On Tue, 2020-11-03 at 00:13 -0700, Chris Murphy wrote: > 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. OK. > > 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. Yes, that looks like what I'll go for. > 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. Here be dragons :-) No thanks, I had enough trouble getting my head around LVM (one reason I'm keen to move to BTRFS). poc _______________________________________________ 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