Incorporeal Waffle posted on Mon, 21 Sep 2015 14:30:21 +0000 as excerpted: > I tried converting my root partition (originally ext4) to btrfs. There's some known bugs with btrfs-convert currently, with current or very recent discussion on-list about how to fix it, if you check the archives. In the more general case, while the present bugs will no doubt be fixed, I (a user, not a dev) don't recommend using convert, as in the best case, it's a compromise, with better results if you treat the existing ext* as a backup and start with a brand new btrfs using mkfs.btrfs. The admin's rule of backups states that if you care about the data, it's backed up, and if it's not backed up, in practice, you're defining the data as not worth the time and resources to back up, any claims to the contrary not withstanding. (Meanwhile, a would-be backup that hasn't been tested restorable isn't considered a backup, because the backup isn't defined as complete until it is tested.) >From that perspective, there's little reason to do a filesystem conversion, since if you care about the data, it's backed up and can be restored to a brand new filesystem, with a better layout than a filesystem that started as something else is likely to ever achieve, and if you don't care about the data, then there's no reason not to start out with a clean filesystem in the first place. So while having a convert tool is "nice", even when it's working correctly, the best choice is to avoid using it, starting with brand new clean filesystem and copying existing data, if any, into it from backups so it is laid out ideally for the new filesystem, instead of the compromise of trying to work around the location of existing data and metadata, in a layout that should work, granted (and it's definitely a bug that it's not doing so today), but is unlikely to be ideal for a different filesystem than the one it started out as. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-btrfs" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
