On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 at 16:44, Robert Munteanu wrote:

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- By default we will NOT propose a separate /home partition

Just to restate, does that mean that /home will end up being backed by a btrfs filesystem by default?

Correct, /home will be a btrfs subvolume -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri, 2018-11-16 at 16:46 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 at 16:44, Robert Munteanu wrote:

...

...

- By default we will NOT propose a separate /home partition

Just to restate, does that mean that /home will end up being backed by a btrfs filesystem by default?

Correct, /home will be a btrfs subvolume

Have you considered disabling copy-on-write for the /home subvolume? It is (in my limited experience) the primary thing that can suprise users in a nasty way under /home. Robert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri, 2018-11-16 at 17:05 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 at 16:58, Robert Munteanu wrote:

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On Fri, 2018-11-16 at 16:46 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 at 16:44, Robert Munteanu

...

wrote:

...

...

- By default we will NOT propose a separate /home partition

Just to restate, does that mean that /home will end up being backed by a btrfs filesystem by default?

Correct, /home will be a btrfs subvolume

Have you considered disabling copy-on-write for the /home subvolume? It is (in my limited experience) the primary thing that can suprise users in a nasty way under /home.

The thought crossed my mind, but I don't think it makes sense here

Unlike /var, the chances of users having data which will benefit from NoCoW is relatively small - how many users have relational databases stored their /home?

Meanwhile having CoW enabled in /home means users can benefit from the *really cool* feature of btrfs send/receive for incremental backups on steroids

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Incremental_Backup

My personal systems have been running for over a year using the config I'm now proposing for everyone by default, and there's no way in heck I could live with /home with CoW disabled.

Ack, thanks. I was thinking more of VM images than relational databases, but as long as it's something you took into account and dismissed it's all fine to me. Thanks, Robert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Freitag, 16. November 2018 18:17:32 CET Christian Boltz wrote:

Hello,

Am Freitag, 16. November 2018, 17:05:54 CET schrieb Richard Brown:

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On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 at 16:58, Robert Munteanu wrote:

...

Have you considered disabling copy-on-write for the /home subvolume? It is (in my limited experience) the primary thing that can suprise users in a nasty way under /home.

The thought crossed my mind, but I don't think it makes sense here

Unlike /var, the chances of users having data which will benefit from NoCoW is relatively small - how many users have relational databases stored their /home?

That number might not be as smallas you think ;-)

KMail / Akonadi uses a MySQL database, so nearly all KMail users have a database in their home directory (unless they change the Akonadi config to use the system-wide MySQL or PostgreSQL).

The various desktop searches like Baloo also use something that looks like a database to me ;-)

Baloo disables CoW for its database, as does Akonadi. Not sure about Firefox (which uses a bunch of sqlite3 DBs). Kind regards, Stefan https://github.com/KDE/baloo/blob/b9e1ef29821d4b05d1c903d4214de9f5f0c63ed3/ src/engine/fsutils.cpp#L36 https://github.com/KDE/akonadi/blob/a3cae6e26a0f31e7f92ea9b5717b4739149ed8ea... src/server/utils.cpp#L209 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 16/11/2018 18.17, Christian Boltz wrote:

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My personal systems have been running for over a year using the config I'm now proposing for everyone by default, and there's no way in heck I could live with /home with CoW disabled.

Just curious - how big is your btrfs partition?

I have a ~500 GB btrfs since some months, and had a few cases where one of the btrfs-* (IIRC balance) cronjobs (actually timers) made the system mostly unusable for some minutes by causing a high IO load. Is this a known issue, or should I report a bug if/when it happens again? (I'm aware of boo#1063638, but I'm not sure if it matches my problem, and given the number of comments I slightly ;-) doubt if adding even more comments there is a good idea ;-)

Yes, that sounds *exactly* like boo#1063638 but you are right, one more "me too" comment will not help to solve it any faster. I myself tend to run all my systems as well without a dedicated home partition on the first disk so same as Richard is proposing now. However, this will make boo#1063638 more likely for even more people. Let's see how that will play out ;) But also could be that I experience less issues after I trigger snapperd itself with IO niceness, see https://github.com/openSUSE/snapper/pull/437#issuecomment-429993992 maybe it helps. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 16/11/2018 16.46, Richard Brown wrote:

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 at 16:44, Robert Munteanu wrote:

...

...

- By default we will NOT propose a separate /home partition

Just to restate, does that mean that /home will end up being backed by a btrfs filesystem by default?

Correct, /home will be a btrfs subvolume

Ok, question then: If one is installing to a previously installed machine with this setup, will the home subvolume be left intact, with all its data, and only the "system" space formatted or erased? A common manner of installing the next release is to replace "/" and leave "/home" partition intact. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.3 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)

Hi Carlos,

How can the install person choose defaults? Say "I want separate home"? I mean, will it be some sort of button, or do we have to enter expert partioning and edit the partition layout?

