You have to think of what might be the popular, unique (or unlikely to match something else), and concise form of the question to get good results with google, which probably uses previous choices of which result to click on for a given search, to help rank future results.
A search for zfs refer vs used gives in the first few results, explanations like https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/understanding-the-space-used-by-zfs-v2 <https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/understanding-the-space-used-by-zfs-v2> and https://www.thegeekdiary.com/how-to-find-the-space-consumed-by-zfs-snapshots/ <https://www.thegeekdiary.com/how-to-find-the-space-consumed-by-zfs-snapshots/> Specifically, the difference is likely to be obvious when snapshots or clones are present, and that will be visible if you use options such as zfs list -t all (snapshots and clones are not listed by default) The additional option -o space gives more space related columns. I don't offhand know an exact definition of each or why there are sometimes not exact matches between some columns of the display without that, and with it. But with the googling hint I gave, you can probably find as much as you need. > On Dec 25, 2019, at 09:30, Harry Putnam <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Still puzzled by the output of zfs list. In particular the REFER > header. > > NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT > [...] > p1/vb 1.54T 556G 26.9G /vb > p1/vb/vm 738G 556G 323G /vb/vm > > Why the massive difference between USED and REFER > > and what does REFER actually mean? > > Googling this finds massive info about zfs and probably a snippet in > there somewhere will explain it, but finding it is not so easy. > > With google's dumbed down search capabiility using quotes around REFER or > the like doesn't seem to pare the field. > > A google seach like [ understanding "zfs list output" ] without > the brackets (used here to indicate the string used), but with quotes as > shown, two of the first hits are all about snapshots instead of > explaining the basic meaning of the headline colums. > > Even adding `-snapshot' to try to cut to the chase seems only to > produce plenty of discussion about zfs and zfs list but so far I find > no simple and succinct exposition of what the heads mean. > > man zfs has one occurrence of `REFER' and it is not about its > meaning. Searching "man zfs" on `list output' gets no hits at all. > > Such a strait forward question must have a full answer somewhere. > > Can anyone help me find it? > > > _______________________________________________ > openindiana-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss > _______________________________________________ openindiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
