Btrfs devel - Dec 2011 - What is best practice when partitioning a device that holds one or more btr-filesystems

Hi,

What is best practice when partitioning a device that holds one or
more btr-filesystems

Do it the old fashioned way, and create a number of partitions
according to your needs? Or create one big btrfs partition and use
subvolumes where you would normally create different partitions?

What are the considerations for doing it either way?

-- 
Wilfred
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Hallo, Wilfred,

Du meintest am 14.12.11:
> What is best practice when partitioning a device that holds one or
> more btr-filesystems
"That depends ..."

My favourite installation is a bundle of 2-TByte-disks which btrfs  
presents as one big disk. data=raid0, metadata=raid1

It''s a kind of archive, p.e. for video *.mpeg

Viele Gruesse!
Helmut
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2011/12/14 Wilfred van Velzen
<wvvelzen@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> What is best practice when partitioning a device that holds one or
> more btr-filesystems
>
> Do it the old fashioned way, and create a number of partitions
> according to your needs? Or create one big btrfs partition and use
> subvolumes where you would normally create different partitions?
>
> What are the considerations for doing it either way?
>
it depends,

Currently I am using the old fashioned setup becouse of a couple of reasons:
* I converted some of them from ext4
* Selecting the right subvolume to boot from is not easy (i know it is
posible, but have not yet got the time to look into it deep enough)
* If one of the filesystems gets destroyed due too a btrfs bug, i
still have the other ones (I have currently "/", "/home" and
a backup
of "/home" which is never automounted)


Simon
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On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 7:21 PM, Mitch Harder
<mitch.harder@sabayonlinux.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 7:00 AM, Wilfred van Velzen
<wvvelzen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What is best practice when partitioning a device that holds one or
>> more btr-filesystems
>>
>
> When it comes to "best practices" in btrfs filesystem layouts,
your
> primary consideration should be to make yourself robust to potential
> filesystem failure.
>
> Of course this should be true of any storage arrangement.
>
> But if you''re going to be playing with rc kernels and applying
patches
> off the list, you might want to break it up into multiple partitions
> so as to mitigate the problem if one partition picks up a
> inconsistency.
>
> On the other hand, it''s also good for people to use the volume and
> subvolume features.  There''s many different ways for people to
make
> use of volumes and subvolumes, and it''s good to explore those
> features.
Well, of course there are different usecases for different situations.

What I want to find out is, if you should partition differently when
you are using btrfs compared to partitioning for the other
older/regular filesystems for linux, for regular (production)
usecases.

(I''m not interested in what early adopter users do when they are using
rc kernels...)

http://btrfs.ipv5.de/index.php?title=UseCases#What_is_best_practice_when_partitioning_a_device_that_holds_one_or_more_btr-filesystems

-- 
Wilfred.
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On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Gareth Pye <gareth@cerberos.id.au>
wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Wilfred van Velzen
<wvvelzen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> (I''m not interested in what early adopter users do when they
are using
>> rc kernels...)
>
> Yet your going to use a FS without a working fsck? That puts you in early
> adopter territory to me.
Yeah maybe. But I''m still not interested in it regarding partitioning!
;)

But actually I decided not to use it for the production environment.
The missing working fsck is one of the reasons.
Although opensuse supports it and Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 is
going to support it with their next SP release in Februari, and Fedora
might use it as default in their next release... Did I miss any?

But I''m going to use it at home and probably in some test environments
rsn... ;)

Wilfred
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On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 4:42 AM, Wilfred van Velzen <wvvelzen@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Gareth Pye <gareth@cerberos.id.au>
wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Wilfred van Velzen
<wvvelzen@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> (I''m not interested in what early adopter users do when
they are using
>>> rc kernels...)
>>
>> Yet your going to use a FS without a working fsck? That puts you in
early
>> adopter territory to me.
>
> Yeah maybe. But I''m still not interested in it regarding
partitioning! ;)
I''d just use one big partition. That way all subvolume can share free
space, making space use more efficient.

