2.2.0rc3 feedback

[incumbent]

And my workaround for now is to set com.apple.mimic=hfs which prevent this issue.

I am a bit surprised that this issue is not widely reported as some common tasks like installing a homebrew cask causes a kernel panic when using com.apple.mimic=apfs. I need to use that because I am running this Mac mimi as able content caching server and also as time machine backup server.

I don't know if you'd be into this idea but I run a few macOS Sonoma VMs on my household hypervisor and one of them is an iCloud Content Cache. it won't allow you to start the service without some changes in the EFI environment but it's been very stable and working hard ever since i launched it. I'm using proxmox.

[incumbent]

i had two datasets that were set to mimic=apfs. i did
that because my pool is on nvme, and it seemed logical. but i was getting kernel panics often as i rebuilt that workstation and had a big brew bundle install, etc.

i changed them to hfs mimic, exported pools, rebooted and imported and when the time came for creative cloud and calibre i watched disk images spawn and _i panicked_ but my workstation did not. anecdote isn't the singular form of data but i haven't seen this machine go 24 hours and now i have so there might be some voodoo to this.

[dmz]

I can say, unequivically, at this point that changing the mimic setting from apfs to hfs completely stopped the panics I was getting (that I referred to earlier in the thread). apfs mimic is just broken in some way - but it's also unnecessary, as far as I can tell; the system is perfectly happy with my hfs-mimic'd volumes.

[nodarkthings]

FWIW, I had reproducible issues copying data in the Finder to a dataset having com.apple.mimic set to hfs or apfs: some files get copied as empty (though they are not...) It mainly happens with big folders, but I guess it's rather a question of statistics...
Despite my many trials, there's no clear pattern, type of files or any other reason, except that using copy utilities (CCC, Chronosync or any other) behave correctly: it's some incompatibility with the Finder.
Setting com.apple.mimic=off fixes the issue, so that's my choice from now on.