linux. If you really need one, get a computer with gaming quality grade components and always back up the data on a different server.
  • Linux kernel plays an important role to ZFS. Try to use v.3 (e.g., RHEL 7) when possible. Using ZFS with v. 2.6 (e.g., RHEL 6) may cause some unexpected problem to non-commerical grade hardware. As of October 2019, I cannot make version 4 (e.g., install via kernel-ml or CentOS 8) works with ZFS on RHEL 7:
    Loading new spl-0.6.5.9 DKMS files...
    Building for 4.11.2-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64
    Building initial module for 4.11.2-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64
    configure: error: unknown
    Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 4.11.2-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64 (x86_64)
    Consult /var/lib/dkms/spl/0.6.5.9/build/make.log for more information.
    
  • Set up your ZFS with the hard drive identifier (e.g., /dev/disk/by-id/someid), not the generic device id (e.g., /dev/sda).
  • You may lose some storage space (smaller than 1%) comparing to the same setup in FreeBSD. But the amount is trivial.
  • If you already install ZFS on Linux, try to exclude the kernel from system update. The system will not load the ZFS after reboot, and it will take some extra work to get ZFS running again.
  • Some Linux distributions such as CentOS 7 will not load ZFS at the boot time. You can solve this problem by using cron job. If you have other services (e.g., MySQL, NFS, Apache) that depends on the ZFS, you will need to restart them.
  • Bookmark this ZFS emergency recovery guide. Trust me, you never know when your ZFS on Linux decide to stop working.

Do not update the kernel automatically

I’ve wrote an article on how to rescue your ZFS file system after updating the kernel. Please click here for details.

ZFS is not native in Linux. The whole idea of ZFS on Linux is nothing more than a brunch of modules being injected to the kernel, such that the kernel will load the ZFS at boot time. This is a fantastic idea because it will not introduce the performance problem like ZFS/FUSE (running on the user land, i.e., very slow). However, there is a potential problem here. This “injection” only happens when a ZFS module (zfs-kmod) is needed to be installed or updated. During this process, the system will download the latest copy of the zfs-kmod and injecting it to the current running kernel. See the problem here?

That being said, running root (/) on ZFS in Linux is a very very bad idea. You will not be able to access anything when the ZFS is not available at the kernel level.

So we have four different situations here after hitting the update command:

Kernel has new update
Kernel has no update

zfs-kmod has new update
Yes. Your ZFS will be available after the reboot.
Yes. Your ZFS will be available after the reboot.

zfs-kmod has no update
No. Your ZFS will not be available after the reboot.
Yes. Your ZFS will be available after the reboot

In general, if you really need to update the kernel, you will need to update the kernel first, reboot to the new kernel (ZFS will be missing), and re-run the process such that ZFS module will be injected to the new kernel. Some people may recommend to uninstall the zfs-kmod and reinstall it again. Unless you have a very strong reason to use the latest kernel (e.g., you’ve got plenty of spare time), otherwise I won’t recommend doing it because the whole process is a pain.

Another thing you can do is to disable the auto update. Only update the system when there is a new update for both kernel and the zfs-kmod. Then you can update the kernel first, reboot, and then update the zfs-kmod after the reboot. However, keep in mind that you will run into some problem eventually. Many packages depend on the newer kernel, if you try to update the system, it will complaint because you will need to update the kernel first before updating those packages. You can get around by skipping the broken packages (yum update –skip-broekn).

In my settings, I simply exclude the kernel from the update. That way I only need to work with one kernel, and I know that that particular kernel knows how to handle ZFS module.

sudo nano /etc/yum.conf 

exclude=kernel*

In case you are running into trouble, i.e., ZFS is missing in the latest kernel, you can try doing the following:

Before running the following commands, make sure that you know what you are doing.


#Make sure that you reboot to the kernel you want to fix.
#Find out what is the current kernel
uname -a
Linux 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 6 23:06:41 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

#In my example, it is:
3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64


#Basically we want to remove the following files:
ls -al /lib/modules/your_new_kernel/extra
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 344K Dec 12 15:58 splat.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 167K Dec 12 15:58 spl.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  14K Dec 12 16:02 zavl.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  75K Dec 12 16:02 zcommon.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.2M Dec 12 16:02 zfs.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 130K Dec 12 16:02 znvpair.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  34K Dec 12 16:02 zpios.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 324K Dec 12 16:02 zunicode.ko

#If you have no extra modules installed other than ZFS and SPL, you can run the following:
sudo rm -Rf /lib/modules/*/extra/* 

#Otherwise just remove the files one by one.


