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List of useful BTRFS tools (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi, I want to do an "awesome things" list with BTRFS tools

Help me gather them?

Update: see here

General

BTRFS Assistant

Tool for doing many BTRFS actions graphically

It requires snapper and offers a GUI for it.

butter-manager

Tool for managing snapshots, balancing filesystems and upgrading the system safetly.

Backups & Snapshots

Snapper

General system snapshot utility with BTRFS support, used in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed by default. There are also plugins for Fedoras dnf and for Arch pacman.

Timeshift

System restore tool for Linux. Creates filesystem snapshots using rsync+hardlinks, or BTRFS snapshots. Supports scheduled snapshots, multiple backup levels, and exclude filters. Snapshots can be restored while system is running or from Live CD/USB.

Currently maintained by LinuxMint, even though they dont use BTRFS by default, it works better there.

libtuikit / transactional-update

Used in OpenSUSE microOS and the Desktop variants.

provides an application and library to update a Linux operating system in a transactional way, i.e. the update will be performed in the background while the system continues running as it is. Only if the update was the successful as a whole the system will boot into the new snapshot.

Available as a library for other distros.

Yet Another BTRFS Snapshotter

Alternatives don't supports customized of snapshot location, (e.g. Arch recommended layout). Adhering to such layouts, and rolling back using them, sometime involve non-obvious workarounds. The motivation for yabsnap was to create a simpler, hackable and customizable snapshot system.

btrfs-autosnap

There are 2 separate projects with that name

[btrfs-sxbackup])https://github.com/masc3d/btrfs-sxbackup)

Incremental btrfs snapshot backups with push/pull support via SSH

Small CLI tools

btrfsd - tiny Btrfs maintenance daemon

Btrfsd is a lightweight daemon that takes care of all Btrfs filesystems on a Linux system.

It can:

Check for detected errors and broadcast a warning if any were found, or optionally send an email

Perform scrub periodically if the system is not on battery

Optionally schedule balancing operations as well

compsize

Fedora Magazine on BTRFS compression

Takes a list of files on a btrfs filesystem and measures used compression types and effective compression ratio

Used in flatpak-dedup-checker

btdu

sampling disk usage profiler for btrfs For multiple reasons, classic disk usage analyzers such as ncdu cannot provide an accurate depiction of actual disk usage. (btrfs compression in particular is challenging to classic analyzers, and special tools must be used to query compressed usage.)

btrfs-fuse

A read-only btrfs implementation using FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace). Although btrfs is already in mainline Linux kernel, there are still use-cases for such read-only btrfs implementation:

btrfs debugger

The btrfs debugger (pronounced "buttered").

btrd is a REPL debugger that helps inspect mounted btrfs filesystems. btrd is particularly useful in exploring on-disk structures and has full knowledge of all on-disk types.

ntfs2btrfs

a tool which does in-place conversion of Microsoft's NTFS filesystem to the open-source filesystem Btrfs, much as btrfs-convert does for ext2. The original image is saved as a reflink copy at image/ntfs.img, and if you want to keep the conversion you can delete this to free up space.

Consists of a Windows and a Linux executable. Does not work on the primary drive.

Partition managers with support

KDE-Partitionamanger
GNOME-Disks
blivet-gui (Fedora Anaconda setup)
gparted ?

Data recovery

When having deleted or corrupted data on a BTRFS partition, these tools can help:

Testdisk?

photorec?

Scalpel?

R-Linux

Freeware, not FOSS? Not related to R and "R-Studio" is also not related to RStudio

BTRFS bindings

These allow you to do BTRFS actions in many programming languages

all 32 comments

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[-] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago

SUSE & openSUSE also have a great documentation about the snapper snapshot tool which is also available in many distributions:

Snapper Documentation

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Arch wiki already in there XD

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

True :D but my link goes directly to the snapper section of the wiki^^.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

~~Okay, you won~~ we have the same link, stop confusing me XD

[+] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

[deleted]

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Does timeshift also use BTRFS features, or just the normal method?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Timeshifts main reason to use is BTRFS functionality. It's a fantastic tool, but I only used it previously on EXT4, in which case it defaults to slow rsync method. I really like the software, but on my new install decided against using it (I'm on EXT4 yet again). https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift And while I post this reply, just noticed that Linux Mint is maintaining it now. The old repo is in archive mode: https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Really interesting project.

