On Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 5:45 AM Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I'd normally upgrade, but my /dev/sda uses LVM to handle root, /home > etc. and from what I read this cannot be converted directly to BTRFS, > which I'm interested in using. ext4 can be converted to Btrfs but I can't strongly recommend it because you're not going to get the same layout as a default installation. The conversion won't remove LVM, and it won't add the subvolume layout we're using where "home" and "root" subvolumes are assigned to /home and / mountpoints respectively. > > What would be the best way to approach this?: > > 1) Do a system upgrade and then convert to BTRFS by backing everything > up and restoring it (I'd need guidance on how to do this). > > 2) Do a complete system install and then restore from backups. > > I'm guessing that (2) is the simplest answer, but I'd appreciate any > comments, especially from people who have actually done either of > these. Top choice: Backup /home. Optionally /etc. And hand it over to the installer for complete wipe and clean install. From scratch setup. And after going through initial setup, restore /home (specifically restore the contents of ~/ for each user). Probably the most straightforward. Second choice: Esoteric but a rather neat trick, is btrfs conversion, snapshot root and home. And use Btrfs send/receive to populate a new Btrfs file system with those snapshots. The conversion to Btrfs is merely a means to being able to use send/receive to replicate them. You get to keep your customizations without a clean install, but you do get the subvolume layout of a clean install. It is a bit partition-ninja. And there are post steps like all the bootloader stuff. It really depends on how comfortable you are with a rather low level process of migrating the data, almost inevitably messing it up, and working through the screwups. I've done quite a few of these and manage to screw it up somehow, and have to backtrack but I also don't panic easily, not least of which is a bunch of backups. So no matter how badly I mess it up I know I'm not losing things I care about. -- Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