#And we want to do the same thing to the weak-updates.
ls -al /lib/modules/your_new_kernel/weak-updates

drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4.0K Sep 16 10:58 .
drwxr-xr-x. 7 root root 4.0K Sep 16 10:58 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   54 Sep 16 10:56 splat.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/splat.ko
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   52 Sep 16 10:56 spl.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/spl.ko
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   53 Feb 22  2016 zavl.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/zavl.ko
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   56 Feb 22  2016 zcommon.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/zcommon.ko
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   52 Sep 16 10:58 zfs.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/zfs.ko
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   56 Sep 16 10:58 znvpair.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/znvpair.ko
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   54 Feb 22  2016 zpios.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/zpios.ko
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   57 Feb 22  2016 zunicode.ko -> /lib/modules/2.6.32-573.18.1.el6.x86_64/extra/zunicode.ko



#If you have no extra modules installed other than ZFS and SPL, you can run the following:
sudo rm -Rf /lib/modules/*/weak-updates/*


#Otherwise just remove the files one by one.


#Now, let's get into the fun part. We will remove them and reinstall them.
#Don't forget to match your version.
sudo dkms remove zfs/0.6.5.8 --all
sudo dkms remove spl/0.6.5.8 --all
sudo dkms --force install spl/0.6.5.8
sudo dkms --force install zfs/0.6.5.8

And we will verify the result.

#sudo dkms status
spl, 0.6.5.8, 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64, x86_64: installed
zfs, 0.6.5.8, 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64, x86_64: installed
zfs, 0.6.5.8, 3.10.0-327.28.3.el7.x86_64, x86_64: installed-weak from 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64

The Kernel Version Matters

The kernel version does matter, and I will avoid using version 2.6 or below if you don’t have a professional grade hardware, such as Xeon CPU. Here is my comment:

Hardware
Linux Kernel (v.2.6)
Linux Kernel (v.3)
FreeBSD
9 & 10

Dell Power Edge T100 II
(Intel Xeon E3-1240 V2, 8GB memory, US$250)
Stable
Stable
Stable

Dell Power Edge T320
(Intel Xeon E5-2430, 64GB memory, US$2,000)
Stable
Stable
Stable

Gaming Quality Desktop
(Intel i7-4770, 32GB memory, US$900)
Unstable
Stable
Stable

Consumer Grade Desktop
(Intel i3-540, 8GB memory, US$500)
Unstable
Stable
Stable

However, it doesn’t mean that you should always use the latest kernel. Remember one thing, always keep a copy of the previous kernel before switching to the latest one. You never know whether ZFS will work with the latest one or not. For example, I have a big trouble to get ZFS working with 2.6.32-573.7.1.el6.x86_64, which is the latest kernel available on CentOS 6.7 (as of Oct 26, 2015). I ended up switching the system to 2.6.32-573.3.1.el6.x86_64 (-1 kernel). So always test the system before making the switch.

The Hard Drive Identifier

Set up your ZFS with the unique, non-changeable hard drive identifier (e.g., /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x1234c567890d0aaa). Do not use the generic device id (e.g., /dev/sda). When you reboot the system, the generic device id (/dev/sda) may get changed. This will be a problem to the ZFS.

For example, when RHEL 7 names the hard drive, it will name the hard drives that are attached directly to the motherboard first, these includes USB flash drives, SD card etc. After that, it will name the hard drives that are attached to the PCIe raid card. When you boot the computer with a USB flash drive attached, and if the USB flash drive was not available at the time you set up the ZFS, this small change is good enough to mess up your ZFS.

Here is an example:

History for 'storage':
zpool create -f storage raidz /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500206e46d4 \
                              /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500205eba0d \
                              /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x50014ee25a9074e2 \
                              /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x50024e9001c19fb2

So far I only noticed this problem with low-end / consumer grade motherboard. However, this is not a problem with FreeBSD because it is smart enough to re-map the old values.

