Episode: 1610
Title: HPR1610: The BTRFS File System
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1610/hpr1610.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 05:47:26

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This is my last segment on the file system.
There's a new thing out there and I'm really not so new but it's called BTRFS and it's been a
pretty big thing. It's supposed to be a really big deal and the commercial Linux
distributors are supposed to have it as the default system.
Unfortunately somehow XFS has come back and sort of pushed BTRFS out of the commercial realm
and back into the hobby realm.
It's a new copy on right or CWO file system for Linux and it implementing advanced features
while focusing on fault tolerance. Repair and easy administration.
It's been jointly developed by a number of companies. Sousa, HP, Red Hat, lots of different
companies. BTFRS is licensed under GPL and open for contribution from anyone.
Not too many companies have said that they are using BTRFS and production but we
welcome those who can say they are production users on a following page.
And so when I went to the Wiki it says BTRFS on various sleep analysis, it had lots of names so
it's called ButterFS and that's what I heard on the Linux Action Show when they talked about it
or betterFS or BTRFS or simply BTRFS and again it's GPL licensed experimental copy on right
file system for Linux. Okay and of all places guys for all these Oracle haters out there,
it started with Oracle in 2007 so and it's still heavily development and marked as unstable,
especially when the file system becomes full. No space conditions arise which make it
challenging to delete files. BTFRS is intended to address the lack of pooling snapshots,
check sums and integral, multi-device spanning list of systems. So question why would you use
BTRFS if the free ZFS is available now? That's just, you know,
and it allows you to scale upward to larger file systems in the enterprise.
Chris Mason is the principal BTRFS author and he's done a lot of work and I really wish
that I could talk to him about why it's great and the differences between it and ZFS and XFS
but I don't know if I'll ever find him. I'll have to Google him and see if he'll do an interview with me.
Has a stated goal to let Linux scale. He said that it was a stated goal,
stated the stated goal was to let Linux scale for the storage that will be available. So that's
what the stated goal was to let Linux scale for the storage that will be available. Scaling is not
just about addressing the storage but also means being able to administer and manage it with a
clean interface that lets people see what's being used and makes it more reliable. In 2008,
the principal developer of XT3 and XT4 file systems, his name is Theodore TSO stated that although
XT4 has improved features, it's not a major advance and uses old technology and is stopgap.
TSO believes that BTRFS is the better direction because it offers improvements in scale,
build your reliability and ease of management. BTRFS also has a number of design ideas that were
used in RISER 3 and RISER 4. Okay, I've used BTO for S and for BORI one time and it was okay.
In the enterprise commercial space, I'm not sure why I would use it if I could use XFS or
if I could use the ZFS for Linux option. All right, so this concludes my series. I hope that
y'all enjoyed it. I really like to have these short features. I listen to a variety of podcasts
and not very many of them go out and look at something and make it short and try to be concise with it.
For instance, if you listen to the Linux outlaws, you have to go into it for almost an hour before
you figure out what's going on in the podcast if you want to listen to it. Same thing with
if you listen to Dan Washco and all those at the weekly podcast that's been on for five years,
it's not really a concise thing so they don't say what they're going to talk about at the beginning
of it. So it's more of a meeting between friends and they talk about beer or whatever and
I'm sure that sometimes this is interesting. But if you really want to look at something,
I'm not sure really that there's that many formats. I mean sometimes if you listen to
the guy at StoneHinge.com that does floss weekly, you know you know within a minute or two if
it's interesting for you. So I'm more than that camp to try to tell you upfront what I'm going to do
and then if you're not interested you know the great thing about podcasts is you just click the
next button. All right, hey if you have any questions or anything you can reach me at jwp5.html.com.
I really appreciate your time and any feedback you might have that be more than welcome. All right,
hey thank you very much. Bye.
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