4 ms·

What's the status with BTRFS? Also, is ZFS Linux performance still terrible, or did they find a way to fix that?

meaty 14y ago
btrfs is shipping with OpenSuSE and Oracle Linux apparently as stable. Not sure I trust it yet. If they ship it with Debian stable I will consider it. ZFS still uses FUSE AFAIK so is going to suck.
- skeletonjelly 14y ago
  Doubt ZFS is going to be anything but FUSE. Mandated by licenses. ZFS can be used with *BSD of course.
  - Andys 14y ago
    The linux ZFS kernel modules work well and are not prohibited by license. It simply will never be included in the Linux kernel.
- batgaijin 14y ago
  I thought they had a kernel module or something bypassing the need for fuse.
  - dmpk2k 14y ago
    Indeed there is: http://zfsonlinux.org/ http://zfsonlinux.org/ There's more than one ZFS port to Linux, which might be confusing some people. There's also the more dramatic option of using FreeBSD or one of the illumos derivatives, which work fine in my experience too.
- kzrdude 14y ago
  Btrfs will be in the next stable, and it will be Linux 3.2. Not a good idea to use that old version of linux if you want btrfs!
rogerbinns 14y ago
btrfs works, and gets better in every kernel release. 3.2 was a major stability point. It is absolutely certain they haven't found the last bug (as is true of almost any code). https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Is_btrfs_stable.3F https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Is_btrfs_stable.... If you have reasonable resiliency and redundancy in your backups then it largely doesn't matter what filesystem is used. I do and consequently use btrfs everywhere across several different machines in several different configurations. The crucial functionality which pushed me over was: * snapshots (I already did this using rsync and hard links) * compression (Save some space) * checksums and online scrubbing (I had a disk very slowly go bad with ext4. The only scrubbing available required the system being offline for 19 hours.)
- batgaijin 14y ago
  how do you handle btrfs updates? from what I understand it seems like every kernel update I have supports a newer version. are you updating the filesystem regularly? does it matter?
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    I use Ubuntu on all my machines and use the standard kernel that comes with it. For a brief while I used kernel 3.4 on my laptop due to Ivy Bridge issues but could also boot into the Ubuntu 3.2 kernel just fine. (And on the laptop I'm also using encryption.) Note that the kernel has updates of the code, not updates of the filesystem format. Supposedly the last filesystem format change was in 2.6.31 (from 2009). Compression is a format "difference". For example lzo was added about 18 months ago, so in theory an older kernel won't understand your filesystem that is using it. There was some talk about snappy being added earlier this year, but I don't know if it ever was. I haven't encountered any compatibility issues at all with btrfs. In various places I am using compression, RAID 0, RAID 1, ext4 to btrfs conversion, encryption (dmcrypt/LUKS), SATA, USB and who knows what I have forgotten. Except for one system all are on UPS and in general do not experience unclean shutdowns or similar adversity. The only trouble I have ever had is when a filesystem filled up. It gets quite challenging freeing up disk space because deleting a file requires an append to the btree which needs space. btrfs has been an absolute joy for me. I can just throw devices at it. I can do scrubbing without taking systems offline. I could convert existing filesystems. I don't have to perform system administration with it. And I know it will tell me about bitrot. And worst case I have backups, and backups of backups, on and offsite.

meaty 14y ago

btrfs is shipping with OpenSuSE and Oracle Linux apparently as stable. Not sure I trust it yet. If they ship it with Debian stable I will consider it. ZFS still uses FUSE AFAIK so is going to suck.

skeletonjelly 14y ago
Doubt ZFS is going to be anything but FUSE. Mandated by licenses. ZFS can be used with *BSD of course.
- Andys 14y ago
  The linux ZFS kernel modules work well and are not prohibited by license. It simply will never be included in the Linux kernel.
batgaijin 14y ago
I thought they had a kernel module or something bypassing the need for fuse.
- dmpk2k 14y ago
  Indeed there is: http://zfsonlinux.org/ http://zfsonlinux.org/ There's more than one ZFS port to Linux, which might be confusing some people. There's also the more dramatic option of using FreeBSD or one of the illumos derivatives, which work fine in my experience too.
kzrdude 14y ago
Btrfs will be in the next stable, and it will be Linux 3.2. Not a good idea to use that old version of linux if you want btrfs!

rogerbinns 14y ago

btrfs works, and gets better in every kernel release. 3.2 was a major stability point. It is absolutely certain they haven't found the last bug (as is true of almost any code). https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Is_btrfs_stable.3F https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Is_btrfs_stable.... If you have reasonable resiliency and redundancy in your backups then it largely doesn't matter what filesystem is used. I do and consequently use btrfs everywhere across several different machines in several different configurations. The crucial functionality which pushed me over was: * snapshots (I already did this using rsync and hard links) * compression (Save some space) * checksums and online scrubbing (I had a disk very slowly go bad with ext4. The only scrubbing available required the system being offline for 19 hours.)

batgaijin 14y ago
how do you handle btrfs updates? from what I understand it seems like every kernel update I have supports a newer version. are you updating the filesystem regularly? does it matter?
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  I use Ubuntu on all my machines and use the standard kernel that comes with it. For a brief while I used kernel 3.4 on my laptop due to Ivy Bridge issues but could also boot into the Ubuntu 3.2 kernel just fine. (And on the laptop I'm also using encryption.) Note that the kernel has updates of the code, not updates of the filesystem format. Supposedly the last filesystem format change was in 2.6.31 (from 2009). Compression is a format "difference". For example lzo was added about 18 months ago, so in theory an older kernel won't understand your filesystem that is using it. There was some talk about snappy being added earlier this year, but I don't know if it ever was. I haven't encountered any compatibility issues at all with btrfs. In various places I am using compression, RAID 0, RAID 1, ext4 to btrfs conversion, encryption (dmcrypt/LUKS), SATA, USB and who knows what I have forgotten. Except for one system all are on UPS and in general do not experience unclean shutdowns or similar adversity. The only trouble I have ever had is when a filesystem filled up. It gets quite challenging freeing up disk space because deleting a file requires an append to the btree which needs space. btrfs has been an absolute joy for me. I can just throw devices at it. I can do scrubbing without taking systems offline. I could convert existing filesystems. I don't have to perform system administration with it. And I know it will tell me about bitrot. And worst case I have backups, and backups of backups, on and offsite.