Status update

Some people have (quite understandably) requested me to post a status update, so here it goes:

The good news:

• The project is not dead.
  
• The code is being updated every month with new features and bug fixes from OpenSolaris.
• Critical bugs, and especially any bug reports of corruption, will receive my full attention, so please report them if that happens to you. I am 100% committed to fix any such bugs, but I haven't received any such reports in quite a time. However, I'm not sure if this issue has been truly fixed simply because I've been unable to reproduce it.
• I will make an effort to review and integrate any patches that I receive that improve zfs-fuse.
  

The bad news:

• The beta release is quite old already, so I should definitely make a new release..
• I haven't been able to work on improving zfs-fuse, except for the monthly updates and the occasional bug fixes.
  
• I have a couple of features that I've started to work on but haven't had the time to finish. One of them is async I/O and the other one is automatic disabling of disk write caching with hdparm and sdparm.

That said, if you would like to use zfs-fuse without having to worry about your data safety, please do the following:

• Use the latest development code, from the Mercurial trunk (very important)
• Disable disk write caching on your disks with hdparm and sdparm (very important)
• Create and import your pools with devices from /dev/disk/by-id (highly recommended)

I am reluctant to release a new version until these last 2 points are dealt with in a safe way, either by displaying flashing big red warnings along with setting the mixer volume to the maximum and playing sounds of sirens, or by making zfs-fuse handle it automatically (probably better).