[Discuss] BTRFS, ZFS, XFS .... Confused!!

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2014-10-28 23:53-0700 Cy Schubert wrote:

> In message <alpine.DEB.2.02.1410282213420.15114 at enira.zlyna.ubzr>, "Alan W.
> Irw
> in" writes:
[...]
>> BTRFS has been the expected successor to ext4 on Linux for at least 5
>> years now (even by the principal developer of ext4).  See the remarks
>> in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs>.  However, ext4 has been
>> "good enough" and zillions of users had little trouble with ext4.
>> Thus, many distributions stuck with ext4 as the default despite lack
>> of certain killer features (that BTRFS has) such as snapshots.
>
> BTRFS lacks a reliable repair facility. I don't think I'd trust it yet.

The above article has an interesting quote on that subject:

"The btrfsck program is now available but, as of May 2012, it is
described by the authors as "relatively new code" which has "not
seen widespread testing on a large range of real-life breakage", and
that "may cause additional damage in the process of repair".

Evidentally in the 2+ years since that quote, that BTRFS repair
facility has been sufficiently tested so that OpenSUSE developers are
satisfied with it.

I therefore think the best summary is BTRFS has had a long time to
stabilize with lots of early adopter use of it (attracted by its
snapshot feature and COW capibilities) to shake out the bugs.
Furthermore, the OpenSUSE developers have moved to BTRFS as the
default file system with their reputations on the line.  So it will
probably be fine for all those OpenSUSE users who will take that
default.  But it is the first large-scale deployment of BTRFS by a
major Linux distro (as far as I know) so if OpenSUSE users like John
are really cautious they might want to stick with ext4 for now and
only go for the default BTRFS when they upgrade to the next OpenSUSE
release a year or so from now.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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