The Stability

For some odd reasons, the ZFS will be unstable or even unavailable when the I/O is heavy:

  pool: storage
 state: DEGRADED
  scan: none requested
status: One or more devices could not be opened.  Sufficient replicas exist for
        the pool to continue functioning in a degraded state.
config:

        NAME                        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        storage                     DEGRADED     0     0     0
          raidz1-0                  DEGRADED     0     0     0
            wwn-0x5000c500206e46d4  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x5000c500205eba0d  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x50014ee25a9074e2  ONLINE       0     0     0
            wwn-0x50024e9001c19fb2  UNAVAIL      0     0     0

This kind of problem happens mainly with low-end consumer grade computer with older kernel. Once I upgraded the kernel to a newer version, the problem is gone. No hardware change is needed. Again, I’ve never experienced this kind of problem since FreeBSD 9. The only explanation I can think of is the older Linux Kernel does not support ZFS and low-end computer very well.

Load ZFS at Boot

Some Linux variants such as CentOS 7 will not load ZFS at boot (in my case, my kernel is 3.10.0-327.28.3.el7.x86_64). I choose to run the ZFS via cron job. What if the ZFS contains the files that are required by some service, e.g, your database or web server files are on ZFS? You will need to restart those services after loading the ZFS. Here is an example:

sudo nano /etc/crontab

#Example 1: Load all available ZFS pools
@reboot         root    sleep 20; zpool import -a;

#Example 2: Load all ZFS pools first, then restart the Apache, MySQL and NFS services
@reboot         root    sleep 20; zpool import -a; sleep 15; systemctl restart httpd.service && systemctl restart mariadb.service && systemctl restart nfs-server;

Good luck!

–Derrick

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FreeBSD or Linux in 6 Simple Questions

FreeBSD or Linux

FreeBSD or Linux (Ubuntu/RHEL)? This is a very old question. It’s like asking iPhone or Android. There is no short answer. It all depends on your situation. To make things easier, I am going to break it down into six simple questions to help you making decision.

My Background
I have been a FreeBSD user since 2003. My usage on FreeBSD mainly on service-oriented stuffs such as web farm, database clusters and file system etc. In short, I mainly use my FreeBSD system via command line. In 2009, I jumped into Linux world (Ubuntu/RHEL) because of my job. As an advanced user on both Operating Systems (FreeBSD and Ubuntu/RHEL Linux), here is my guide on these two systems.

There is only one FreeBSD, but there are many different variants of Linux. The Linux I mention below refers to two popular distributions: RHEL and Ubuntu.

FreeBSD vs Linux: Q.1 How do you describe yourself?

I am a very demanding person. I like to control everything I manage. –> FreeBSD
I don’t care about how a system is run. I am okay as long as it just works. –> Linux / Ubuntu / RHEL

Comment:
FreeBSD gives you freedom to control every single thing. One of its coolest feature is the port tree. You can build every application from source using port tree. In Linux world, you usually install applications from pre-built/pre-compiled package (yum, apt-get etc), which may not be exactly what you need.

Example:
In RHEL and Ubuntu, HTTP load balancer module does not come with Apache by default. You will need to compile Apache from source. What about in FreeBSD? All you need is to check a box (pretty much like shopping cart) and you are done.

FreeBSD vs Linux: Q.2 Do you prefer Ferrari or Hyundai?

Ferrari / BMW / SLR Camera –> FreeBSD
Toyota / Hyundai / Point and Shoot Camera / Phone Camera –> Linux / Ubuntu / RHEL

Comment:
The technology uses by FreeBSD such as kernel, file system, architecture etc are way better and more advanced than Linux. It’s like comparing Ferrari and Hyundai (And no, I am not kidding).

Example 1:
I need to run some extreme applications (e.g., DNA Sequence Alignment) which use all available threads and memory. The default settings of memory management in Linux is very poor. Every time I run my application, the system becomes not usable to other users. However, FreeBSD does not have this server problem. In fact, FreeBSD is smart enough not to cause the system to freeze. Of course you can tweak the memory management settings in Linux, or even run the command along with the nice command. However, these settings are just not available out of the box, and most of the time, you learn these tricks after your system has problem.

Example 2:
I installed FreeBSD 11 and RHEL 7 on two identical computers respectively. Both use default settings and enable similar services, such as enabling the SSH server and disable booting to X-Windows (RHEL). I used these two machines for exact the same purposes: SSH tunneling, with exact the same work load (evenly distributed). After using them for a month, I checked the memory usage. With FreeBSD, the available memory is about 800MB (out of 1GB), while there are only 200MB left (out of 1GB) on RHEL. Yes, Linux (at least with RHEL 7) consumes lots of memory.

