[Freedombox-discuss] Switch to btrfs on the Freedombox?

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Anders Jackson]
> As an option, I guess it is ok.  But I would predere default to be
> something more stable.  There are one or two horror stories to much
> for me that say the toolbox isn't prime time yet.  But prepared for
> those so incline, great.

Sure, vmdebootstrap can build the images using ext4 too, but ext4 lack
several of the features I believe are vital for a home server, like
checksumming of all data blocks to detect data corruption and volum
management with RAID support.  One can get similar volume managemnt
using SW RAID + LVM, but not with the same flexibility.  And one is
still not sure the data is correct.  But I am sure those with interest
can get vmdebootstrap to build using other file systems too, it just
is not implemented yet.

> But grub doesn't work with ARM CPU:s, does it?

No idea.  I do not have any hardware for arm myself.  If it does not,
please provide more details in <URL: https://bugs.debian.org/742267 >
to let the vmdebootstrap maintainer know that extlinux need to work
better even with grub support in vmdebootrap.  For my need, building
x86 images, grub fill the need.

> You could get the same use with software raid, LVM2 and xfs, jfs and
> exfs4.

Not really.

> Yes, it *is* good to experiment with new stuff like btrfs.  If not
> for anything else then getting more users on it.  But it should be
> an option.

If we are going to use the features provided by btrfs, and for example
implement support for it in plinth to allow user to add extra disks
and check upgrades on snapshots before commit the change to disk, I
suspect our available man power will be focused on one file system and
not across many.

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen