SUSE Remains Committed To The Btrfs File-System

[dweigert]

As a SUSE customer, Mattias and I have had long talks about BTRFS, and I've had to debug hairy problems in the past. I still trust it more than the EXTx filesystems at the moment, but then again, I NEVER used the RAID functionality. All the machines I admined had hardware raid controllers, and I let that be the guide.

[k1l_]

Whenever this issue comes up, I see comments where users are expecting their filesystem and/or RAID to negate the need for backups. It's a bit shocking to see that even highly skilled technical people have this aversion to properly backing up their data.

Well, filesystems like ext4 can be used without having to worry about that the FS fails due to power outtage etc. You do regular backups for user failure or Hardware failure, or when you plan updates/upgrades or other potential risky things.
backups because the FS is unstable is not the great vision for the next-gen FS.

[andyprough]

You do regular backups for user failure or Hardware failure, or when you plan updates/upgrades or other potential risky things.

Any risk is too much risk for me; I backup constantly - real-time, daily, weekly. I backup redundantly. ext4 has the same level of risk for me as Btrfs: too much risk.

That said, I've never lost data from an ext4 system or a Btrfs system because of a hard shutdown or a power loss. Since the late 1990's I've mainly used the default file system from a SUSE or openSUSE installation, and I've had very good success. That covers ext2, ext3, and ext4 along with Btrfs if I recall correctly. They've all been kind to me. The only total loss I've suffered was from an NTFS disk in the late 90's, where the office had a "server tech" who claimed he was doing proper backups but they were corrupted.

[nomadewolf]

I have nothing against BTRFS I even used it for a while but I think the solution is to move that manpower into http://zfsonlinux.org and add any missing feature from btrfs to ZFS and even focus some of that money(if there is any) into having some lawyers checking safe ways to include ZFS as default.

As far as I've understand BTRFS is a lesser ZFS clone because of licensing conflict that is not even close to ZFS yet, in this case I think everyone would benefit better just focusing and uber optimizing ZFS since is open source as well and the actual thing BTRFS is kinda trying to clone(but it seems CDDL is less or more or equally open source but it seems not as opensource as the kernel is or wants to be but is at the same time more open source than some parts of the kernel are but in the wrong open source way while at the same time is more open source than half the userspace code, boy I hate licensing).

Personally, i think bcachefs has potential and am rooting for it.

[nomadewolf]

What does ZFS have that btrfs does not?

I have btrfs on half a dozen drives, and I've been using it that way for years without any trouble.

It does everything that btrfs promises to do. And it does it all. And it does it well.
ZFS is an excellent filesystem, but i think it'll never be a first class citizen in Linux...

[nevion]

it's in SUSE enterprise... they have to save face and deal with it anyway. And it'll be a while until they can do something else. I'm just not sure what the use in pretending zfs on linux doesn't exist as a first rate solution. They package it but they don't advert it like they would btrfs. SUSE invested themselves fairly strongly in btrfs's capabilities tho, in SLE 12 sp1 or 2... it really put them in an awkward position for what they wanted as an advertised capability vs reality. They got like 5-7 years supporting that left, at least.

[roelandjansen]

ZFS' license and Linux' license are just not compatible. It will forever remain an external module... unless Oracle changes its license. Or the Linux driver is rewritten from scratch under a compatible license.

Btrfs, on the other hand, is already part of Linux and, feature-wise, it's not that far anymore from ZFS.

and not to forget, not a port but native. While peopel may think that this is not interesting... look at how long XFS took....

[roelandjansen]

nice to known, this explain a lot

while automatic discovery would be neat, what makes it different from say a lv mirror or most of the other hw/sw implementations?

[roelandjansen]

it's in SUSE enterprise... they have to save face and deal with it anyway. And it'll be a while until they can do something else. I'm just not sure what the use in pretending zfs on linux doesn't exist as a first rate solution. They package it but they don't advert it like they would btrfs. SUSE invested themselves fairly strongly in btrfs's capabilities tho, in SLE 12 sp1 or 2... it really put them in an awkward position for what they wanted as an advertised capability vs reality. They got like 5-7 years supporting that left, at least.

did you read Matthias' story? I know him personally and all you wrote is really not in sync with his or SUSE's thought.

ZFS under linux does exist but we all know that licensing is an issue for some products / environments.

[roelandjansen]

Any risk is too much risk for me; I backup constantly - real-time, daily, weekly. I backup redundantly. ext4 has the same level of risk for me as Btrfs: too much risk.

That said, I've never lost data from an ext4 system or a Btrfs system because of a hard shutdown or a power loss. Since the late 1990's I've mainly used the default file system from a SUSE or openSUSE installation, and I've had very good success. That covers ext2, ext3, and ext4 along with Btrfs if I recall correctly. They've all been kind to me. The only total loss I've suffered was from an NTFS disk in the late 90's, where the office had a "server tech" who claimed he was doing proper backups but they were corrupted.

recently I got an ext4 root filesystem damaged when the underlying vmware datastore went away. The f/s was set R/O on panic and still massively corrupted.
That's the second time in 10+ years running linux (debian, redhat, suse) in commercial environments with parks well over 1000 systems)

BTRFS -- one time loss of data - on my own laptop, longer than 5 years ago. And now even more mature.

So far XFS, nor EXT3/4 or BTRFS were in the lead when it came to corruption all these years.