Last updated: 2017-04-08

The FreeBSD build will build most of the tools in Ceph. Note that the (kernel) RBD dependent items will not work

I started looking into Ceph, because the HAST solution with CARP and ggate did not really do what I was looking for. But I'm aiming for running a Ceph storage cluster on storage nodes that are running ZFS. In the end the cluster would be running bhyve on RBD disk that are stored in Ceph.

The FreeBSD build will build most of the tools in Ceph.

Progress from last report:

Most important change:

• A port is submitted: net/ceph-devel.

Other improvements:

* A new ceph-devel update will be submitted in April

• Ceph-Fuse works, allowing to mount a CephFS on a FreeBSD system and do
  some work on it.
• Ceph-disk prepare and activate work for FileStore on ZFS, allowing
  easy creation of OSDs.
• RBD is actually buildable and can be used to manage RADOS BLOCK
  DEVICEs.
• Most of the awkward dependencies on Linux-isms are deleted only
  /bin/bash is there to stay.

Getting the FreeBSD work on Ceph:

pkg install net/ceph-devel

Or: cd "place to work on this" git clone https://github.com/wjwithagen/ceph.git cd ceph git checkout wip.FreeBSD

Building Ceph

• Go and start building
  

  ./do_freebsd.sh

Parts not (yet) included:

• KRBD Kernel Rados Block Devices is implemented in the Linux kernel And perhaps ggated could be used as a template since it does some of the same, other than just between 2 disks. And it has a userspace counterpart.

• BlueStore. FreeBSD and Linux have different AIO API, and that needs to be made compatible Next to that is there discussion in FreeBSD about aio_cancel not working for all devicetypes

• CephFS as native filesystem (Ceph-fuse does work.) Cython tries to access an internal field in dirent which does not compile Build Prerequisites ===================

  Compiling and building Ceph is tested on 12-CURRENT, but I guess/expect 11-RELEASE will also work. And Clang is at 3.8.0. It uses the CLANG toolset that is available, 3.7 is no longer tested, but was working when that was with 11-CURRENT. Clang 3.4 (on 10.2-STABLE) does not have all required capabilities to compile everything

The following setup will get things running for FreeBSD:

This all require root privilidges.

• Install bash and link it in /bin
  sudo pkg install bash
  sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash

Getting the FreeBSD work on Ceph:

• cd "place to work on this"
  git clone https://github.com/wjwithagen/ceph.git
  cd ceph
  git checkout wip.FreeBSD.201702

Building Ceph

• Go and start building
  ./do_freebsd.sh

Parts not (yet) included:

• KRBD
  Kernel Rados Block Devices is implemented in the Linux kernel
  It seems that there used to be a userspace implementation first.
  And perhaps ggated could be used as a template since it does some of
  the same, other than just between 2 disks. And it has a userspace
  counterpart.
• BlueStore.
  FreeBSD and Linux have different AIO API, and that needs to be made
  compatible Next to that is there discussion in FreeBSD about
  aio_cancel not working for all devicetypes
• CephFS
  Cython tries to access an internal field in dirent which does not
  compile

Tests that verify the correct working of the above are also excluded from the testset

Tests not (yet) include:

•  None, although some test can fail if running tests in parallel and there is
   not enough swap. Then tests will start to fail in strange ways.
  

Task to do:

• Build an automated test platform that will build ceph/master on FreeBSD and report the results back to the Ceph developers. This will increase the maintainability of the FreeBSD side of things. Developers are signalled that they are using Linux-isms that will not compile/run on FreeBSD Ceph has several projects for this: Jenkins, teuthology, pulpito, ... But even just a while { compile } loop and report the build data on a static webpage would do for starters.

• Run integration tests to see if the FreeBSD daemons will work with a Linux Ceph platform.

• Compile and test the user space RBD (Rados Block Device).

• Investigate and see if an in-kernel RBD device could be developed a la 'ggate'

• Investigate the keystore, which could be kernel embedded on Linux an currently prevents building Cephfs and some other parts.

• Scheduler information is not used atm, because the schedulers work rather different. But at a certain point in time, this would need some attention: in: ./src/common/Thread.cc

• Improve the FreeBSD /etc/rc.d initscripts in the Ceph stack. Both for testing, but mainly for running Ceph on production machines. Work on ceph-disk and ceph-deploy to make it more FreeBSD and ZFS compatible.

• Build test-cluster and start running some of the teuthology integration tests on these. Teuthology want to build its own libvirt and that does not quite work with all the packages FreeBSD already has in place. Lots of minute details to figure out

• Design a virtual disk implementation that can be used with behyve and attached to an RBD image.