Linux @lemmy.ml boredsquirrel @slrpnk.net 5 mo. ago

List of useful BTRFS tools

Hi, I want to do an "awesome things" list with BTRFS tools

Help me gather them?

Update: see here

General

BTRFS CLI Interface

btrfs-progs

official userpace utilities

BTRFS Assistant

Tool for doing many BTRFS actions graphically

It requires snapper and offers a GUI for it.

butter-manager

Tool for managing snapshots, balancing filesystems and upgrading the system safetly.

Backups & Snapshots

btrbk

Backup utility using BTRFS

Snapper

General system snapshot utility with BTRFS support, used in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed by default. There are also plugins for Fedoras dnf and for Arch pacman.

Timeshift

System restore tool for Linux. Creates filesystem snapshots using rsync+hardlinks, or BTRFS snapshots. Supports scheduled snapshots, multiple backup levels, and exclude filters. Snapshots can be restored while system is running or from Live CD/USB.

Currently maintained by LinuxMint, even though they dont use BTRFS by default, it works better there.

libtuikit / transactional-update

Used in OpenSUSE microOS and the Desktop variants.

provides an application and library to update a Linux operating system in a transactional way, i.e. the update will be performed in the background while the system continues running as it is. Only if the update was the successful as a whole the system will boot into the new snapshot.

Available as a library for other distros.

Yet Another BTRFS Snapshotter

Alternatives don't supports customized of snapshot location, (e.g. Arch recommended layout). Adhering to such layouts, and rolling back using them, sometime involve non-obvious workarounds. The motivation for yabsnap was to create a simpler, hackable and customizable snapshot system.

btrfs-autosnap

There are 2 separate projects with that name

grub-btrfs

Set BTRFS snapshots as boot options

[btrfs-sxbackup])https://github.com/masc3d/btrfs-sxbackup)

Incremental btrfs snapshot backups with push/pull support via SSH

Small CLI tools

btrfsd - tiny Btrfs maintenance daemon

Btrfsd is a lightweight daemon that takes care of all Btrfs filesystems on a Linux system.

It can:

Check for detected errors and broadcast a warning if any were found, or optionally send an email

Perform scrub periodically if the system is not on battery

Optionally schedule balancing operations as well

dupreremove

Tools for deduplicating file systems

compsize

Fedora Magazine on BTRFS compression

Takes a list of files on a btrfs filesystem and measures used compression types and effective compression ratio

Used in flatpak-dedup-checker

btdu

sampling disk usage profiler for btrfs For multiple reasons, classic disk usage analyzers such as ncdu cannot provide an accurate depiction of actual disk usage. (btrfs compression in particular is challenging to classic analyzers, and special tools must be used to query compressed usage.)

btrfs-list

Helps listing directories

btrfs-fuse

A read-only btrfs implementation using FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace). Although btrfs is already in mainline Linux kernel, there are still use-cases for such read-only btrfs implementation:

btrfs debugger

The btrfs debugger (pronounced "buttered").

btrd is a REPL debugger that helps inspect mounted btrfs filesystems. btrd is particularly useful in exploring on-disk structures and has full knowledge of all on-disk types.

ntfs2btrfs

a tool which does in-place conversion of Microsoft's NTFS filesystem to the open-source filesystem Btrfs, much as btrfs-convert does for ext2. The original image is saved as a reflink copy at image/ntfs.img, and if you want to keep the conversion you can delete this to free up space.

Consists of a Windows and a Linux executable. Does not work on the primary drive.

WinBTRFS

filesystem driver for Windows

Partition managers with support

KDE-Partitionamanger
GNOME-Disks
blivet-gui (Fedora Anaconda setup)
gparted ?

Data recovery

When having deleted or corrupted data on a BTRFS partition, these tools can help:

Testdisk?

photorec?

Scalpel?

R-Linux

Freeware, not FOSS? Not related to R and "R-Studio" is also not related to RStudio

BTRFS bindings

These allow you to do BTRFS actions in many programming languages

30 comments

SUSE & openSUSE also have a great documentation about the snapper snapshot tool which is also available in many distributions:

Snapper Documentation

SUSE Linux Enterprise

openSUSE Leap

Arch Wiki
- Arch wiki already in there XD
  
  True :D but my link goes directly to the snapper section of the wiki^^.
Permanently Deleted
- Does timeshift also use BTRFS features, or just the normal method?
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  Timeshifts main reason to use is BTRFS functionality. It's a fantastic tool, but I only used it previously on EXT4, in which case it defaults to slow rsync method. I really like the software, but on my new install decided against using it (I'm on EXT4 yet again). https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift And while I post this reply, just noticed that Linux Mint is maintaining it now. The old repo is in archive mode: https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift
I like btdu which is essentially ncdu, but works in a way that is useful even if advanced btrfs features (CoW, compression etc.) are used.
- Added it
I've used btrfs-autosnap for a while on Arch and it's brilliant. Whenever you install or remove something with pacman it creates a btrfs snapshot of your subvolumes and if you have grub-btrfs install too they get added to Grub menu. Very handy.

You can define which subvolumes you want snapshotted and how many snapshots of each you want to keep. Which means it also removes the oldest snapshot when a new is created if it gets over the keep amount.
- Added it
There is R-Linux for recovering deleted files, altough it doesn't support btrfs it can recover data from btrfs drives(if anyone knows something better please let me know as I have a drive that completely wiped itself).
- Is that R-Linux and R-Studio something different from R the language and RStudio the GUI for it? Damn this is confusing.
  
  I have no idea. R-Linux is what the package on the AUR is called and it doesn't require a license unlike R-Studio from the site.
Nice list.

Depending on your package manager, there are very handy snapper plugins that do automated pre/post snapshots for package installation/removal.

For Arch-based systems it's snap-pac, and Fedora has one too (although I can't remember the name).
- Thanks, added it
I would like to recommend Yabsnap as an alternative to Snapper. It's made for Arch, tested on Fedora and might work on other distros. But it needs more eyes and testers!

Edit: thank you for the list! It's very nice to see what is available for btrfs
- Added it
https://github.com/knorrie/python-btrfs

https://github.com/kdave/btrfsmaintenance
- Okay I will add a "btrfs bindings" section 🫠
I’m not saying this to start a fight, but as a person who used btrfs for a situation it was not suited for: there need to be some tools for migrating off btrfs here.
- Ok you know one?
  
  Not that I was aware of a couple of years ago. I ended up copying to a different media, reformatting and copying back and accepting the loss of the snapshots.