Is BTRFS dead? Who is the new king?

[hendersj]

On Thu, 11 Jan 2018 10:06:02 +0000, swerdna wrote:

> V_idocq;2833345 Wrote:
>> Use ext4 for everything A filesystem that continues to create
>> snapshots like Btrfs, it seems that knowing that she is ill she
>> continually supplies her medicines
>
> What an interesting thought.

Interesting, but I think it considers only that the problem could be a
filesystem problem - and not something like an update you want to back
out or a configuration change that breaks things.

Snapshots are useful for more than just recovering from filesystem
errors.

--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

[V_ido]

Interesting, but I think it considers only that the problem could be a
filesystem problem - and not something like an update you want to back
out or a configuration change that breaks things.

Snapshots are useful for more than just recovering from filesystem
errors.

There are other tools to create snapshots, with fewer btrfs problems.
Having an external HD is better in my opinion
Btrfs should take care only of the filesystem, already in the way of partitioning during the installation and the creation of a lot of subvolumes gave me the impression of something complicated.
I had btrfs when it was put by default and I left enthusiastically doing the installer ... but it caused me only problems, you say, look at the Wiki make this change go here .. and then .... etc, noooo I do not watch the wiki and I do not make any changes.
Maybe now it's better ... I do not know, I'm going off

Mine is just a nobody's weight

[ChuangTzu]

btrfs is ok, had some problems with it on openSUSE and Mageia, nothing catastrophic, but also did not see any real advantage over the venerable ext4. I do think openSUSE jumped the gun a bit defaulting to btrfs, time will tell if it lasts or not.

[hendersj]

On Thu, 11 Jan 2018 20:16:01 +0000, V idocq wrote:

>> Interesting, but I think it considers only that the problem could be a
>> filesystem problem - and not something like an update you want to back
>> out or a configuration change that breaks things.
>>
>> Snapshots are useful for more than just recovering from filesystem
>> errors.
>
> There are other tools to create snapshots, with fewer btrfs problems.
> Having an external HD is better in my opinion Btrfs should take care
> only of the filesystem, already in the way of partitioning during the
> installation and the creation of a lot of subvolumes gave me the
> impression of something complicated.
> I had btrfs when it was put by default and I left enthusiastically
> doing the installer ... but it caused me only problems, you say, look
> at the Wiki make this change go here .. and then .... etc, noooo I do
> not watch the wiki and I do not make any changes.
> Maybe now it's better ... I do not know, I'm going off
>
> Mine is just a nobody's weight

Sorry to hear you've had a bad experience with it. For me, btrfs has
worked like a champ - no problems, use the machine every day (using it
right now, in fact).

There are obviously a million ways to do this kind of thing - that's the
OSS way for a lot of things.

Jim

--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

[aaccioly]

What tools would you guys recommend to replace Btrfs Snapshots (assuming a EXT4 or XFS filesystem)? I have a love/hate relationship with Btrfs.

The bad:

1. It is kinda hard to answer questions like "How much space will I get back if I delete that snapshot?".
2. Automatic rebalance makes my system unbelievably slow. I often have to init3, restart kwin and Plasma after the rebalance
3. There are so many subvolumes... Understanding the structure can be difficult.

The good:

Snapper + Installation / Administration snapshots + ability to boot to a previous snapshot often saves my bacon. Everything works very well out of the box.

Every time that I do a fresh install I feel indecisive about Brtfs.

[cjcox]

On 08/04/2017 02:36 AM, Miuku wrote:
>
> psijic;2832663 Wrote:
>> Yes but it's a default system in the OpenSUSE.
> They weren't in any way involved in the development of BTRFS so it's not
> surprising they didn't choose to use it.
>
> They use other methods to achieve the same features.
>

??? Those features being? Red Hat doesn't have a BTRFS replacement or
filesystem + extras that covers what BTRFS can do.

[xorbe]

What tools would you guys recommend to replace Btrfs Snapshots (assuming a EXT4 or XFS filesystem)? I have a love/hate relationship with Btrfs.

