3 ms·
A subvolume for your Maildir, mounted with "-o nodatacow", would have prevented the first issue. If btrfs could modify that behavior automatically using heuris
by tadfisher 10y ago
A subvolume for your Maildir, mounted with "-o nodatacow", would have prevented the first issue.
If btrfs could modify that behavior automatically using heuristics it would truly be general-purpose. However there are some inherent tradeoffs of that approach that users need to consider, and I consider that downside a basic constraint of the Unix filesystem abstraction.
- avar 10y agoI think I did try stuff like that, including mounting / with nodatacow and other similar options. I walked away with the impression that btrfs was a powerful tool for certain use-cases, but definitely not something I'd call a "general purpose" filesystem given the need to be fairly knowledgeable about its internals to use it for common desktop use-cases. To me a general purpose filesystem is something like ext4, it doesn't have amazing performance, it's not bad either, but generally nothing unexpected happens with it and I can just leave it there and don't have to worry about it. The btrfs filesystem seemed like the opposite of that. A very powerful tool whose power and flexibility made it less general purpose by virtue of needing to keep close tabs on how you were using it.
- ryao 10y agoIf you are open to trying again, I suggest trying ZFS. It should work well here.
- ryao 10y agonodatacow means no checksums. Whatever performance problem it was intended to resolve should also recur the moment that a snapshot is done, because then CoW re-enters the picture.