zfs-macOS-2.3.1

[lundman]

Discussion thread for the zfs-macOS-2.3.1 release

[nexusgoblin]

Deployed on Tahoe M4 Pro and Sequoia Intel i7 - seems good. Will depoly to Tahoe M3 Pro and Sequoia Intel Xeon a bit later.

[rjhind]

I've installed over 2.3.0 on an M1 Pro running Sequoia. Update went really smoothing with a single re-boot after installing and seems to be running well. Thanks.

[nodarkthings]

Hi! As for me, I'd still need a version for Intel 10.9-10.11-10.14 — the 10.9 installer for v2.3.0 was perfect on all three. 👍

[lundman]

OK, put up a 10.9 - let me know if it works.

[nodarkthings]

Tested on 10.9 and 10.14: it installs and works ok (provided I do the usual modifications in 10.9).
Quite strange though, writing speed is correct in 10.9 while it can be awfully slow in 10.14 (I guess you know, as there's been many people complaining about it in the forum since 2.1.6) — tested on a clean 10.14 just in case.
I've made the pure speculation that something changed in disk management in MacOS 11 (APFS got an heavy update, AFAIK), that could explain maybe why it happens in old MacOS versions — but not why it doesn't in 10.9... 🤔

[lundman]

Can produce a 10.14 version too, but it sounds like you don't expect it to make much difference?

[nodarkthings]

Thanks, it's very nice of you, but indeed, I don't think the issue lies on the installer. 🙂
v2.1.0 works well in 10.14 and I don't really need the newer features. I guess everyone who is concerned about it has either upgraded their OS or kept v2.1.0.

[nexusgoblin]

Installed on Tahoe M3 Pro, Sequoia Intel Xeon-W and Tahoe Intel i7 without issue too.

[a7z]

I installed the 10.9 version on Mac Mini 2009, native on 10.11 and on patched 10.14.

Install went well on 10.14. But as I copied something ( rsync -aXA hfs/Libreoffice.app zfs/ ) while watching some YT videos, after some time the Mini crashed and rebooted.
After reboot the crash-report showed me some infos (see attached file).
It didn't happen again, but I'm still a little nervous if it will stay stable.

On 10.11 the install did take longer, "registering components" took way longer than "less than a minute".
But all went good. Till I wanted to export the pool on my external hdd. It was while I watched something in Firefox. Thought it would make the streaming smoother.
But it didn't export. After a loooooong time it said "timeout ..." and ended without exporting. Closing Firefox didn't help, it even got stuck in closing and I needed to kill it.
Cause of not being able to export both the external and internal pool ("pool busy") I had to switch off the computer.
Although after the reboot I was able to export the pools easily I decided to uninstall 2.3.1 and revert back to 2.2.3.
I had this same problem with 2.3.0 before.

I don't know if it has something to do with installing the 10.9 version, and installing separate versions 10.11/10.14 would prevent such hickups. The 2.3.0 version was only in a 10.9 version present, too.
Coincidence, correlation or causality? Who knows.

---

crash-on_10.14_2025-11-25.txt

[a7z]

$ xcrun atos -o /System/Library/Kernels/kernel -l 0xffffff8005600000 0xffffff80057ae6ed 0xffffff80058ea185 0xffffff80058db8ba 0xffffff800575bb40 0xffffff80057ae107 0xffffff80057adf53 0xffffff80057ba7ea 0xffffff80057ba9ca 0xffffff8005a2d45f 0xffffff7f862065b4 0xffffff80059f8239 0xffffff7f861fe3e2 0xffffff7f86094d1c 0xffffff800575b0ce

handle_debugger_trap (in kernel) + 1149
kdp_i386_trap (in kernel) + 341
kernel_trap (in kernel) + 1290
0xffffff800035bb40 (in kernel) + 38
panic_trap_to_debugger (in kernel) + 407
panic (in kernel) + 99
0xffffff80003ba7ea (in kernel) + 90
kfree_addr (in kernel) + 202
vnode_getattr (in kernel) + 719
0xffffff7f862065b4
vfs_iterate (in kernel) + 489
0xffffff7f861fe3e2
0xffffff7f86094d1c
call_continuation (in kernel) + 46

[lundman]

That does match up, so we iterate the mounted filesystems vfs_iterate(), which calls the zfs_findernotify_callback() for each one, call vnode_getattr() which for some reason crashed in one of them.

[a7z]

I could reproduce the crash: Firefox-Dynasty 145, 2 tabs with YT playing a video while copying with rsync from hfs to zfs.
Is there something I could test or dump as I just came back from the reboot?

[lundman]

I believe you can disable the findernotify thread, if we can just remember the tunable.

sysctl -a | grep finder

[nodarkthings]

I second a7z about installing on 10.14 that was unusually long.

[greybeard198]

Hi there, folks 🙂
I’ve got a well spec’d Mac Studio M4 Max and am experimenting with this wonderful 2.3.1 release.
Installation has gone fine and I’m currently stress-testing it with a full sync from my NAS to an old QNAP JBOD (6x4TB iron wolf) via Carbon Copy Cloner.
Everything appears to be behaving perfectly but I will report back later in the day with my results.
Fantastic job with this build. 👍