The bad:

1. It is kinda hard to answer questions like "How much space will I get back if I delete that snapshot?".
2. Automatic rebalance makes my system unbelievably slow. I often have to init3, restart kwin and Plasma after the rebalance
3. There are so many subvolumes... Understanding the structure can be difficult.

The good:

Snapper + Installation / Administration snapshots + ability to boot to a previous snapshot often saves my bacon. Everything works very well out of the box.

Every time that I do a fresh install I feel indecisive about Brtfs.

Okay this is my crazy plan that works:

/dev/sda1 - small uefi partition
/dev/sda2 - 24 GB / ext4
/dev/sda3 - 12 GB swap
/dev/sda4 - the rest /home ext4

I boot with USB rescue and "dd if=/dev/sda bs=1M count=xxxxx | gzip -1 > `date +%Y%m%d.ssd.gz`" on a mounted partition on /dev/sdb (different drive!!!)

/home just gets a gzip with the normal system running.

I had to restore once, that's "zcat filename.ssd.gz | dd of=/dev/sda bs=16K"

I guess the tricky part is computing count=xxxxx from cfdisk /dev/sda partition table, making sure the all the math pans out. The reason swap follows root is in the event of a small typo it'll only trash swap, theoretically. It's very nice to have a precise backup of root. I could literally swap drives, and have my system up and running in a few minutes, though with some minor email loss of about ~1 week depending on last /home gzip. Yeah I should cron that to daily ...

[Fraser_Bell]

What tools would you guys recommend to replace Btrfs Snapshots (assuming a EXT4 or XFS filesystem)? I have a love/hate relationship with Btrfs.

The bad:

1. It is kinda hard to answer questions like "How much space will I get back if I delete that snapshot?".
2. Automatic rebalance makes my system unbelievably slow. I often have to init3, restart kwin and Plasma after the rebalance
3. There are so many subvolumes... Understanding the structure can be difficult.

The good:

Snapper + Installation / Administration snapshots + ability to boot to a previous snapshot often saves my bacon. Everything works very well out of the box.

Every time that I do a fresh install I feel indecisive about Brtfs.

Hmmm. *I* would say stick with btrfs in your case.

[aaccioly]

Okay this is my crazy plan that works:
I boot with USB rescue and "dd if=/dev/sda bs=1M count=xxxxx | gzip -1 > `date +%Y%m%d.ssd.gz`" on a mounted partition on /dev/sdb (different drive!!!)

/home just gets a gzip with the normal system running.

I had to restore once, that's "zcat filename.ssd.gz | dd of=/dev/sda bs=16K"

I guess the tricky part is computing count=xxxxx from cfdisk /dev/sda partition table, making sure the all the math pans out. The reason swap follows root is in the event of a small typo it'll only trash swap, theoretically. It's very nice to have a precise backup of root. I could literally swap drives, and have my system up and running in a few minutes, though with some minor email loss of about ~1 week depending on last /home gzip. Yeah I should cron that to daily ...

This is a nice but minimalistic way of doing things. I've tried to do something similar with Clonezilla but the " boot to live media" routine is just a recipe for procrastination. I'm very curious about hot snapshots of EXT4 partitions... I mean, Windows can do it with VSS on NTFS partitions. Macrium Reflect does a wonderful job, I have to admit that right now I'm using Windows + Macrium to backup my EXT4 partitions.

Hmmm. *I* would say stick with btrfs in your case.

Fair enough. But I would really like to know what are the alternatives to Btrfs snapshot functionality on an ext4 system. The only "alternative" that I know is LVM...

[pborowicz]

Red Hat's problem with btrfs is their incredibly old kernel. They standardize on a kernel and backport patches, but are throwing in the towel on btrfs because of a lack of expertise.

They were never a big btrfs player like Suse. Btrfs is in the kernel, it' here to stay and only improving. I keep xfs on my main data drive, but backup to a btrfs volume so I can snapshot etc. I'm also learning btrfs. Last time I talked to someone at Suse, they weren't recommending btrfs for large data drives, only the OS partitions.

This is how I have it configured and snapshots are awesome.