zfs-fuse 0.5.0 released

Hi,

After resyncing the ZFS code in zfs-fuse to OpenSolaris build 98, I have (finally!) decided to make a new release.

I know that going from 0.4.0_beta1 to 0.5.0 is not the most logical thing to do.

However, if you consider that 0.4.0_beta1 was released more than 18 months ago and if you consider all the improvements that have been made since then, it makes a little more sense :-)

(By the way, if you still running 0.4.0_beta1... please, please, please upgrade *now* - serious bugs have been fixed).

This release brings us up-to-date with ZFS pool version 13 (try "zpool upgrade -v").
You can read about any zfs-fuse specific fixes or enhancements in the CHANGES file, although I'm sure I missed a few things.

One thing to mention is that there's no development going on in zfs-fuse in terms of missing features (the ones in the STATUS file). At the moment you can only expect bug fixes and ZFS code updates.

For those of you who have not been following zfs-fuse development closely, please be assured that if you are using IDE, SATA or SCSI disks, you no longer need to disable the write caches of your devices (thanks to Eric Anopolsky).

However, that is only true if you use raw disks or partitions as your vdevs -- if you use LVM, EVMS or other devices (such as loop devices), the disks' write caches still should be manually disabled to avoid potential problems.

If you want peace of mind you can check your syslog right after zfs-fuse starts to do any I/O - zfs-fuse will notify you if it can't flush the write cache.

Enjoy!