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I've been using btrfs since 2012, and while as of 2014, it's far from done, it's gone a long way in that time. I thought I'd post some tips and scripts from things I've learned through my own use and sharing with others, hence this page.
More generally, you'll find Btrfs documentation on the btrfs wiki.

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2014/05/20 Historical Snapshots of Backups With Btrfs
π 2014-05-20 01:01 in Btrfs, Linux

How to manage historical snapshots of backups with Btrfs

I have a setup where I backup a certain number of machines to a central server. There are multiple ways to do hierarchical backups with btrfs.

snapshots and rsync on top

http://marc.merlins.org/linux/talks/Btrfs-LC2014-JP/html/img33.html
  • not great because of COW relationship lost to unix tools,
  • not great because backing up server on another one requires a lot more snapshots of snapshots for btrfs send of old things that never change
  • works for deduping data that partially changes or changes owners

    • cp -a --link + rsync

    http://marc.merlins.org/linux/talks/Btrfs-LC2014-JP/html/img34.html
  • newer btrfs should be ok with many hardlinks
  • du can figure out the data saved
  • you can use hardlinks.py instead of bedup
  • can be transferred via cp/rsync without losing links
  • but hardlinks will not work across subvolumes

    • cp -a --reflink + rsync

    http://marc.merlins.org/linux/talks/Btrfs-LC2014-JP/html/img35.html
  • very nice, does not require hardlinks which you can't do across subvolumes
  • works for deduping data that partially changes or changes owners
  • but totally lost as soon as you copy it anywhere else (unless you use btrfs send)
    • More pages: March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 October 2014 March 2018

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