Where can I find docs/tutorials on BTRFS?

[mirto]

Hi all,
In a new installed machine the default file system suggested was BTRFS.

During a recent update I noticed that a snapshot was automatically done.

Where can I find documentation / tutorials on BTRFS specifically snapshots during updates?

[Arrababiski]

You can start here:

Btrfs

And then…

Welcome to BTRFS documentation! — BTRFS documentation

[Teo]

And some more

Btrfs Best Practice

When using btrfs, you can simply do everything as before, but to take advantage of its benefits, you’ll need to do some things differently. UEFI and GPT Use GPT as the partition table and create a single EFI partition marked as bootable. why ? single large btrfs partition Use a single large btrfs partition and create subvolumes instead of using multiple partitions. why ? swap Use a real swap partition instead of a swap file why? btrfs layout Use a btrfs layout that is supported by as many…

[HowTo] Alternate method for BTRFS Snapshots

Hi all, This is the easiest and quickest way I’ve found to enable BTRFS snapper snapshots on Manjaro, after a clean install (tested on Plasma version but should work on all). REMEMBER! to select btrfs filesystem option during the installation process. Not the default, which is ext4. After a fresh installation of Manjaro, right after your first boot into the new installed system, immediately remove timeshift to avoid any timeshift snapshot if you make an update. Here are the steps: pamac rem…

[HowTo] get "out of space" with BTRFS

The “out of space” problem of btrfs Anyone who uses btrfs should know about the “out of space” problem of btrfs. Here i try to briefly explain how this can happen. When btrfs gets into the “out of space” situation, it no longer has any room to move to free itself. Then no more file operations can take place. Often you can’t even delete files. The solution is explained in the manjaro btrfs wiki. But how does the problem actually arise? Let’s take a quick look at some made-up scenarios to get …

[HowTo] Manual rollback with btrfs

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ Why roll back? Now btrfs pays off! With a good layout and snapper. Please read all of the instructions through to the end before you begin. Only a few steps are necessary for a rollback: Boot a rescue Manjaro [details=“Where is the “good” snapshot?”] First look at the disks with gparted and search for the device with the btrfs file system that should get the rollback. Then mount this volume in the 1st terminal: mkdir /mnt/ROOT; cd /mnt/ROOT My btrfs volume i…

[HowTo] get Space on BTRFS

If you encounter a situation where a Btrfs volume is out of space, There is a way out However, you have to accept that Btrfs is a “strange” filesystem. So if you’re doing things that would help with other filesystems, it might NOT help with btrfs. If you want to know why, check out the wiki Here are a few simple tips: 1. Only use btrfs to meassure the unallocated space on your filesystem: sudo btrfs filesystem usage / 2. Look at “Device unallocated:” If the Unallocated size is less than 10GB…

[HowTo] use btrfs send / receive

Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ This is a wiki post, so feel free to contribute (but please stay on topic) Btrfs is a very different file system (compared to others). Some parts even look weird. send/receive btrfs is weird ! Btrfs send Takes an existing snapshot (read-only) and converts it to a data stream. Btrfs receive Takes a data stream and creates a snapshot (and makes it read-only) Every command on this wiki must be run as root, or with sudo Copy If you pipe send to receive, a copy of the…

[HowTo] Copy/Move a subvolume from one partition to another

Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ While there are a some applications, which provide a tooling for doing incremental backups, yet there is no simple tutorial which just explain how to move a subvolume. That is the reason why I try to explain the basic steps here. Preparation Install pv: pamac install pv pv is needed to monitor the progress, when streaming or piping on the terminal, but is rather optional. Switch to root: sudo --shell --user root Set the source and target path: export SOURC…

[Molski]

The man pages are very undervalued for btrfs-tools.

You always can: man btrfs-subcommand.

e.g.

man btrfs-scrub

They are very well done and concise.

If you get hung up on terminology or commands, then you can resort to searching and find tons and tons of information.

[qruqs]

@Molski

man pages are very undervalued

So is “info”: info btrfs for more in depth, and complete, documentation. Accessible (in this case at least) as man 8 btrfs. Perhaps it’s different on how man is installed, or if one has info installed or not (I’m not that knowledgeable) but I only get a mere summary when man btrfs is used. A summary is often what one needs, but sometimes it’s just interesting to read the full docs.

info: texinfo 7.2-1
man : man-db 2.13.1-1