I have just read an article comparing btrfs on Fedora with Ext4/LVM.
From Fedora 33, btrfs is now standard. Apparently it needs a separate
ext4 /boot partition, because btrfs and Grub2 don't work together well.

I still use ext4, and the general advice from the article seems to be,
don't change unless you have a specific reason to do so. My regular
backup partition as ext4 was very unreliable, so I changed it to XFS,
and I have had little trouble since the change. I don't use LVM or
RAID, so in my case, I probably should stick with what I have.

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On Fri, 1 Jan 2021 00:15:43 +1100, Doug Laidlaw wrote:

I have just read an article comparing btrfs on Fedora with Ext4/LVM.
From Fedora 33, btrfs is now standard. Apparently it needs a separate
ext4 /boot partition, because btrfs and Grub2 don't work together well.

I still use ext4, and the general advice from the article seems to be,
don't change unless you have a specific reason to do so. My regular
backup partition as ext4 was very unreliable, so I changed it to XFS,
and I have had little trouble since the change.

Hmmm, I would be worried if any partition was having problems let alone
my backup partitions.

I am a little curious about your setup/use.

Is the partition type GPT or Msdos?

What/how is your backup application?

My setup is GPT and I use rsync. If backing up /. I boot another install
to do the backup.



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On 1/1/21 12:26 am, Bit Twister wrote:

Hmmm, I would be worried if any partition was having problems let alone
my backup partitions.

I am a little curious about your setup/use.

Is the partition type GPT or Msdos?

What/how is your backup application?

My setup is GPT and I use rsync. If backing up /. I boot another install
to do the backup.

The backup partition is on an external Seagate drive. The output of
gdisk is as follows:

Partition table scan:
MBR: MBR only
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present


***************************************************************
Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format
in memory. THIS OPERATION IS POTENTIALLY DESTRUCTIVE! Exit by
typing 'q' if you don't want to convert your MBR partitions
to GPT format!
***************************************************************

For backups I use rsnapshot.

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On 01.01.2021 at 00:15, Doug Laidlaw scribbled:

I have just read an article comparing btrfs on Fedora with Ext4/LVM.
From Fedora 33, btrfs is now standard. Apparently it needs a
separate ext4 /boot partition, because btrfs and Grub2 don't work
together well.

Yes and no. There is a version of GRUB with btrfs support, but the
vanilla GRUB does not support it, indeed.

I still use ext4, and the general advice from the article seems to
be, don't change unless you have a specific reason to do so.

Bleh, I've been using btrfs for all my partitions (except /boot) for
over a year and a half now, and it has been rock-solid so far.
However, the RAID-5/-6 implementations of btrfs are dangerously
unstable and should not be used.

My regular backup partition as ext4 was very unreliable, so I changed it
to XFS, and I have had little trouble since the change.

XFS is a good choice. I've used it for many, many years.

I don't use LVM or RAID, so in my case, I probably should stick with what I

have.

btrfs offers more than just volume management or RAID. It has
transparent inline compression, inline defragmentation (not recommended
on SSDs), SSD performance optimizations, snapshotting capability, it's copy-on-write, and everything is checksummed. It's also very fast,
albeit that I don't have any data on how it compares to XFS or ext4 in
terms of performance.

--
With respect,
= Aragorn =


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* Origin: A noiseless patient Strider (2:250/1@fidonet)

Hello Doug!

Thursday December 31 2020 13:15, Doug Laidlaw wrote to All:

I have just read an article comparing btrfs on Fedora with Ext4/LVM.
From Fedora 33, btrfs is now standard. Apparently it needs a
separate ext4 /boot partition, because btrfs and Grub2 don't work
together well.

I still use ext4, and the general advice from the article seems to be,
don't change unless you have a specific reason to do so. My regular
backup partition as ext4 was very unreliable, so I changed it to XFS,
and I have had little trouble since the change. I don't use LVM or
RAID, so in my case, I probably should stick with what I have.

I use xfs on my mythbuntu service as it is the fastest file facility when deleting files and as some files are in the => 1GB category it helps keep
CPU utilisation under control. Speed to delete a file with xfs is under a second but for ext 4 it takes a long time and as I can be recording up to
48 programs at once it is important and no usually 3 - 7 programs.


