ZFS Snaphots UI

Project Description

The initial idea for this project is to expose the underlining "power of Solaris" on the desktop.

The project has been split into 3 different parts. This approach has been chosen to allow a phased integration in next releases of OpenSolaris.

The 3 different parts are :

• provide a graphical mean to graphically explore snapshots (a.k.a Nautilus View) Targeted for OpenSolaris 2008.11
• provide a graphical mean to schedule zfs snapshots (a.k.a snapshot manager) Subset of feature targeted for OpenSolaris 2008.11
• provide a graphical mean to backup zfs snapshots on removable media and network storage (a.k.a backup manager) targeted for OpenSolaris 2009.04

The implementation of this project will be based on Jaime's design.

NOTE that not all the features in this proposed Design will be implemented

Previous work on snapshot manager done by Tim Foster can be found here. Calum's initial design on snapshot manager.

Resources

• Nautilus View tasks (Total 20 days):
  • enhance Nautilus extension to add arbitrary widgets (e.g. slider bar) total duration 10 days
    • initial investigation (done 1 days)
    • implementation design (in progress)
    • implementation of the slider widget (5 days)
    • implementation of an enhanced snapshot view.
  • implement the zfs snapshot discovery. total duration duration 5 days
    • proof of concept code (done 2 days).
    • integration in Nautilus architecture (3 days).
  • create tests and polish UI. total duration duration 5 days

• Snapshot Manager (Total 25 days):
  • create a cron managed smf service to enable cyclic ZFS snapshots during 15 days
  • implement a UI to interact which this service (duration 5 days)
  • create test and polish UI. during 5 days.

Assumptions

Risks (and contingency plans)

• cannot get a private contract to libzfs
• libzfs API changes will impact the Nautilus View task.

Dependencies

• ZFS : libzfs (C API) and commandline interface
• Nautilus APIs
• pyhton gtk bindings

Schedule

• build 100