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by evanjrowley 274 days ago
Good question. I don't know about other microkernels, but NetBSD is a small kernel that supports ZFS. The support has been there since the 4.0.5 and 5.3[0], possibly earlier too. I'm not adept at navigating the mailing lists here, but I imagine a good place to learn about the challenges of porting ZFS to a smaller kernel would be the NetBSD and ZFS lists from that era (2008-2009). What NetBSD does today is use a 'zfs' modlue that depends on a 'solaris' kernel modile. The dependency of Solaris primitives is probably one of the major challenges with porting ZFS to any kernel. FWIW, somehow a ZFS port for the "hybrid" kernel in Windows also exists[1].

[0] https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/zfs-compatibility/

[1] https://github.com/openzfsonwindows/openzfs

1 comments

NetBSD isn’t a microkernel.
Who is calling it a microkernel? The post youre replying to calls it a “small kernel” - that does not imply it’s a microkernel tho, right? I didn’t think size has anything to do with it.
I'm not sure if it originally said small kernel, though I know for sure the italics weren't originally there. The wording is unclear in a couple ways.
I came back to maybe delete my comments as I felt I might have came off harsh, esp before I saw the dead comment chain. No ill will, was confused as well I think.