BTRFS Filesystem

Feedback Feature Request
29

yes, it is. however, I only use the free drivers

very interesting problem in regards to out of ram. very weird indeed. have you set sysctl -w vm.swappiness=1? to set that permanently in the /etc/sysctl.d folder the file 99-swappiness.conf with the setting vm.swappiness=1

you know what. i have no idea what advantage it has at the moment either. however, i read somewhere that a volume is like a folder you store data in

30

yeah it seems to only automatically partition a ext4 filesystem for you. you have to manually do everything in manual partition, which fails

31

No I did not set that. I have seen that one the net but some pros said that it is not really advised on SSD and/or with plenty of RAM without swap or somethign liek that. I have leartn that it is betetr not to mess to much with the system when it runs butter smooth and snappy like Manjaro :wink: I have tried many other distros these weeks where you would definitely need like dozens of tweaks just to feel them running okayish…

1 Like
32

I have made a FAT boot you can see, on EFI boot and GPT… I guess I messed up right? It works perfectly, anyway,… so i do not complain. System is faster than my Win10 was…

33

nope you didn’t mess up at all. you just prepared your system for large disk drives larger than 2tb

34

Hi!
I converted my machine to btrfs a couple months back while I was writing this

  1. I’ve 3 volumes, root, home , snapshots and grub-btrfs.
  2. I’ve try snapper(cli/gui) and timeshift.
    2.1 Timeshift is easier but more basic, snapper is more complete but more difficult.
  3. I notice my system a little bit slower but it’s normal, ext4 is faster than btrfs.
  4. My system doesn’t lost any performance with time.

About btrfs as default

  1. I don’t think that’s a good idea.
    1.1 A lot of noobs still having problems with the partition process, if you add them volumes,subvolumes… Wow!!! that could blow their minds and the forum…
  2. Still have some issues, I wouldn’t recommended for production machines if you don’t know what you’re doing.
35

I was working on making btrfs a single checkbox automatic option in calamares, but my computer broke and I’ve been waiting for a new one before continuing.

This that need implementation:

  • better subvolume layout to exclude pkgcache and other low value data from snapshots
  • automatic maintenance services so users don’t run out of space because they didn’t know to balance their volumes
  • warning system and easy recovery tools if user runs out of space
  • automatic setup of timeshift-autosnap and grub-btrfs
  • checkbox to enable all this in calamares
8 Likes
36

I would love to see btrfs receiving more attention on Manjaro. Its features, particularly snapshots, are too powerful not to receive prime attention. And with credible distributions such as Suse and now Fedora defaulting to it, in my view this is an are where Manjaro seems to be falling behind.

I have defaulted to Manjaro as my primary distro as I find its core principles practically unbeatable in the desktop Linux world, but I have found its btrfs implementation to be unreliable as my system kept hanging periodically for long stretches each time. Ended up having to format into ext4 and snapshot with timeshift in rsync. Not ideal, but stable.

37

Hi. How has this hourly snapshotting setup been working for you? Stable?

I had that for a while on my i7 with SSD, but after around 100 snapshots, I suffered some data corruption problems on the snapshots themselves. Running a timeshift checking command ended up erasing most snapshots and from that point onwards it was a horror story that only got solved when I gave up on brtfs and reverted to ext4 on Manjaro.

38

I’m afraid he won’t be replying to you anymore, @gustavo. He has told us a few days ago that he’s gone back to using Microsoft Windows, and that he won’t be coming back to the forum anymore. :man_shrugging:

39

Thanks for letting me know. Too bad. No snapshots on Windows… :wink:

1 Like
40

I’m using BTRFS and snapshots for quiet sometime, i have not faced any issues till now. I take snapshot at boot and keep 5.

41

The problems I was facing then have been fixed. Things are getting more stable noy

42

I don’t have a particularly ambitious setup but I’ve been running BTRFS for a month now, and no-one’s died… yet. Was planning on using it on my home desktop when I re-install Manjaro in the coming days.

2 Likes
43

But those can not really be considered as show-stoppers, as seen from openSUSE or Fedora. I would not even consider it unstable features only because built-in encryption is missing, TLP requiring a certain config option to be set and the tool btrfs check still having issues with the recommendation of not being used for the time being.

I am currently facing exactly that dilemma, coming from Manjaro XFCE installed on EXT4 with TimeShift running in RSYNC mode with the intention to move to Manjaro KDE on BTRFS mainly for being able to boot into snapshots with grub-btrfs and using Timeshift in BTRFS mode.

Looking at the pros and cons, I’d say the benefit of being able to boot into snapshots alone outweighs any possible disadvantage. The filesystem BTRFS itself is already considered to be stable after all, isn’t it?

I assume the recommended way to give it a try is by installing using Manjaro Architect?

I still have to do more research first, especially on partition layout with swap file for hibernation, subvolumes and mount options. This is about a couple of laptops / netbooks and I’m not interested in using snapper, but Timeshift instead.

Any more hints are very much appreciated.

1 Like
44

The same for me : i use BTRFS for my root partition, with Timeshift / Timeshift-autosnap / grub-btrfs activated. And XFS for my Home partition. It’s a thing i take from OpenSuse install and now that i run a Manjaro Distro i use it too…

1 Like
45

Why? Wouldn’t a @home BTRFS subvolume make more sense?

46

I choose BTRFS because of its snapshots capabilities. I associate it with Timeshift so i can easily reverse back to a previous state of my system if an upgrade or an install goes wrong.
I do not want my home partition to go to a previous state as i already make real backups of my personal data. So BTRFS make no sense for me on my home partition.

47

BTRFS offers more benefits than just the ability to work with snapshots. So my take on that filesystem considered to be stable enough for production use (as long as you are aware of the current caveats) coupled with a proper backup strategy should do fine for /home as well.

Still being in the preparations phase, I am now wondering about the following limitation concerning Timeshift in BTRFS mode:

BTRFS snapshots are supported only on BTRFS systems having an Ubuntu-type subvolume layout (with @ and @home subvolumes).

Does that mean that these two are the only allowed subvolumes for Timeshift to work, or does it mean that other subvolumes can be used as well as long as these two are setup that way?

Because I was thinking of using a swapfile for hibernation on a dedicated subvolume, which seems to be the only way with using a swapfile on BTRFS.

Any other recommendations for a BTRFS subvolume setup with just the EFI and one BTRFS partition?

I still would prefer to use timeshift + timeshift-autosnap instead of snapper + snap-pac despite its limitation, because that’s what I already know and use (in RSYNC mode though).

48

I have exactly that setup: dedicated swap volume with a swap file in it. In fact, you must do it like this because you want to turn off COW on the swap file and turning off COW on a file in the @ volume breaks the snapshot process.

The statement concerning the subvolume layout only means that timeshift always does snapshots of @ and you have the option of turning on snapshots for @home. You cannot change these names in timeshift.