Hello, I’ve run into some issues with my root partition that is btrfs. Apparently the filesystem gets full even if it shows about 7 GB of free space. The system simply won’t boot letting me know there is not enough space left on the device. So I guess 19 GB might not be enough for btrfs with snapshots. I have about 15 GB of unallocated space on the same drive next to my root partition. Can I do it on the fly without having to boot from a LiveCD? I couldn’t find any relevant tutorial how to do it.
Simply typing:
btrfs filesystem resize max /
apparently is not enough. I guess I need to resize the partition too, is that right?
No 19 gig is not enough with BTRFS the recommended is 40 GIG
A file system can only be as big as the partition it is on. You can expand a partition but it must be continues you can 't have any thing between the frees space you expand into and the partition you expand. and the free space mus be at the end. Wirth out seein haow you have things setup it is hard to say. But onec you expand the partition you also need to expand the file system. There is an exception if you use LVM containers you canin essence chain them to gether even across drives. But that is a different animal and you have to start out with it
Slightly off topic, but, I don’t think that is technically completely true.
If you have LVM, you can combine several partitions into a big filesystem. If you are using RAID, that effectively combines partitions, although that doesn’t always result in bigger, depending on which RAID mode you choose…
BTRFS can do a number of LVM-like tricks without (or even, with) LVM, so I suspect that BTRFS can do the same trick. So, probably you really would need to say “A file system can only be as big as the sum of the partitions on which it is based.” (Unless and until someone gets de-dupe working, and then it can be slightly bigger, or, at least, seem slightly bigger.)
Thank you for the replies. I have a continuous space prepared for my purpose and I do want to use snapper as it used to be quite helpful because I like to experiment with my installation. Snapper is a great tool but I underestimated the size of the partition.
I do use LVM on another drive but I don’t want to use it in this situation.
What should I do to resize my root btrfs then? Do I simply resize the partition in yast and then the btrfs filesystem in command-line?
I have never done this, but you might be able to add to the size of the file system by using the command
btrfs device add
Before using the command, backup your data.
Yes this is potential data losing procedures. BACKUP
Unfortunately I don’t know the BTRFS commands to extend the file system look them up. But you can use about any partitioning software to re-size the partition. DO NOT format the partition just re-size it. Then run the file system re-size command to adjust the file system.
I mentioned LVM but the BTRFS may eventually have lots of fancy stuff the last I checked it was still in a state of alpha testing. I would in no way rely on the lvam and RAID functions
But I maintain you can not put more FS in any container then it will hold. Partitions are just containers and yes you can add more containers and can chain LVM containers and maybe someday BTRFS stuff. note that LVM is a pure container where as BTRFS is a file system that thinks it is a container. You can put any file system in a LVM container