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Solaris ZFS Administration Guide

Settable ZFS Native Properties

Settable native properties are properties whose values can be both retrieved and set. Settable native properties are set by using the zfs set command, as described in Setting ZFS Properties or by using the zfs create command as described in Creating a ZFS File System. With the exceptions of quotas and reservations, settable native properties are inherited. For more information about quotas and reservations, see Setting ZFS Quotas and Reservations.

Some settable native properties are specific to a particular type of dataset. In such cases, the particular dataset type is mentioned in the description in Table 6–1. If not specifically mentioned, a property applies to all dataset types: file systems, volumes, clones, and snapshots.

The settable properties are listed here and are described in Table 6–1.

The canmount Property

If this property is set to off, the file system cannot be mounted by using the zfs mount or zfs mount -a commands. Setting this property is similar to setting the mountpoint property to none, except that the dataset still has a normal mountpoint property that can be inherited. For example, you can set this property to off, establish inheritable properties for descendent file systems, but the file system itself is never mounted nor is it accessible to users. In this case, the parent file system with this property set to off is serving as a container so that you can set attributes on the container, but the container itself is never accessible.

In the following example, userpool is created and the canmount property is set to off. Mount points for descendent user file systems are set to one common mount point, /export/home. Properties that are set on the parent file system are inherited by descendent file systems, but the parent file system itself is never mounted.


# zpool create userpool mirror c0t5d0 c1t6d0
# zfs set canmount=off userpool
# zfs set mountpoint=/export/home userpool
# zfs set compression=on userpool
# zfs create userpool/user1
# zfs create userpool/user2
# zfs mount
userpool/user1                  /export/home/user1
userpool/user2                  /export/home/user2

Setting the canmount property to noauto means that the dataset can only be mounted explicitly, not automatically. This setting is used by the Solaris upgrade software so that only those datasets belonging to the active boot environment (BE) are mounted at boot time.

The casesensitivity Property

This property indicates whether the file name matching algorithm used by the file system should be casesensitive, caseinsensitive, or allow a combination of both styles of matching (mixed).

When a case-insensitive matching request is made of a mixed sensitivity file system, the behavior is generally the same as would be expected of a purely case-insensitive file system. The difference is that a mixed sensitivity file system might contain directories with multiple names that are unique from a case-sensitive perspective, but not unique from the case-insensitive perspective.

For example, a directory might contain files foo, Foo, and FOO. If a request is made to case-insensitively match any of the possible forms of foo, (for example foo, FOO, FoO, fOo, and so on) one of the three existing files is chosen as the match by the matching algorithm. Exactly which file the algorithm chooses as a match is not guaranteed, but what is guaranteed is that the same file is chosen as a match for any of the forms of foo. The file chosen as a case-insensitive match for foo, FOO, foO, Foo, and so on, is always the same, so long as the directory remains unchanged.

The utf8only, normalization, and casesensitivity properties also provide new permissions that can be assigned to non-privileged users by using ZFS delegated administration. For more information, see Delegating ZFS Permissions.

The dedup Property

This property controls whether duplicate data is removed from the file system. If a file system has the dedup property enabled, duplicate data blocks are removed synchronously. The result is that only unique data is stored and common components are shared between files.

When dedup is enabled, the dedup checksum algorithm overrides the checksum property. Setting the value to verify is equivalent to specifying sha256,verify. If the property is set to verify and two blocks have the same signature, ZFS does a byte-for-byte comparison with the existing block to ensure that the contents are identical.

This property can be enabled per file system as follows:


# zfs set dedup=on tank/home

You can use the zfs get command to determine if the dedup property is set.

Although deduplication is set as a file system property, the scope is pool-wide. For example, you can identify the deduplication ratio as follows:


# zpool list tank
NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
rpool   136G  55.2G  80.8G    40%  2.30x  ONLINE  -

The DEDUP column indicates how much deduplication has occurred. If the dedup property is not enabled on any dataset or if the dedup property was just enabled on the dataset, the DEDUP ratio is 1.00x.

You can use the zpool get command to determine the value of the dedupratio property.


# zpool get all export
NAME     PROPERTY       VALUE       SOURCE
export   size           33.8G       -
export   capacity       0%          -
export   altroot        -           default
export   health         ONLINE      -
export   guid           2064230982813446135  default
export   version        22          default
export   bootfs         -           default
export   delegation     on          default
export   autoreplace    off         default
export   cachefile      -           default
export   failmode       wait        default
export   listsnapshots  off         default
export   autoexpand     off         default
export   dedupditto     0           default
export   dedupratio     3.00x       -
export   free           33.6G       -
export   allocated      105M        -

This pool property illustrates how much deduplication we have been able to achieve.

The recordsize Property

Specifies a suggested block size for files in the file system.

This property is designed solely for use with database workloads that access files in fixed-size records. ZFS automatically adjust block sizes according to internal algorithms optimized for typical access patterns. For databases that create very large files but access the files in small random chunks, these algorithms may be suboptimal. Specifying a recordsize greater than or equal to the record size of the database can result in significant performance gains. Use of this property for general purpose file systems is strongly discouraged, and may adversely affect performance. The size specified must be a power of two greater than or equal to 512 and less than or equal to 128 Kbytes. Changing the file system's recordsize only affects files created afterward. Existing files are unaffected.

This property can also be referred to by its shortened column name, recsize.

The sharesmb Property

This property enables sharing of ZFS file systems with the Solaris CIFS service, and identifies options to be used.

Because SMB shares requires a resource name, a unique resource name is constructed from the dataset name. The constructed name is a copy of the dataset name except that the characters in the dataset name, which would be illegal in the resource name, are replaced with underscore (_) characters. A pseudo property name is also supported that allows you to replace the dataset name with a specific name. The specific name is then used to replace the prefix dataset in the case of inheritance.

For example, if the dataset, data/home/john, is set to name=john, then data/home/john has a resource name of john. If a child dataset of data/home/john/backups exists, it has a resource name of john_backups. When the sharesmb property is changed for a dataset, the dataset and any children inheriting the property are re-shared with the new options, only if the property was previously set to off, or if they were shared before the property was changed. If the new property is set to off, the file systems are unshared.

For examples of using the sharesmb property, see Sharing ZFS Files in a Solaris CIFS Environment.

The volsize Property

The logical size of the volume. By default, creating a volume establishes a reservation for the same amount. Any changes to volsize are reflected in an equivalent change to the reservation. These checks are used to prevent unexpected behavior for users. A volume that contains less space than it claims is available can result in undefined behavior or data corruption, depending on how the volume is used. These effects can also occur when the volume size is changed while it is in use, particularly when you shrink the size. Extreme care should be used when adjusting the volume size.

Though not recommended, you can create a sparse volume by specifying the -s flag to zfs create -V, or by changing the reservation once the volume has been created. A sparse volume is defined as a volume where the reservation is not equal to the volume size. For a sparse volume, changes to volsize are not reflected in the reservation.

For more information about using volumes, see ZFS Volumes.