One of my big assumptions so far is that using a Mac is feasible as the ZFS host server. Before I got too far into my search for a home ZFS setup, I figured I'd at least first try the Mac ZFS binaries available at MacOSforge.org.

I grabbed a leftover drive from my pile, an 8.6GB behemoth, to use as my testbed. I'm too lazy to put the drive in an enclosure, so I just used one of those IDE/SATA-USB bridges (very handy, for disk recovery and other purposes) to mount the drive.

1. First, download their ZFS binaries and extract them.

2. Backup the original ZFS binaries on your Mac (remember, must be running OS X 10.5/Leopard):

   sudo bash
   mkdir /Users/tony/zfs-backup
   cp -pr /usr/sbin/zfs /usr/sbin/zpool /usr/lib/libzfs.dylib /System/Library/Extensions/zfs.kext /System/Library/Filesystems/zfs.fs /Users/tony/zfs-backup
   

3. Install the new ZFS binaries, per their instructions:

   sudo cp build/Release/zfs /usr/sbin/zfs
   sudo cp build/Release/zpool /usr/sbin/zpool
   sudo cp build/Release/libzfs.dylib /usr/lib/libzfs.dylib
   sudo /bin/rm -rf /System/Library/Filesystems/zfs.fs /System/Library/Extensions/zfs.kext
   sudo cp -R build/Release/zfs.fs /System/Library/Filesystems/zfs.fs
   sudo cp -R build/Release/zfs.kext /System/Library/Extensions/zfs.kext
   

4. Bring up the Getting Started page and run:

   diskutil list 
   

   to get the list of device names.

5. Now run diskutil to format your target device:

   diskutil partitiondisk /dev/disk2 GPTFormat ZFS %noformat% 100% 
   

6. That's it. After that, I was able to create a zpool on the drive and ZFS filesystems with no problems.

The real catch-22 now is how to give ZFS on Mac OS X a better real-world test. To do that I need a decent drive enclosure/array and more disks -- but that's what I'm in search of already. I could experiment with some of my older drives, but they're all IDE and most newer enclosures would use SATA drives. One enclosure I found worth considering does take IDE, but it's still $199 even without drives. I'll have to see if I can find something more in the $100-120 range to experiment with.

It's too bad Leopard won't run on a G3, otherwise I'd gladly rebuild my G3 PowerMac, even if it's a little underpowered.