Btrfs For Linux 6.6 Brings Fixes, Partially Recovers From Scrub Performance Regression

[user1]

For me, that'd be yes. Up until 2018 I ran multiple disks with multiple distributions installed using different file systems just to try different things out on real hardware and I've lived in places with such great infrastructure that a 20mph+ wind would make the power flicker and, in those times, I had more issues losing random data with BTRFS than anything else. I've never used BTRFS for just a data disk; only root volumes that I wasn't afraid of losing data with. Before 2016 the data disk role went to XFS, 2016 and beyond its been ZFS.

Nowadays, I don't find the whole running 8 distributions thing very fun.

Interesting. Do you remember having any issues with ext4 because of this? I'm currently on ext4 and I recently had at least 2 unclean restarts because Steam is very buggy after the big ui update. When the Steam client crashes, it sometimes freezes the whole graphical session, so I had to hard reboot as a result.

I haven't experienced any issues or data loss as a result, but I just wonder if I should run fsck after the unclean restart. Interestingly, I did see some additional boot messages after the unclean restarts, but the boot is too fast to read them.

[F.Ultra]

I'm running BTRFS on 3 disks, my main NVMe disk with root and home on it, as well as 2 mirrored disks that have "all my stuff" that doesn't need to be on an NVMe disk.
Now I've discovered that all my file systems have faults, and I have to reformat them. The "btrfs check" tool has a repair command, but they really discourage users from ever using it.
I'm a bit disappointed. I thought I had gone for the most robust FS.

did you mirror the 2 disks and then applied btrfs over it or did you run btrfs in raid 1c2 on them? Also how did you determine/discover that there are file system faults on all of them?

[F.Ultra]

Interesting. Do you remember having any issues with ext4 because of this? I'm currently on ext4 and I recently had at least 2 unclean restarts because Steam is very buggy after the big ui update. When the Steam client crashes, it sometimes freezes the whole graphical session, so I had to hard reboot as a result.

I haven't experienced any issues or data loss as a result, but I just wonder if I should run fsck after the unclean restart. Interestingly, I did see some additional boot messages after the unclean restarts, but the boot is too fast to read them.

you can see the boot messages using either dmesg or the journal after the boot, so no need to try and read them during boot. fsck on btrfs is not used at all, you should use "btrfs check <device>" to perform a full FS check instead.

Myself I have experienced tons of unexpected power outages lately since I upgraded to a rtx7900xtx and my 10yo PSU couldn't handle the power spikes (have since upgraded the PSU). Not a single problem on my btrfs filesystems, I do however run raid1c2.

[darkbasic]

I think it's been abandoned for now. The branches are stale:

https://github.com/josefbacik/linux/branches

Block group tree was a big part of the original idea, and thats' been merged in linux for a while now (I'm a happy user of it). I don't think there was much buy in from other devs for the rest of extent v2. And there's plenty of work that will minimize contention without the partitioning that extentv2 would introduce so I think that's were all the effort has been spent. Maybe when that effort has been exhausted they'll look at this idea again.

Really? That's a terrible news, AFAIK there is little chance to get quotas + snapshots working decently without extent v2

[jstoik]

I've been running BTRFS on multiple systems for years and have never had any issues with it, but I don't use its compression or RAID features, so that might be the difference.

[fitzie]

Really? That's a terrible news, AFAIK there is little chance to get quotas + snapshots working decently without extent v2

don't worry, facebook still cares about this. there's a new feature (with on disk format changes) brewing for performance improvements around quotas (w/ snapshots) called "simple quotas".

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/[email protected]/

[Vorpal]

Native, in-kernel, file systems without relying on external frameworks like Stratis, BTRFS is the most advanced there is. Ext4 and XFS are probably the most robust in regards to data safety while BTRFS is the most robust in regards to features.

I had data corruption in ext4, because it doesn't checksum the data. It made it into backups without me noticing. I can only assume it was cosmic rays or something causing bit flips.

Never again using a file system that doesn't checksum data. Btrfs has been rock solid for me for a few years now.

[Rovano]

I had data corruption in ext4, because it doesn't checksum the data. It made it into backups without me noticing. I can only assume it was cosmic rays or something causing bit flips.

Never again using a file system that doesn't checksum data. Btrfs has been rock solid for me for a few years now.

Something in my hardware was wrong. Probably the motherboard or power supply. On the face of it, it appears to have been the source. Sometimes it was quiet for a month and other times my operating system crashed 5 times a day.

NTFS
NTFS was absolutely recommended one day including backup structure data. But it wasn't to blame. Power went out during disk data structure changes. I should have had a spare power supply. My mistake.

If you damage NTFS with a hard shutdown, Windows says everything is fine. Although it is demonstrably not working properly. Some icons were missing from the Windows bar.And the data partition in one directory doesn't work properly either. The opposite is true and the fix needs to be invoked manually.
And then fix the system itself. Windows 10 from 2023.

BTRFS
I used it with a good feeling on the system partition until it was filled with images. Then I tried to fix BTRFS with some very poorly and outdated utility. That worked. But the nerves.

It is said that you need to watch the versions of BTRFS and tools. Only when it is too late does one find out that something is not compatible.

I imagine a stable file system differently.

EXT4
I've had a few hard reboots recently due to a bad source. Operating system messag dove into the depths of Linux to find out how distributions today work with data control on disks. I was slightly disappointed. It's similar to Windows. It is necessary to start the check or repair manually. And yes, something has been fixed on 2 partitions. Apparently, everything was working before, but after all, I was calmer after the repairs.

As Vorpal writes about EXT4. Same experience.

That's my recent experience.

[cynic]

I'm running BTRFS on 3 disks, my main NVMe disk with root and home on it, as well as 2 mirrored disks that have "all my stuff" that doesn't need to be on an NVMe disk.

did you applied btrfs on another mirroring solution, or did you use only btrfs?
in the latter case, btrfs is able to fix all the disks issues

[Azpegath]

did you applied btrfs on another mirroring solution, or did you use only btrfs?
in the latter case, btrfs is able to fix all the disks issues

Only btrfs. How is it able to fix it, if the same error are present on both mirrors?