[EN] [SOLVED] Btrfs compression

[agaida]

dibl: I don't like btrfs very much (performancewise). It's to slow on writing. I've benched this a time ago and i'm not impressed. I would prefer btrfs on small devices like netbooks, where the fast reading make sense and the slow writing doesn't count ( aka i never ever will compile a kernel, a office suite or a browser on a netbook).

[dibl]

No.  Alf, I think you do not understand the purpose of BTRFS -- it is only for the large data filesystems.  It has no advantage for a netbook, or the OS partition on a typical Linux installation.  It is for the big data server.

[agaida]

- i think i understand btrfs. But i will never ever use it for a data server this time. I will have a second thought about using it on a server in 10 years.

[dibl]

I will have a second thought about using it on a server in 10 years.

No problem -- in 2023, on 9 JAN, we will discuss how you will install BTRFS for your data partition.

 :lol:

[dfe]

Now, after running with compression for a day, I can say that everything is working fine. GRUB2 has no problems booting from the compressed filesystem. Thanks for all the help here.

Maybe it's of interest how I compressed the existing files on the fs.
After adding "compress=lzo" to the mount options and rebooting, I issued the following as root:

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cd / && find -xdev -type f -exec btrfs fi defrag -clzo '{}' \;
That shrinked the size of my install from around 3.6GB to 2.1GB.

[dibl]

Very good!  There is also a "scrub" tool for btrfs, which I have used on my filesystem.  You can read about it in the wiki.

If you will please edit the title of your original post and add "SOLVED", then perhaps another user will find this thread helpful.  Thanks!