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GRUB 1.99 Released With Support For ZFS and BtrFS
kthreadd writes "GNU GRUB has been updated to version 1.99. Among the many improvements are support for two new filesystems, BtrFS and ZFS. For Linux users this means that it's now possible to move to BtrFS entirely and not use it only for non-bootable volumes."
Ext4 is stable now, and was an easy upgrade from ext3, both in terms of development and in terms of converting your existing filesystems -- one command, and then just remount as ext4, no time-consuming and dangerous conversion needed.
BtrFS looks to be better than ext4 in every way except the above -- and I haven't been following it for awhile, so as far as I know, btrfs might be rock-solid stable by now.
Put another way, ext4 is a replacement for ext3, whereas btrfs is a replacement for zfs.
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Until it supports booting from paper tape or punch card, I'm not going to trust it 100%
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With GRUB ~= 2.0, you aren't supposed to mess with grub.conf. You're supposed to mess with a shitpile of external .conf files and command line tools.
I like having the ability to wipe out and redo any partition without ruining my ability to boot into my other partitions. I typically multi-boot 3 or 4 partitions so this matters to me.
So I always use an independent boot manager like GAG or PLOP that can boot just about anything else and is drop dead simple to reconfigure. Each partition gets it's own favorite PARTITION boot manager, Grub for Linux, BCD for Windows, etc...
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Ext4 is a more error-resistant (safer) and potentially faster Ext3. If you don't know what BtrFS is good for, you don't need to use BtrFS (although it could become a mainstream filesystem some day).
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I'd take a look here: Btrfs The main problem I have with it is that there's a large number of filesystems out there and while that's not really a bad thing, it makes interoperability a real headache sometimes. Personally, I'd rather have a somewhat less than perfect filesystem (assuming that it is reliable than a huge variety of specialty filesystems which may or may not be readable under any other OS.
And apart from ZFS suffering from NIH problems as well as the CDDL licensing, I really don't see any compelling reason to add yet another filesystem that does largely the same thing.
Put another way, ext4 is a replacement for ext3, whereas btrfs is a replacement for zfs.
I think you mean that btrfs is a replacement for ext4. Maybe I'm naive and a bit reactionary but I'm just not seeing FreeBSD and Solaris switching to btrfs just because the Linux crowd says it's the greatest thing since sliced bread...
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"In 2008 the principal developer of the ext3 and ext4 file systems, Theodore Ts'o, stated that ext4 is a stop-gap and that Btrfs is the way forward,[10] having "a number of the same design ideas that reiser3/4 had". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs & http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/8/1/217
I8-D
This is really cool. Now when one of these filesystems becomes stable in Linux, we'll be ready to go. Look out 2025--here I come!
LI
When it has integrated EMACS?
To obtain all of the ext4 performance, tweaks, and reliability benefits, you MUST perform an ext4 format.
That's not entirely correct. With two commands, you get a full conversion from ext3 to ext4 without a reformat, leaving your data in place: /dev/DEV /dev/DEV
tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index
e2fsck -fDC0
(On an unmounted filesystem, obviously. Source. )