Re: [opensuse-factory] ¿Which is the better way to clone the btrfs system root partition?

On Mon, 24 Jul 2017, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2017-07-23 15:51, Richard Brown wrote:

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On 23 July 2017 at 15:45, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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As on my computer the Leap partition 42.1 was broken, I want to clone Leap 42.3 from the other disk. On my pc I have installed Leap 42.2, so no hard disk needs to be mounted, both the source and the destination to clone Leap 42.3.

¿Which is the better way?

There is no good way to clone a btrfs root partition. Better install again.

Carlos, please don't be so inaccurate with your statements when someone is legitimately asking for help

To my knowledge, there is no way to clone a btrfs filesystem. You have to format and manually create the volumes and subvolumes, and there is no listing of which they are on each openSUSE release. The question has been asked several times, and none has answered it adequately.

My answer, to my knowledge, is perfectly accurate. It is not the first time I have made the same answer and none has yet proposed a better method during the years.

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Juan, you can use btrfs send and receive to clone a system to another disk.

https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles-12/stor_admin/data/sec_filesystems_m...

This does not explain how to clone a btrfs filesystem from scratch. The word "clone" does not even exist in the entire page. It only explains how to copy the files and keep them in sync.

I started down the road to cloning a btrfs root using btrfs utilities, and in the end the journey convinced me not to use btrfs (and I don't give up easily). In case it helps, I have written up notes on the structure of an openSUSE btrfs root volume and a bit about recreating a root volume: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/521277-LEAP-42-2-btrfs-root-files... As well as the first post, there is a second post further down the thread concerning preserving copy-on-write attributes. In this case I suspect using a non-btrfs partition cloning utility might be the easiest approach. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org