Is it safe to use btrfs in Ubuntu 12.04?
Linux kernel version: 3.2.0-24-generic
Architecture: x86_64 (64-bit)
Is it safe to use btrfs in Ubuntu 12.04?
Linux kernel version: 3.2.0-24-generic
Architecture: x86_64 (64-bit)
Novell Suse SLES11 people think so, because this enterprise distribution skips write support for ext4 in favour of btrfs. I've tested btrfs a couple of weeks ago (with a 3.0 kernel) and I managed get 2 snapshots that could not be removed, within 20 minutes experimenting.
I don't think you should trust your most valuable assets (photo's, music tracks, development files ...) to btrfs unless you are absolutely sure you have proper backups. If you don't need btrfs for its features, don't use it for other purposes than testing.
The filesystem btrfs is no longer a technology preview in the kernel but as eager as I am to use it, I'm not switching just now. Here is why I would also advise not to do it (note that this answer might be out-dated shortly) by order of importance
It is absolutely NOT safe to use Btrfs. Just performed my 5th re-install of Ubuntu 12 within a week. Btrfs is unstable as an alpha and crashes after each little update. Having /boot as btrfs results in not finding kernel files. Having / as btrfs results in major damage to the root system.
Don't ever use the autorecovery and compression functions as they actually make things worse. Compression causes lot of file errors and autorecovery is STILL not working.
Lots of error reports on Launchpad and developers, as usually, are dismissing most of them as not relevant.
If you are going to use btrfs, then you should use the newest kernel available. It would likely be advisable to run Ubuntu 12.10 in favor of Ubuntu 12.04 so that you get a newer kernel by default.
Oracle considers Btrfs production ready.
In Oracle Linux 6.3 (6u3), you can use Btrfs for / (need UEK2 2.6.39 - in fact based on 3.0 kernel). And 6.3's boot & rescue ISO comes with Btrfs, it also provide the utility to convert ext{3, 4} to Btrfs by using btrfs-convert
provided.
I would recommend at least use raid1 for data (you need at least 2 block devices - partitions in this case), metadata is by default duplicated across devices (don't use -m single
for a single device). I've been using Btrfs for testing purpose in several internal production environment, so far so good, I haven't encountered any serious problem (scrubbing is cool!).
BTW: Btrfs
works perfectly well with LXC
!
See this doc: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37670_01/E37355/html/ol_btrfs.html
Keep it in mind, always back up your data. Safe and unsafe, it's relative;-)