On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 8:16 AM, Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote: > On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 12:39:47 +0100, Peter Humphrey wrote: > >> In particular, is there a suitable installation medium that can create >> BTRFS before installing into it? > > System Rescue Cd, I've just installed a new laptop with it, using btrfs > for everything but /boot. >
Agree - I use that as my, well, rescue image in part because it ships recent kernels and has btrfs support. Just be sure to use the most recent version, and boot with the alternate kernel (which is currently 3.18-based). With btrfs you'll want a recent kernel - I am currently tracking 3.18 which is the most recent longterm, and will probably jump to the next longterm when it matures. Just avoid parity raid (raid5/6) for now - that is very immature and there are constant reports of problems (it really was only supported at all in the last few months). Also, if you want to migrate an existing ext3/4 partition check the lists as there have been a bunch of threads about conversion issues recently - that should be a non-issue if you're just formatting a new partition. Grub2 can also read your kernel/initramfs from btrfs, so I'd recommend it even though you're trying to avoid it. Otherwise you're probably going to need a separate ext4 boot partition (I don't think legacy grub can read btrfs). I just make install my kernels and use grub2-mkconfig - it is nice having a list of older kernels auto-updated. Or you can hand-roll the config like you do in grub - it isn't any harder than it used to be but there just aren't as many docs on how to do it. -- Rich
