mholiv @ mholiv @lemmy.world

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Hey. No problem. Something to keep an eye out for in the future might be bcachefs. I think it’s a step up above ZFS and btrfs. The author missed the last merge window by days but it should make it into the next kernel merge window. It’s exciting stuff. Other options might be a local GlusterFS or CephFS setup.

Fair fair. This being said ZFS isn’t in RHEL either. 🤔 Poor Red hat though. I used to work there a long time ago. I’m sad to see how they went from being THE open spice company to being worse than Oracle 🤢 when it comes to source distribution.

The crux of the matter is that the article's criticisms of btrfs are largely based on its differences from ZFS, rather than any inherent flaws in btrfs itself. Notably, Suse Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and Meta's Linux engineers all advocate for btrfs, using it extensively in production.

The article's main grievances are:

Btrfs RAID Arrays:

The author is upset that btrfs RAID arrays don't function as he anticipated. However, btrfs isn't ZFS or mdadm; it's its own system and should be understood as such. The author criticizes btrfs for allowing drives of mismatched sizes. This flexibility, however, isn't inherently negative.

Btrfs RAID Array Management:

The author laments that btrfs can't be mounted by a human-readable name like ZFS, and instead requires UUID. Using UUID is standard practice for native Linux file systems. A side note: mounting by drive letter is outdated; UUID is the recommended method.

Btrfs-RAID's Redundancy:

The author points out that btrfs won't auto-mount an array if a drive fails, while ZFS will. This is actually a protective measure. By not auto-mounting, it minimizes the risk of further drive failures, prioritizing data preservation.

Btrfs-RAID Maintenance:

The author's complaint here boils down to "btrfs isn't ZFS." He attempts ZFS recovery methods on btrfs and is surprised when they don't work. The processes are different, but that doesn't mean btrfs is more labor-intensive.

He also critiques the use of crc32 for corruption detection. If this is a concern, other algorithms can be used. The default, crc32, is chosen for its speed. In fact, some argue that btrfs's integrity checks are faster than alternatives.

In summary, the article's author seems primarily upset that btrfs isn't a ZFS clone. He overlooks btrfs's advantages over ZFS, such as ZFS pools occasionally failing to mount due to kernel updates. On the other hand, major entities like Suse Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and Meta rely on btrfs in large-scale production environments.

When revisiting the article, keep the perspective of "an individual frustrated that btrfs isn't ZFS" in mind. The bias becomes evident.

The only thing you need to do if you run a standard Linux distro is to set up scheduled scrubbing and smart alerts. Nas OSes do that by default. But if you set it up as a cronjob or systemd timer you can achieve the same result.

The advantage of running a Linux distro over a Nas OS is that you could add virtual machines on top via kvm or run appliances via docker. It’s just a sever with a lot of storage added on top.

As for btrfs raid. Yes. If you motherboard fails or you have to reinstall the OS you can reimport it with no prior existing knowledge. It’s simple mounting it like a normal Linux file system because it is one. The kernel will locate all members of the raid pool.

If you are using fedora (with a recent install) you are using btrfs right now. 😉

My desktop and laptop run fedora. For my servers I run Debian 12 with everything in docker.

As for that article yah. Btrfs has had some rough points in its past. It’s true. Can’t deny it. This being said I would hold that the way btrfs treats raid definitions in unconventional ways is a design advantage.

Btrfs raid1 is more like “replica 2”. If you have one 12TB drive and two 6TB drives you get 12TB of useable space. Because btrfs will work to ensure there are two replicas behind the scenes. In a traditional raid 1 you could not use the space from the mismatched drives. It’s not traditional raid1 but I think it’s preferable.

I think the main advantage for btrfs for home lab is that you can toss in any drive regardless of size and btrfs will use it. You can remove any drive and btrfs will auto rebalance. These are btrfs exclusive features. You can also change the raid type on the fly too. Once I get kernel 6.2 I could live convert my btrfs raid1 pool into a raid 5 pool while the pool is live and mounted. You can do any such live mounted conversions on the fly.

For me home lab is being flexible and working with what you can get. And I feel btrfs is a great fit for that.

That and since btrfs if a native part of the kernel you won’t ever have to worry about updating your kernel and breaking the ZFS shim or dkms.

Factually here you are wrong. Btrfs has been around for more than 10 years and is used at scale. Meta uses it at scale in their data centers, Suse Linux uses it as their default file system and uses the btrfs rollback/roll forward as part of their enterprise offerings. Fedora uses it as its default file system too.

If you prefer/know ZFS and want to avoid btrfs because of that I get it. But no need to say that btrfs is “in beta” 😂

If you know Linux, I recommend going with some form of software raid. A lot of people might recommend ZFS but I would recommend btrfs with Linux. Using btrfs you can add and removed drives of any size at will unlike ZFS. That and with btrfs you don’t need to worry about vdevs and stuff. Simple, easy to use, and simple to upgrade. Just use btrfs, set data to raid1 and metadata to raid1c3 and you will have a rock solid system. That and you won’t have to worry about dkms or kernel changes breaking your data storage. Also before someone mentions it there was a btrfs raid5 write hole but that was fixed in Kernel 6.2

Another future interesting option might be btreefs. Just got merged into kernel mainline and has amazing features.

