Tiny Core Linux
General TC => General TC Talk => Topic started by: domike on March 19, 2014, 11:27:56 AM
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Hi, please consider adding btrfs to Tiny Core. I have read the previous topic (2012: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,13362.0.html ) but the raised objections do not hold any more:
It is stable as in "does not crash or corrupt data" and as in "will not change on-disk format without user intervention"; backward-incompatible changes must be explicitly enabled via btrfstune or mkfs, and are only introduced if "there are strong reasons to do so" ( https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=25071#Stability_status)
It is designed not to need fsck after an unclean unmount (it uses atomic transactions and copy-on-write, so that the system always sees a consistent state) and fsck is only needed if the fs is corrupted, which is rare with recent kernels ( https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#What.27s_the_difference_between_btrfsck_and_fsck.btrfs ).
All the mainstream distributions provide official technical support for btrfs (including the enterprise, SUSE >= 11 SP2, Oracle, Ubuntu) and most of them allow the user to choose it in the installer - the absence of btrfs in Tiny Core does not have any advantage to the end user and is an obstacle. It's not a toy or a fad since a while (in my personal experience it's usable since kernels 3.4 or 3.5) and has a growing user base (see stackexchange or a distro's forum)
It has many unique features ( https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page#Features ), personally I'm using transparent compression, transparent checksumming, multiple-device support, and lightweight snapshotting. While other technologies may also provide these features, it takes more time and effort to learn and set up them.
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I would not use brtfs with 3.8 kernel :(
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I agree with bmarkus, I would not consider its use safe in the current kernel version we use.
It's very easy to build a custom kernel though, so that you can use btrfs in your systems. See the wiki and forum posts.