When it comes to file system layout and partitioning, what are the thoughts behind using BtrFS for the root partition and either XFS or Ext4 for the home? What are the advantages/disadvantages to each? I know Ext4 might be more of the standard/stable options, however I believe it might be slower in speed to the other two. Thanks!
There is no force on this earth that will make me use XFS for anything.
In the past I’ve had catastrophic mission critical data loss due to XFS failure (even though backups existed, of course) and nothing will convince me that it is anything but a massive headache.
I guess I’m glad I went with BtrFS for root and Ext4 for home lol lol!
Did you allow extra space for root to allow for snapshots?
Yessir…is that good? Bad? Lol
If you let some extra space for the snaps nothing wrong. You might want to visit the BTRFS/snapper section in Yast and maybe tune back the frequency of snap shots and how many are kept.
Ok, I’ll give that a try. Thanks!
I’m so new to this, I find myself fumbling around in YAsT trying to figure everything out. It seems like almost a one-stop-shop for most things in SUSE. I’m currently trying to find the Video Drivers for my laptop (ATI) and my desktop (Nvidia).
Thanks for the tips!
The nvidia repo is already available for 13.2. Just add it in YaST->Software Repositories->Add->Community Repositories.
ATI’s fglrx driver does not work on 13.2 at the moment though, because of the new Xorg.
See also FGLRX – Warning openSUSE 13.2 / Tumbleweed - News and Announcements - openSUSE Forums .
But, depending on your particular graphics card, the open source radeon driver might be good enough or even better…
Okay, thanks!
Where do I get the open source drivers for ATI? Or is that already used on openSUSE by default? My laptop is ATI, the GPU seems to work fine - I can never correctly wake from sleep, but that’s on all Linux distro’s not just SUSE - so maybe I don’t need to do anything driver wise…
When Ext4 was released I instead moved to Xfs. Unlike the previous poster I never had any problems with it. It’s development has sped up lately and it has a lot of support in the enterprise.
Quite recently I moved to btrfs for all my backups. I did so because it has features like checksumming and compression. I do have a lot of issues with snapper snapshots taking up space without real use, so I just disable snapper. I do think it is a good tool though. I would argue btrfs is the future and it would be best to learn it now.
if you need a more classic filesystem that is just reliable and well tested you might want to go with ext4 or Xfs.
Pull the cord when XFS is writing.
On 11/04/2014 04:56 PM, Miuku wrote:
>
> nightwishfan;2672900 Wrote:
>> Unlike the previous poster I never had any problems with it. It’s
>> development has sped up lately and it has a lot of support in the
>> enterprise.
> Pull the cord when XFS is writing.
>
>
Pull the cord when <insert supposedly full proof fs here> is writing.
(I dare you!)
XFS is Red Hat’s enterprise filesystem (until they finally trust btrfs).
Because ext4 is deficient as an enterprise level fs, Red Hat has spent quite a
bit of time making sure XFS is “up to snuff”. So… I think you can trust XFS
at least as much as ext4 (which isn’t all that trusted by SUSE).
In the USA Red Hat dominates SUSE, so I end up having to use a lot of XFS.
Obviously, SUSE has supported XFS for much longer than Red Hat… which is
pretty much the norm… Red Hat has only recently begun to see outside the extfs
genre.
On 2014-11-04 17:56, EmpireITtech wrote:
>
> Miuku;2672806 Wrote:
>> There is no force on this earth that will make me use XFS for anything.
>>
>> In the past I’ve had catastrophic mission critical data loss due to XFS
>> failure (even though backups existed, of course) and nothing will
>> convince me that it is anything but a massive headache.
I have had data los with all types of filesystem. Hum, not with btrfs
and ntfs… wait, I don’t use btrfs, so that’s why :-p
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
On 2014-11-04 23:36, nightwishfan wrote:
>
> When Ext4 was released I instead moved to Xfs. Unlike the previous
> poster I never had any problems with it. It’s development has sped up
> lately and it has a lot of support in the enterprise.
I have been using xfs for several years, and I’m very happy with it. I
would prefer reiserfs, but it doesn’t scale that well, and its
maintenance is lagging behind, unfortunately.
> Quite recently I moved to btrfs for all my backups. I did so because it
> has features like checksumming and compression. I do have a lot of
> issues with snapper snapshots taking up space without real use, so I
> just disable snapper. I do think it is a good tool though. I would argue
> btrfs is the future and it would be best to learn it now.
I like the idea of a filesystem with compression, but I understand it is
one of the still “beta” features of btrfs. At least on 13.1.
On the other hand, backup of xfs to xfs allows you certain features that
yield a very fast imaging backup. No compression, but compaction.
As for why btrfs on root, well, it offers rollback on updates and
installs, natively. For instance. Devs want that, on YaST.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
On 2014-11-04 23:56, Miuku wrote:
>
> nightwishfan;2672900 Wrote:
>> Unlike the previous poster I never had any problems with it. It’s
>> development has sped up lately and it has a lot of support in the
>> enterprise.
> Pull the cord when XFS is writing.
Pull the cord while reiserfs or btrfs or ext4 is writing.
Of course, a filesystem with heavy optimization in memory can be damaged
if stopped like that. So use an UPS. Reiserfs, on the other hand, was
designed for that scenario (pull the cord), but sometimes it got
corrupted royally, absolutely beyond repair.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
Yes, they are installed and used by default. (unless you boot with “nomodeset” or to “Recovery Mode”)
To check, have a look into /var/log/Xorg.0.log, or run this e.g.:
glxinfo | grep render
YaST->Hardware Information should show as well which driver is in use, as does KDE’s KInfocenter.
The difference being Ext4 survives this, repairs what can be repaired and gets on with its life (most of the time). XFS on the other hand more often than not ends up with a non-boot able system.
There’s tons of “XFS ****ing sucks” threads on Google regarding corruption, data loss and highly damaged systems due to system crashes and/or power failures when using XFS - I’m not making this stuff up so go and Google for some examples.
On 2014-11-05 11:06, Miuku wrote:
> There’s tons of “XFS ****ing sucks” threads on Google regarding
> corruption, data loss and highly damaged systems due to system crashes
> and/or power failures when using XFS - I’m not making this stuff up so
> go and Google for some examples.
Just report each issue on the xfs mail list. They do care. They solved
the problem I had, where the opensuse devs refused, because I use nvidia
proprietary drivers, and now there is a patch on the kernel.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
I heard that EXT support compression too.
Hey wolfi - once I add the repo, how do I apply the new nVidia drivers to my system?
Here’s my current repos which should all be default plus the nVidia and Mozilla ones added:
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/673/gJB6rC.png