I would suggest an optional table of choices presented early, including things like "laptop”.

It can be done with the guided setup like shown here: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/798839#step/partitioning_togglehome/3 But after his change is accepted, it would be the opposite.

...

- swap will not grow to the size of RAM by default (but this can still be enabled in the Guided or Expert partitioners)

Why? Can you expand on this?

Perhaps a button to say swap will be used for hibernation?

This can be also done with the guided setup. You can see the checkbox on the same previous screenshot: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/798839#step/partitioning_togglehome/3 Feel free to check the screenshots and even the video: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/798839/file/video.ogv Kind Regards, Sergio-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/18/2018 03:50 PM, Juan Erbes wrote:

El vie., 16 nov. 2018 a las 12:35, Richard Brown () escribió:

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Hi everyone,

For a while there has been a significant amount of feedback that some of our installers defaults could do with improvement. I've decided to try and tackle some of them.

We have seen a number of users receiving smaller / (rootfs) filesystems than ideal with our default feature set of snapshots and rollback. This results in their systems filling up with snapshots before the space-aware cleanup even has a chance to take effect. A number of users have asked why we mix xfs and btrfs by default, and we've seen bugs where that mixing results in a /home partition that is unusably small.

Therefore I've proposed the following PR to both Leap 15.1 and Tumbleweed's installers

https://github.com/yast/skelcd-control-openSUSE/pull/153

The changes from the current behaviour as follows:

- / will aim to be at least 40GiB by default, and will not be allowed to be smaller than 20GiB - If snapshots are disabled in either the Guided or Expert partitioner, / will aim to be at least 10GiB, and will not be allowed to be smaller than 5GiB - / will try and use all other available space - By default we will NOT propose a separate /home partition - If a separate /home is requested in either the Guided or Expert partitioner, /home will aim to be at least 40GiB and no smaller than 10GiB - If enabled, /home will try to use all other available space at a rate twice as large as / - swap will not grow to the size of RAM by default (but this can still be enabled in the Guided or Expert partitioners) - Unlike previously, all of the above also applies to the "Transactional Server" system role, with the exception that you cannot disable snapshots.

All together this means that most users will have a much simpler straightforward partitioning of their systems, be it a VM with a small disk, a laptop with an SSD, or a massive server/workstation with dozens of GB of RAM.

In addition to the above I took the opportunity to fix a bug that's been lingering in my backlog for most of the year: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1090372

As we now have clear "Server" and "Transactional Server" system roles, the firewall & sshd configuration for those roles will now be optimised by default

- sshd will be enabled by default - firewalld will be disabled by default

I've discussed logic of disabling the firewall was discussed at length with a number of people, especially our Leap release manager Ludwig who's opinion on security I consider very highly.

Given that servers are not general purpose machines and will have a limited number of services installed, each manually by the user, we feel that the firewall is a needless complication for that role which users should be saved from by default.

The firewall & sshd configuration will not be changed for any of the other system roles. The firewall will remain enabled by default for desktop roles, where there is a much larger risk of software opening up ports without the user being aware of it.

Users will of course still be able to modify these settings from their defaults on the "Installation Summary" screen before the install, just as they can today.

If there are any significant improvements you see to the above, please speak up quickly as the pull request is on the way already.

I see with the Partitioning defaults a serious problem, because it ALWAYS tries to format and partitioning the /home partition, both in Leap Alpha 15.1 and Tumbleweed.

The installer always try to make the sufficient space to install the new system. PROPOSING to delete existing partitions if needed. If there is no free space in the disk for the default recommended layout, it will PROPOSE to delete one of the existing partitions. Which partition to PROPOSE for deletion depends on the sizes and positions of the partitions, not on their content. If your previous /home is at the end of the disk and deleting it provides enough space to install the new system... then the installer will propose to delete it so it can use the resulting free space to install the new system there. What would you expect the installer to do instead of that? We need feedback about what are the user expectations in that regard.

In my pc, the installation program of Tumbleweed stopped at the partition window, and I could edit it.

Do you mean this screen? https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/798839#step/partitioning_filesystem/1 Yes, Tumbleweed ALWAYS ALWAYS stops in that screen.

But the last Wednesday installing Tumbleweed in the pc of a friend, the installation program don't stopped at the partition window, and formatted the /home partition, and now I have a serious problem with my friend, because he did not have the data safeguarded.

Do you mean the installer didn't stop at the "Suggested Partitioning" screen linked above? The installer just started to install stuff without offering you to decide the disk layout in any step? I honestly believe that's impossible. A version of the TW installer that does not stop in the "Suggested Partitioning" screen would have never passed the most elementary openQA test. I bet you actually accepted the default suggested partitioning without reading/noticing it. In other words: YaST logs or it didn't happen. ;-) Cheers. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Linux GmbH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org