Lastly you really want all of your drives to be connected via SATA or SAS or M.2. USB isn’t great for HDDs in any sort of raid.

Maybe “fediverse” might be better. All fediverse instances would have the context of fediverse in the scraped data. When someone searches “best budget backpack fediverse” the search engine would show the fediverse instances with the best seo score. Higher quality posts get a letter seo score just as they do today on Reddit. It does not matter which instance the post would be on.

The bigger problem is that search engines can’t even really scrape some parts of the fediverse (like Lemmy) because the default UI does not show any post or comment data.

I think we should prioritize SEO.

If you get a link to a Lemmy post you can’t see the contents nor the comments of the post until you click a further link. Or at least I can’t.

And that means google can’t either.

We need to get to the point where people are adding “Lemmy” to their search posts like they do for Reddit today.

Doing a google search for “best budget backpack Lemmy” should bring up results like “best budget backpack Reddit” does today.

+1 for WikiJS. As a bonus you can have WikiJS back itself up to plain text MarkDown files, so if things explode you can always just read those from wherever.

Another great feature I use is to have WikiJS back itself up into git. If I am going to a place with no internet access I can do a quick git pull and have a complete copy of my wiki including files on my laptop.

True “hackers” do. But the average person’s privacy is violated so frequently and at such depth but companies that the amount of “violation” done by “hackers” rounds to zero.

This being said 2FA is something everyone should use.

Not OP but the reason 2FA does not help is because “hackers” who might be stopped by 2FA are not the people violating your privacy.

It’s the mega corps that you use 2FA to log into that violate your privacy.

This all being said everyone should turn on 2FA for security reasons. Just know that this does not help privacy.

One addition. People say to use a VPN but I would argue that this is virtually pointless if you continue to use privacy violating services from privacy violating companies.

If your connect to what’s app or Snapchat or gmail over a https collection inside a secure VPN you are still sending them your data. Just with an extra lawyer of encryption. Google doesn’t need your IP if you give them your complete email inbox.

Security is not equal to privacy. Even if you do use 2FA and change your passwords all the time. You don’t gain any additional privacy.

Changing your google password and adding 2FA to your google account does nothing to make your life more private because google still can read all your emails, and sell your data regardless of 2FA.

The best habits to maintain privacy are to avoid using the services of companies that’s business model is violating your privacy.

Some pro privacy habits might be:

• Avoid any google products or services.
• Avoid and Meta products or services.
• Don’t use any free software or services that are not community run / non profit. They make money from selling your data.

In a positive light these habits might be reflected as:

• Using a google free phone. (i.e. GraphineOS or CalyxOS or /e/OS or even an iPhone as a last resort.)
• Use Lemmy, mastodon and other alternatives to big social media corps.
• Pay for reputable e-mail hosting with a reputable provider, (Ie Microsoft365 Business Account, Tutanota, or Proton Mail) or host your own.

Privacy isn’t all or nothing. Small steps are still improvements. Microsoft respects their business client’s privacy because that is what is demanded and Microsoft makes money by providing B2B services. Apple is in the business of selling expensive hardware and iCloud services so they don’t need to violate your privacy as much. These products while not perfect are leaps and bounds better then using any google or meta product.

Small steps are good steps.

If I had to choose one thing to do I would say to drop any phone that has the play store pre installed.

Yah. I would strongly recommend https://flathub.org versions of “official” apps over ones you download from the developers sites.

For those people who are new to Linux it’s important to know Linux isn’t like windows. Installing applications from debs or rpms that you get from directly from developers’ sites is often the worst way to install them. Native package managers and flatpak are the ways to go.

It’s a matter of ideology.

This being said I think for you installing “official” apps via flatpak might be the best compromise. You gets apps that don’t need tinkering with and “just work” while those apps are isolated from the rest of your system via flatpak isolation.

If you are going into a period low fiddle time this might be your best bet ^

My understanding is that number is the subscribers from your insurance. Not the total count.

Someone should make a more modern version of this. Make Debian a continent with a nation of “pure Debian” on it. Ubuntu and the rest can be nation states there as well.

Another RPM continent with openSuse and the dark nations of Redhat and Oracle. Etc.

Of course the federated arch archipelago with islands representing things like Manjaro etc.

Could be fun. I would do it if I had any artistic talent.

I would be glad to see this. This being said I see a “last edited 2021” tag on the post. Is the post in question is several years or am I misunderstanding something?

I can’t speak for those two products but I quite like PhotoPrism. It does a decent job at auto tagging my photos.