btrfs install option in armbian-install doesn't work

[Omer Hasanov]

So a clean install of "Armbian 25.2.1 Noble Gnome" with the vendor kernel (6.1.99) fails to boot when installed on an nvme SSDwith the armbian-install script, when btrfs is chosen as the partition type.

 

I am not sure if the files are copied over correctly, since the ~6GB image on the SD card is copied as 2.9GB on the btrfs partition, but there are no errors occuring as far as I can see. The bootloader is up-to-date, and I can access the btrfs drive when booted from the SD card, so the kernel supports btrfs I guess?

 

However, I think there are some things going "wrong", since the armbianEnv.txt file on the nvme SSD has ext4 instead of btrfs as the rootfs? This is basically my first install of armbian so I don't know that much about the installation procedure, but I just followed the official guide (which is also somehow out of date afaik, the images seem wrong...)

(Additionally, apt update + upgrade don't work right now, erroring out with "Mirror sync in progress", so I don't know if this failure is happening because of out of date packages...)

[Werner]

13 hours ago, Omer Hasanov said:

However, I think there are some things going "wrong", since the armbianEnv.txt file on the nvme SSD has ext4 instead of btrfs as the rootfs?

Could be. btrfs installation, especially on other devices, are not much tested. So breakage could be possible. Needs investigation.

13 hours ago, Omer Hasanov said:

This is basically my first install of armbian so I don't know that much about the installation procedure

Should usually just work

 

13 hours ago, Omer Hasanov said:

(which is also somehow out of date afaik, the images seem wrong...

Yes, documentation is a constant problem. We don't have enough helping hands to keep everything in good shape. Keeping up with kernel development is already a challenge with hundreds of boards.

 

13 hours ago, Omer Hasanov said:

Mirror sync in progress

Either the answer is right there or a mirror is out of sync which can happen from time to time.

Feel free to fix apt source to a fixed mirror from this list: https://docs.armbian.com/Mirrors/

[Omer Hasanov]

Thanks for the reply! The mirror sync thing just was unfortunate timing hahah! 15 minutes later all was good. EXT4 install did work, gpu seems to work and performance seems to be "OK". I am seeing like 1700~ points on vkmark, whereas some are seeing about 2400~ points, which is a 40 percent difference? It is probably because of the whole vendor-mainline kernel thing, as far as I can see panthor is supposed to work on mainline, have no idea how the magician behind it make it run on vendor...

btrfs is definitely broken though, maybe need a ext4 boot partition / btrfs root partition type combo to make it work?

Ah also, armbian-config has some funny behavior when trying to switch overlays on/off. You can select the two overlays available (panthor and oc profile) but I can't seem to be able to click save no matter what I tried. Changing armbianEnv.txt works, but I guess this is an issue that needs to go on github...

Anyways, thanks again, I guess this thread is done now...

[Werner]

1 hour ago, Omer Hasanov said:

Ah also, armbian-config has some funny behavior when trying to switch overlays on/off. You can select the two overlays available (panthor and oc profile) but I can't seem to be able to click save no matter what I tried. Changing armbianEnv.txt works, but I guess this is an issue that needs to go on github...

next generation armbian-config still has some rough edges and constantly receiving fixes and improvements. If you can reproduce a special case where something doesnt work right, feel free to report at the github repo.

[eselarm]

2 hours ago, Omer Hasanov said:

btrfs is definitely broken though, maybe need a ext4 boot partition / btrfs root partition type combo to make it work?

At least the Armbian U-Boot .deb packages and also what is written in the image bootsection between partition table and 1st partition is not capable of reading Btrfs. So If you want Btrfs for root filesystem, you need 2 partitions: a first small one formatted FAT or Ext4 for boot files (kernel, initrd, DTB, overlays) and then 2nd for rootfs Btrfs formatted. I constructed this manually for my old 32-bit NanoPi-NEOs, in the past, but if you do a custom Armbian compile/build selecting Btrfs for rootfs (also with additional Zstd compression) it gets all done out-out-of-the-box.

 

If you want a single partition, build U-Boot yourself, with BTRFS enabled. It are 2 settings you need to set to YES. Then write that binary to the bootsection and it can read boot.scr (and armbianEnv.txt. etc) from that 1 single Btrfs partition. I can lookup some old topics here on the forum, I currently keep a 2 partition scheme as I use various U-Boot blobs (also from Radxa) so an extra FAT partition is a bit more failsafe when all there is a serial console cable. It also is then the same as a UEFI system, that also needs a FAT formatted partition where a bootloader and/or bootmanager is located.

Edited yesterday at 10:25 AM by eselarm

[Werner]

Just for fun you could try an edge image for the board with btrfs.

vendor is using a very old vendor-hacked uboot to make it work while edge follows mainline uboot which may have better btrfs support.