Should I switch to ETX4 from BTRFS?

After this 5.16 kernel BTRFS regression thing I’m thinking to switch to ETX4, it’s mature and stable af.

My main reason for using BTRFS was Snapshots. I use Snapper because I’ve an Intel + Nvidia GPU.

How many of you guys use EXT4 ? What you do for backups/snapshots ?

Will I be good if I use Timeshift, timeshift-autosnap, and LTS kernel on an ETX4 system ?

Everyone will have different advice here but mine is:

  • Don’t overreact to this issue
  • No matter which filesystem you use be sure to backup any important data
  • Snapshots aren’t backups
  • If you have backups, you can always restore if your filesystem is corrupt/damaged
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Don’t overreact to this issue

Don’t mind but I’m a new user and this is the first time I’d did some manual intervention in my system.

No matter which filesystem you use be sure to backup any important data

I always keep my important data in an external HDD.

Snapshots aren’t backups

Can you explain this ? I mean I can use Snapper to restore my system if something in the /root get messed up.

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Sure, snapshots are great and serve a specific purpose. I have thousands of them.

However, unless you replicate them, they live inside the same filesystem as the original data so there are many things they can’t protect you against. Such as disk failure or filesystem corruption.

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Now I’ve understood it. I’ll keep my current EOS install. :slight_smile:

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Yes.

:wink:

:sweat_smile:

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Only if you want to, I did just because I reinstall every 3/4 weeks and have never had to use snapshots. But on the other hand useful if you don’t want to reinstall

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If you reinstall every 3-4 weeks, why would you need snapshots? :sweat_smile:

As side note, why do you reinstall every 3-4 weeks?

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In lieu of updating? DE / WM hopping?

I honestly cannot think of a reason to do this.

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Unless your backups are copies of corrupted files… :scream:

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Basically I just like a fresh system and having fun trying out different programs to get games running optimally on what I have. It’s just easier for me until I thought about it properly realised I never use them and because of the bug report I just went on being safe instead of sorry and reinstalled. I get a very minimal amount of money and cannot afford new hardware

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That’s the beauty of Arch & Endeavour, it’s an efficient and lean system, and does NOT need to be reinstalled on a regular basis.

Just practice good package maintenance, remember to remove (sudo pacman -R <package name>) packages you don’t want or need any more, and update regularly, as it will automatically keep installed packages at their leanest.

You can also clear your current cache of no longer installed packages: sudo pacman -Sc

If you really want, you can clear it of all packages, including currently installed programs (a bit overkill unless you’re critically hurting for drive space): sudo pacman -Scc

Remove orphaned packages: sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qtdq)

I can’t think of a viable reason that you’d NEED to re-install your entire system on a monthly basis, because no matter how bloated you may think the system is, it’ll be an order of magnitude leaner than say Ubuntu or Mint, or even another order of magnitude less bloated than Windows.

I’ve had my current install of Endeavour for about 8 months now (new PC), and before that it was about 2 years old, and both installs are/were roughly the same size as the day they were initially installed.

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If you like btrfs and use it. No reason to change. Seriously. Just use the workaround by using noautodefrag and wait for a proper fix to it. Like others already said, no reason to over-react to it. Bugs happen, bugs get fixed.

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I understand, I just prefer the fresh start, it might sound wierd but installing different distros and etting them running how I like is sort of a game to me.

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Oh trust me, I get the entire distro-hopping thing, as I imagine a lot of us do :wink:

My old PC had a front loading SSD enclosure where I could shut down and swap out an SSD without opening it up, and switch boot drive and OS easily. So I spent a LOT of time tinkering and re-installing linux distros, while keeping an EndeavourOS install as my main distro.

It’s just odd that if Endeavour is the sole distro you’re running why you’d feel the need to re-install it every month, but if it’s more of a distro-hopping thing then I can understand that :smiley:

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Yer I just tend to tinker too much with stuff while having a few. I do occasionally tinker with other distros but they just never feel quiet right to me

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I was using Archfi/Archdi til I came across endeavour and found it better suited me

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Lmao, I also reinstall EOS every 4-5 days. DE Hopping addict.

If that is the case, there is a pretty good chance your backups aren’t really what I would call a “backup” and are more likely to be replicas.

A good backup strategy should have the ability to recover files from a prior point in time before the corruption occurred. Of course, it is possible you could not notice a corrupted file for many months but that shouldn’t happen with an entire filesystem.

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Here are my 2 cents:

A snapshot is not a backup. If the device fails your snapshots are lost. And the recent btrfs issue is about potentially killing devices due to too many operations in a short period of time. snapshots do not help you with that kind of issue. A backup on a different drive is needed.

ext4 does not support snapshots.

xfs (my favorite fs) has no special snapshot command but it supports reflinks. With this you can create snapshots with a simple copy command. E.g.

cp --reflink /source /dest

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XFS#Deduplication

And as far as I know reflinks are the way how btrfs creates snapshots too. So this is the closest you can get to btrfs snapshot functionality.

And xfs uses checksums on metadata: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XFS#Checksumming

And besides of that: xfs is considerably more stable than btrfs.

Summary: If you consider eliminating btrfs you should take a closer look at xfs.

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