Shouldn't a replicated zfs be read-only?

[tyjgHoVeqqNeAJUr]

Hello,

1. I set up replication between two freenas machines.

2. The dataset on PUSH is called volume_a/foo/

3. The dataset on PULL is called vol0/remote/foo

4. I manually created volume_a/foo on PUSH and vol0/remote on PULL. I made neither of these read-only

5. I created and ran the snapshot task and the replication task.

6. During the first replication, freenas created vol0/remote/foo and copied the data. It is still copying (it's a lot of data).

7. As I type this, and while the data is copying, the zfs (aka "dataset") on PULL is not read-only!

Code:

[root@milli] ~# zfs get all vol0/remote/foo | grep readonly
vol0/remote/foo  readonly              off                      default

Questions:

Q1: Why didn't FreeNAS make vol0/remote/foo readonly?
a) It never occurred to FreeNAS to do this
b) It will mark it readonly after the first replication is complete. Just be patient.
c) [your answer here]

Q2: Who would ever want a writable periodic-replication-PULL dataset?
a) Nobody. It's dangerous and stupid.
b) [your answer here]
Thank you,
Chris

 

[tyjgHoVeqqNeAJUr]

Hi,

Please if anyone has any input on this let me know. I my "PULL" machine is going to be thousands of miles away and I do not want to risk the replicated dataset getting borked causing me to restart the replication from scratch. Plus I want remote users to be able to view the reaplicated dataset in a readonly manner.

Chris

 

[toadman]

It's a good point. In a backup use case, yes, the replicated dataset should probably be read only. Then again, most backup target systems don't have active users poking around that might modify something.

I the easiest way to achieve this is you could modify the replication script or write one that runs after replication to insure the remote datasets are read only.