Btrfs as root filesystem?

[zador.blood.stained]

9 minutes ago, Tido said:

@zador.blood.stained "in my opinion first boot has too much interactivity already."

I disagree - either you want a SBC and security or you buy a RPi. 

I meant h3disp prompt and this part - AFAIK unfortunately hardcoded

Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
        Full Name []:
        Room Number []:
        Work Phone []:
        Home Phone []:
        Other []:
Is the information correct? [Y/n]

To be clear I think that mandatory user creation is a good thing.

 

Also currently you can abort the new user creation, but pressing <Ctrl-C> kills the whole firstrun script. So adding more logic to this script means that skipping one part but configuring another part will be more complicated.

 

In theory we could, for example, resize to 80% by default and then have a choice (or armbian-config option) - use the extra space for a swap partition or resize the rootfs further)

[Igor]

H3disp was moved to armbian-config yesterday as menu driven thingie and can be removed.

Wrote on mobile

[Peter Lindener]

I think both perspectives have some validity...   the amount of user interactivity on first boot likely should be configurable.. all way down to none at all, (build time encrypted root and first user passWords) as perhaps Zador may be suggesting...

 

   At the other extreme, ARMbian may someday support the building of generic ARM (v7, v8)? SD_card images, that figures out at run time what it's booting up on.. perhaps by way of UEFI..? not sure.  While it's likely the SOC's could be differentiated, maybe not the target board name?.. in this case a runtime board selection menu would likely be good. then a fully generic ARMbian image may still be some a way off in the future..    here I see Zador's perspective that the ARMbian community as a whole may be able to move forward more efficiently if the number of SD_card images in common use can be minimized.   

 

   There will often be the need for first boot user interaction with regard to additional customization. that was not preconfigured in a first_boot_config file.  

 

   In summary: a spectrum of ARMbian image configurations.  ranging from a fully generic bootable SD-card..   and at the other extreme the possibility that ARMbian may some day support a directory of image board_specific_defualt_kernel_config files for the easy minimization of one's custom made ARMbian image.   A well organized framework for first boot interactive config seems in some situations necessary.

 

    -Peter

 

       

[Rodrigo Matias]

On 8/19/2017 at 2:40 AM, Peter Lindener said:

I just finished building BtrFS_Armbian_5.32_Nanopineo2_Ubuntu_xenial_dev_4.11.10.img for an 8GigByte SD card..

once I got the resulting image to actually fit on the card with a config-default.conf file containing:

    ROOTFS_TYPE=btrfs

    FIXED_IMAGE_SIZE=7200

It seems this fixed image size specification is for just the BtrFS partition size and does not include thee Ext4 boot partition that is also included in the SD card image..   after 4 attempt at building a Xenial system with a BtrFS root volume finally fits within the SD card.. 

->df -h -T    yields:
/dev/mmcblk0p1 ext4      58M   25M   32M  44% /boot

/dev/mmcblk0p2 btrfs     7.0G  500M   5.9G   8% /

 

   Changes to /etc/network/interfaces seem remain following a reboot...    

the good news is that ARMbian's support for BtrFS root file systems, with U-boot support via a small Ext4 boot partition seems to be working..

    Ya! way to go!...

That said... since not everyone ends up using the same size SD card, and burning full card size flash images being a fairly slow process..  I know I'm longing for another ARMbain team miracle here.. but it would be great if we figured out how to do dynamic BtrFS partition expansion, similar to how nice the ARMbian team has already done with Ext4 first boot SD card partition expansion.. 

see: Resizing a Btrfs File System..

    https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37670_01/E37355/html/ol_use_case2_btrfs.html

    Then I'm Already a very happy camper...   Thanks for the great Linux build system!...   the ARMbain team made my day!

 

      -Peter

  

 

 

 

 

Hi Peter,

 

Did you find an increase in SD card reliability after moving to BTRFS in your (/) root partition instead of EXT4 default that comes with ARMBIAN?

 

Currently I'm having equipments with filsystem corruption in LIME2 boards average 2-3 months using KINGSTON microSD cards.  The cards are not damaged. I write a new image and everything gets back on track working fine.

 

I recently moved to INDUSTRIAL grade versions of the KINSTON microSD cards and deasctivated almost every filesystem writes like logs, etc....one of the tricks was to move some folders to temporary RAM drives. Waiting for time to pass and see if it improves reliability.

 

Now I'm thinking in creating a new SD image exactly like you did to test if it improves.

 

Regards,

Rodrigo Matias