Long time linux user, but new to btrfs (only dabbled). Did the system just bridge my SATA and NVME?
My PC has 4 drives: two 250gb nvmes, and two 1tb satas.
The nvmes are for linux and windows, the satas are for /home and S:\ (for Stuff)
For the purposes here we just need to worry about one nvme and one sata. Upon installing I selected the two drives, clicked automatic, clicked "pls wipe and encrypt", and then it installed. I was under the assumption that it would ask me which device I would like to boot and which I would like to /home. That's my bad, and honestly I'm impressed that when btrfs says "automatic" is means automatic. But that begs the question, what exactly is going on with my disks?
For one, sa you can see, the sata was selected for /boot, so I'm for sure going to have to redo this, but most notably my nvme was mounted to /sysroot.. is that a subvolume that extends /? If so, by what measure does the system allocate data between the drives, is it totally random? Also, the efi is obviouosly a fat32, but why does /boot have its own ext4 part? Is that so other distros or my "oh-shit-i-need-to-fix-this" usb can easily locate it?
To the btrfs vets out there, do you prefer to:
A, bridge your fast and slow drives in one big btrfs conglomerate
B, configure slow drive(s) as their own btrfs for /home (could make adding storage easier)
C, just do ext4 for /home for simplicity
I know bazzite targets smaller single drive devices typically so information on this topic is greatly appreciated!
7 Replies
you can think of it sorta like a raid 0, overall you don't want to have diffrent devices like this having the FS span over both drives
how to go about fixing it without reinstalling I am not sure atm
If it was done with something like LVM you can say have the hdd as the main storage and the NVME act as a cache drive, then have btrfs on top of that, but that is a bit over the top
I'm just going to reinstall I mean this just happened like 10 minutes ago lul
imo if it is a fresh system I would simply reinstall
just pick the single drive you want as your boot drive
if you want to do that lvm thing idk how you would go about it tbh
(likley just installing to the hdd then later setting the nvme as cache to the hdd)
I'm not interested in LVM, my questions mostly pertain to what the reccomended configuration is regarding filesystem choices. Would you turn your /home drive into a seperate volume with a single subvolume? Would you just turn it into an ext4 for simplicity sake?
LVM is not a filesystem
it is disk management
(p.s. the sata is a SSD, the one in the second image)
you would install btrfs on top of an LVM
I would keep everything btrfs filesystem wise
subvolumes would not solve the issue as they are not like partitions
with how much is loaded from your home I am not sure you truly want your
/var/home to be on the hhd alone
also yes /home is not the right place to mount this. /var/home is the right spot on bazzite
/boot is somethig that is loaded by the bootloader that the UEFI loads, it has to be simple and something that the very small bootloader can understand