Example 3:
FreeBSD comes with ZFS (The next generation file system) by default. Although it has been ported to Linux world, it is definitely unstable. We’ve tried to use it in a production environment. One thing that we’ve learned is that the ZFS may stop working after upgrading to a newer Linux kernel. I’ve received countless of email alert about missing the files (ZFS is not working, of course the files are gone) in the middle of the night. I ended up disable the auto update and disable the reboot after the update. Sounds familiar? That’s a feature in Windows, and for some odd reasons, this feature is available in Linux, a server.

Example 4:
LVM+RAID is an the most advanced storage method in Linux world. Unfortunately it does not do what it promises, i.e., you may lose your data if a hard drive is failure, even if you follow its directions to detach your failed hard drive correctly. Not to mention that the data will get corrupted if the power is down (which has been taken care of in ZFS, available in FreeBSD).

That’s why I prefer ZFS over LVM+RAID here: Building a Super Large and Reliable File Server with Mixed Size of Harddisks. It solves my problem (yes, even the power is failed during writing to the disk, my data is still safe!)

FreeBSD vs Linux: Q.3 Do you have lots of free time?

Yes: FreeBSD
No: Linux / Ubuntu / RHEL

Comment:
Making a production-ready system using FreeBSD can take you days to weeks if you are not an experienced FreeBSD user, while everything works out of the box in Linux. Sometimes, the new upgrade from the port tree can drive you nut, such as package conflicts etc. However, working with Linux is a leisure thing.

Example:
Installing Apache + MySQL + PHP from FreeBSD port (compiling the source) can take at least half day on a computer with a dual core CPU (AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+), while it takes less than 30 minutes on Linux. That’s because you need to compile the code from source in FreeBSD, while you simply download the packages and extract them in Linux. The time difference is huge.

FreeBSD vs Linux: Q.4 Do you prefer simplicity or complexity?

Adding sugar into water –> FreeBSD
Taking sugar away from soda–> Linux / Ubuntu / RHEL

Comment:
FreeBSD is a very very simple system. Think of it as a bare-bone system that comes with no junk. By default, it comes with no graphic user interface, no unnecessary application. It likes a pure distilled water.

In Ubuntu / RHEL, everything is configured and ready to use. It comes with very attractive, beautiful graphical user interface. Everything just works out of the box, no tuning or tweaking is required. However, it also comes with lots of junk such as Ubuntu One (For Ubuntu Cloud service), SELinux (A program developed by Red Hat where many people don’t use it), etc. It makes your system very bulky and increase the computation resource consumption.

FreeBSD vs Linux: Q.5 Are you going to use the computer as desktop?

Yes: Linux / Ubuntu / RHEL
No: FreeBSD

Comment:
Setting up a desktop-ready system on FreeBSD can take a long time. Main reason is the drivers availability. A lot of hardware such as graphic cards, audio cards or webcams are not supported in FreeBSD natively. If you want to get them working as good as on Windows / Ubuntu, you will need to get the driver first (if available), build it (which may gives error during compiling the codes), and recompile the kernel to make it supports the new driver, which can take few days if you are not experienced with FreeBSD and debugging driver.

On the other side, the Linux driver community is very strong and well developed. Usually they develop drivers for most popular hardware.

Example:

#1: My Logitech Orbit MP webcam (Pan / Tilt / Zoom) is not working on FreeBSD but works like a charm on Linux.

#2: Some vendors such as Highpoint may stop developing drivers for their products for newest version of FreeBSD.

FreeBSD vs Linux: Q.6 Do you need to blame someone when something goes wrong?

Yes: Linux / Ubuntu / RHEL
No: FreeBSD

Comment:

When something goes wrong, you can blame Linux and you can’t blame FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is a community driven operating system, while some Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and RHEL are backed by commercial vendors. In the world of FreeBSD, it is not uncommon that some unskilled developers introduce bugs, troubles to the rest of the world. Yes, we know it is free, so we can’t complaint about it. However, as an IT administrator, you will need to use your judgement to judge whether those new stuffs are safe to use or not. In short, that will increase your workload. It’s more like Windows update. How many people actually read the change log before hitting the update button?

In Linux (e.g., RHEL), that’s a whole different story. Every patches, new updates have been screened by the vendor before hitting to public. So you can trust them in some degree. And the key thing is, you can blame them when something goes wrong.

Conclusion

In short, use FreeBSD for your personal purpose while Linux for your work. Be the top 5%, not the bottom 95%.

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