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Lie Ryan posted on Fri, 11 May 2012 02:31:27 +1000 as excerpted: |
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> Also, it probably won't hurt using ext4, given that ext4 had several |
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> performance improvements over ext3. However, as Theodore T'so - the |
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> primary developer of ext4 - said, ext4 is a stopgap until btrfs is |
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> ready. IMO, from my experience of using btrfs some time ago, I'd say |
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> that btrfs is pretty much ready nowadays. |
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As long as you don't have problems or want to do anything fancy like |
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multi-disk, btrfs can be fine. But it's still in active development and |
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officially experimental, it only recently (Feb/Mar) got an error |
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correcting btrfsck at all, and that still comes with "it may make the |
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problem worse instead of fixing it" warnings. I'm running a few |
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partitions of it now, but as I tell people on the btrfs list, while a |
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good admin will always have backups no matter the stability of the |
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filesystem, with something as experimental and under development as |
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btrfs, it's best to consider your btrfs copy an extra "testing" copy, |
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that may or may not be there the next time you access it. Your primary |
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copy, along with all backups you'd ordinarily have, should still exist |
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and be located on something other than btrfs. |
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We routinely see people on the list asking how to recover data, because |
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they didn't heed that advice. Sometimes it's recoverable, sometimes part |
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of it is, sometimes not. |
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Just watching the commits and related discussion on either the btrfs |
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lists or as they hit the mainline kernel, they're still actively fixing |
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code broken in one way or another, as well as continuing to add |
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features. raid5/6 mode is roadmapped for 3.5 (some preliminary prep |
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commits went into 3.4), and full n-way mirroring raid1, the current so- |
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called raid1 mode is only two-way-mirroring) is roadmapped after that as |
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it builds on it. |
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But with a few more kernels, say by the end of the year or early next, |
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btrfs should really begin to stabilize. |
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Meanwhile, anyone who does choose to run it should be keeping up with the |
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latest kernels. If you're not running the rc kernels at least by rc5 or |
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so, you're running old code with known problems patched in newer kernels. |
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
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