Yes I also thought it would be focused on non-BTRFS, especially as Mint doesnt use BTRFS either, right?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

You mean the default filesystem? I actually never used Mint and don't think it's the default, but most likely an option at install time. Maybe they plan on switching as the default in the future.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

May I ask why you switched back to ext4?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I never used BTRFS at all. At the moment I do not feel comfortable using BTRFS yet and wait until its proven over long time and ironed out even the weirdest edge cases.

Edit: Don't misunderstand me. I know its relative stable now, but reading here and there about the problems makes me very uncomfortable to switch from the battle tested EXT4. I really like its features and evaluated last year to use BTRFS as my system drive. Ultimately decided against it for now. I plan on using it, and clicked this post for this reason, to learn more about it.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Maintaining btrfs is more work than maintaining ext4, which basically doesn't need any. I.e. running btrfs scrub is important to keep performance up. Monthly scrubs are good because they don't take as long if done regularly.

Btrfs balance can free up some space, but otherwise isn't important on SSDs.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I think BTRFS is especially problematic on Fedora Atomic desktops.

Afaik the OSTree snapshots use BTRFS deduplication, also the zstd compression helps reduce storage usage and increase SSD use.

But as the entire system partitions are read only, you cant balance, scrub etc them.

This is a big issue I think, I will open a Fedora Discussion post about this.

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/119216

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Afaik the OSTree snapshots use BTRFS deduplication [...]

Note: OSTree will transparently take advantage of some BTRFS features if deployed on it. [1]

Interesting, I didn't know OSTree takes advantage of BTRFS features.

On my current system I use ext4 instead of btrfs which I regret specifically because of the missing transparent compression and reflink copy.

[1] https://ostreedev.github.io/ostree/introduction/

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I also tried an install with LVM and F2FS instead of the default EXT4. It works, and F2FS is faster in theory, but I only found 2 bigger benchmarks. The older one said BTRFS is waaay slower, a newer one with exact reproducability details said it is equal.

And yes I suppose that rpm-ostree utilizes the BTRFS CoW, deduplication and compression which all help reducing disk usage.

But I dont know that.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

I like btdu which is essentially ncdu, but works in a way that is useful even if advanced btrfs features (CoW, compression etc.) are used.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Added it

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

I've used btrfs-autosnap for a while on Arch and it's brilliant. Whenever you install or remove something with pacman it creates a btrfs snapshot of your subvolumes and if you have grub-btrfs install too they get added to Grub menu. Very handy.

You can define which subvolumes you want snapshotted and how many snapshots of each you want to keep. Which means it also removes the oldest snapshot when a new is created if it gets over the keep amount.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Added it

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Nice list.

Depending on your package manager, there are very handy snapper plugins that do automated pre/post snapshots for package installation/removal.

For Arch-based systems it's snap-pac, and Fedora has one too (although I can't remember the name).

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks, added it

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

There is R-Linux for recovering deleted files, altough it doesn't support btrfs it can recover data from btrfs drives(if anyone knows something better please let me know as I have a drive that completely wiped itself).

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Is that R-Linux and R-Studio something different from R the language and RStudio the GUI for it? Damn this is confusing.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I have no idea. R-Linux is what the package on the AUR is called and it doesn't require a license unlike R-Studio from the site.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I would like to recommend Yabsnap as an alternative to Snapper. It's made for Arch, tested on Fedora and might work on other distros. But it needs more eyes and testers!

Edit: thank you for the list! It's very nice to see what is available for btrfs

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Added it

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

https://github.com/knorrie/python-btrfs

https://github.com/kdave/btrfsmaintenance

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Okay I will add a "btrfs bindings" section 🫠

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I’m not saying this to start a fight, but as a person who used btrfs for a situation it was not suited for: there need to be some tools for migrating off btrfs here.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Ok you know one?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Not that I was aware of a couple of years ago. I ended up copying to a different media, reformatting and copying back and accepting the loss of the snapshots.

this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024

114 points (99.1% liked)

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General

BTRFS CLI Interface

btrfs-progs

BTRFS Assistant

butter-manager

Backups & Snapshots

btrbk

Snapper

Timeshift

libtuikit / transactional-update

Yet Another BTRFS Snapshotter

btrfs-autosnap

grub-btrfs

[btrfs-sxbackup])https://github.com/masc3d/btrfs-sxbackup)

Small CLI tools

btrfsd - tiny Btrfs maintenance daemon

dupreremove

compsize

btdu

btrfs-list

btrfs-fuse

btrfs debugger

ntfs2btrfs

WinBTRFS

Partition managers with support

Data recovery

Testdisk?

Scalpel?

R-Linux

BTRFS bindings

Snapper Documentation

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