Vincent


SEEN-BY: 250/1 3

On 1/1/21 11:22 am, Aragorn wrote:

btrfs offers more than just volume management or RAID. It has
transparent inline compression, inline defragmentation (not recommended
on SSDs), SSD performance optimizations, snapshotting capability, it's copy-on-write, and everything is checksummed. It's also very fast,
albeit that I don't have any data on how it compares to XFS or ext4 in
terms of performance.

Thanks for the feedback. I switched my backup partition from ext4 to
XFS for reliability. It has let me down a couple of times only
(possibly associated with power failures,) within several years. Its
only negative is that it can't be checked with fsck on bootup, but apart
from the above occasions, that has not mattered.

The advantages of btrfs seem to be more for power users. Reading about
it, it almost needs a new driver license. I spend too much time at my computer, but I don't make extensive changes. It seems to me that the original advice, equivalent to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is the
right one for me.

Doug.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: Aioe.org NNTP Server (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 2021-01-26, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:

On 1/1/21 11:22 am, Aragorn wrote:

btrfs offers more than just volume management or RAID. It has
transparent inline compression, inline defragmentation (not recommended
on SSDs), SSD performance optimizations, snapshotting capability, it's
copy-on-write, and everything is checksummed. It's also very fast,
albeit that I don't have any data on how it compares to XFS or ext4 in
terms of performance.

Thanks for the feedback. I switched my backup partition from ext4 to
XFS for reliability. It has let me down a couple of times only
(possibly associated with power failures,) within several years. Its
only negative is that it can't be checked with fsck on bootup, but apart from the above occasions, that has not mattered.

You got it for reliability and it has let you down a couple of time? Do
you see a contratication there? My ext4 has not let me down every ( may
years).

The advantages of btrfs seem to be more for power users. Reading about
it, it almost needs a new driver license. I spend too much time at my computer, but I don't make extensive changes. It seems to me that the original advice, equivalent to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is the right one for me.

Sounds to me like it is broke.

Doug.

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* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 26.01.2021 at 16:50, William Unruh scribbled:

On 2021-01-26, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:

On 1/1/21 11:22 am, Aragorn wrote:

btrfs offers more than just volume management or RAID. It has
transparent inline compression, inline defragmentation (not
recommended on SSDs), SSD performance optimizations, snapshotting
capability, it's copy-on-write, and everything is checksummed.
It's also very fast, albeit that I don't have any data on how it
compares to XFS or ext4 in terms of performance.

Thanks for the feedback. I switched my backup partition from ext4
to XFS for reliability. It has let me down a couple of times only (possibly associated with power failures,) within several years.
Its only negative is that it can't be checked with fsck on bootup,
but apart from the above occasions, that has not mattered.

You got it for reliability and it has let you down a couple of time?
Do you see a contratication there? My ext4 has not let me down every
( may years).

XFS aggressively caches and buffers, and only does last-minute commits,
which means that in the even of a power loss, some data may also be
lost.

I think that's what Doug is referring to. He's either way using XFS
for his backup partition, not ext4.


--
With respect,
= Aragorn =


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.7.21 (GNU/Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Strider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 2021-01-26, Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be> wrote:

On 26.01.2021 at 16:50, William Unruh scribbled:

On 2021-01-26, Doug Laidlaw <laidlaws@hotkey.net.au> wrote:

On 1/1/21 11:22 am, Aragorn wrote:

btrfs offers more than just volume management or RAID. It has
transparent inline compression, inline defragmentation (not
recommended on SSDs), SSD performance optimizations, snapshotting
capability, it's copy-on-write, and everything is checksummed.
It's also very fast, albeit that I don't have any data on how it
compares to XFS or ext4 in terms of performance.

Thanks for the feedback. I switched my backup partition from ext4
to XFS for reliability. It has let me down a couple of times only
(possibly associated with power failures,) within several years.
Its only negative is that it can't be checked with fsck on bootup,
but apart from the above occasions, that has not mattered.

You got it for reliability and it has let you down a couple of time?
Do you see a contratication there? My ext4 has not let me down every
( may years).

XFS aggressively caches and buffers, and only does last-minute commits,
which means that in the even of a power loss, some data may also be
lost.

Of course backups are most often needed due to problems on powerloss. So
a backup filesystem that fails just when it is needed is pretty useless.
I would say it is broken.

I think that's what Doug is referring to. He's either way using XFS
for his backup partition, not ext4.

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