bcache on system disk (I need help)

Hello Opensuse Community!

My PC has a 120 GB SSD and a 2 TB HDD. i want to cache the HDD with the SSD with bcache. I think I would need a separate partition for /boot, /boot/efi and swap on the SSD. the rest of the SSD should cache the whole HDD. On the resulting bcache-device I want one large btrfs filesystem with /home and other as a separate subvolumes. I did not see an option for that in the Tumbleweed installer the last time I tried.

How can I do that? I am not afraid to invest time here initially but after that it should just work. I hope you can help me and I thank you in advance!

Ulrich

You can set up your bcache partition after installation, not necessarily during.

Looks like the following will work on openSUSE

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bcache

bcache-tools is available for Tumbleweed (and other openSUSE).

TSU

Thanks for your answer tsu2!

You are saying I could convert the existing disk in place? If so, what steps do I need to take to make grub recognize the new Layout?

Ulrich

Hi
FWIW, this is what I did awhile back setting up a bcache system after install. No need to do anything if it’s just an additional partition…
https://forums.opensuse.org/entry.php/159-Setting-up-bcache-on-openSUSE-13-2

But I want to cache my system Partition, the only partition…

Hi
Hmmm, Is this a fresh install?

If so, I would look at booting from a live TW rescue USB and create the cache and edit the system fstab as required (never done this).

So what is the end game for bcache, is there a particular part of the filesystem your wanting to increase performance, eg kvm image partition, database etc?

You only need /boot/efi no separate /boot, swap and /.

You need bootloader that can read bcache or you need to maintain your kernel on ESP. I am not aware of openSUSE officially supporting systemd-boot and grub2 does not support bcache so /boot should leave outside of it, otherwise you will need to maintain your kernels in bootloader manually.

I gave up on it. I now habe a root partition in the SSD and my /home HDD is bcached with another portion oft the SSD.
I think this is the easy way, that makes the least trouble.