If you decide to go that route, the missing feature is quota and space
accounting. At this moment you can''t tell which subvol use how much,
and limit it. There are (unmerged) patches for that though.
>
> But actually I decided not to use it for the production environment.
> The missing working fsck is one of the reasons.
> Although opensuse supports it and Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 is
> going to support it with their next SP release in Februari, and Fedora
> might use it as default in their next release... Did I miss any?
Oracle linux :D
> But I''m going to use it at home and probably in some test
environments rsn... ;)
If you''re keeping your options open, try zfsonlinux as well. It might
be better suited for certain needs.

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Fajar
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On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Wilfred van Velzen <wvvelzen@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Gareth Pye <gareth@cerberos.id.au>
wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Wilfred van Velzen
<wvvelzen@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> (I''m not interested in what early adopter users do when
they are using
>>> rc kernels...)
>>
>> Yet your going to use a FS without a working fsck? That puts you in
early
>> adopter territory to me.
>
> Yeah maybe. But I''m still not interested in it regarding
partitioning! ;)
>
> But actually I decided not to use it for the production environment.
> The missing working fsck is one of the reasons.
> Although opensuse supports it and Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 is
> going to support it with their next SP release in Februari, and Fedora
> might use it as default in their next release... Did I miss any?
MeeGo has been using btrfs by default right from the start. In the
current versions, we even install everything in a single btrfs
partition, and use 2 subvolumes (/home and /), and create a factory
reset snapshot of the / filesystem at installation.

Auke
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On 12/15/2011 03:51 AM, Wilfred van Velzen wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 7:21 PM, Mitch Harder
> <mitch.harder@sabayonlinux.org>  wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 7:00 AM, Wilfred van
Velzen<wvvelzen@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> What is best practice when partitioning a device that holds one or
>>> more btr-filesystems
>>>
>>
>> When it comes to "best practices" in btrfs filesystem
layouts, your
>> primary consideration should be to make yourself robust to potential
>> filesystem failure.
>>
>> Of course this should be true of any storage arrangement.
>>
>> But if you''re going to be playing with rc kernels and applying
patches
>> off the list, you might want to break it up into multiple partitions
>> so as to mitigate the problem if one partition picks up a
>> inconsistency.
>>
>> On the other hand, it''s also good for people to use the volume
and
>> subvolume features.  There''s many different ways for people to
make
>> use of volumes and subvolumes, and it''s good to explore those
>> features.
>
> Well, of course there are different usecases for different situations.
>
> What I want to find out is, if you should partition differently when
> you are using btrfs compared to partitioning for the other
> older/regular filesystems for linux, for regular (production)
> usecases.
Maybe just skip partitioning altogether ;)  - format the device to btrfs 
and use subvolumes instead of your usual partitions (some /boot 
restrictions apply). You won''t be able to use grub2 though, but
syslinux
will work.
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dima wrote (ao):
> Maybe just skip partitioning altogether ;)
+1
> format the device to
> btrfs and use subvolumes instead of your usual partitions (some
> /boot restrictions apply). You won''t be able to use grub2 though,
> but syslinux will work.
Grub2 has btrfs support for quite some time now, which you are aware of
I assume. Grub2 can''t cope with / in a subvolume or something?

	Sander

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On 12/15/2011 05:25 PM, Sander wrote:
> dima wrote (ao):
>> Maybe just skip partitioning altogether ;)
>
> +1
>
>> format the device to
>> btrfs and use subvolumes instead of your usual partitions (some
>> /boot restrictions apply). You won''t be able to use grub2
though,
>> but syslinux will work.
>
> Grub2 has btrfs support for quite some time now, which you are aware of
> I assume. Grub2 can''t cope with / in a subvolume or something?
No, btrfs has nothing to do with this. It is just that grub2 cannot be 
installed to a partition-less drive (at least 1 partition is needed), 
while syslinux can.
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dima wrote (ao):
> >>format the device to
> >>btrfs and use subvolumes instead of your usual partitions (some
> >>/boot restrictions apply). You won''t be able to use grub2
though,
> >>but syslinux will work.
> >
> >Grub2 has btrfs support for quite some time now, which you are aware of
> >I assume. Grub2 can''t cope with / in a subvolume or something?
> 
> No, btrfs has nothing to do with this. It is just that grub2 cannot
> be installed to a partition-less drive (at least 1 partition is
> needed), while syslinux can.
Ah, wasn''t aware of that. Thanks for the info!

	Sander
 
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