{"id":12499,"date":"2025-11-11T01:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=12499"},"modified":"2026-01-20T13:28:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:28:24","slug":"converting-to-btrfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.both.org\/?p=12499","title":{"rendered":"Converting to BtrFS — Episode 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n 1 <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n

I’ve previously written about why I won’t use the BtrFS filesystem<\/a>, and the fact that it’s become the only filesystem<\/a> available for new installations of Fedora starting with Fedora 43. In that second article I said I’d keep you all updated on my efforts to migrate at least some of my systems to BtrFS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not going well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Converting existing filesystems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Since I’ve had problems with BtrFS in the past, I decided that my first attempt at converting an LVM\/EXT4 filesystem to BtrFS would be on a virtual machine which I could easily roll back to a previous snapshot. It’s much better to be safe than sorry and there’s no way I’d start on my primary workstation, or any other of my real systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I booted my virtual machine to a Live ISO image of Fedora and started with the recommended fsck<\/strong> command to ensure the \/home<\/code> filesystem I chose for this first attempt was clean. Then, using the btrfs-convert<\/strong> command, I attempted the conversion. I tried to mount the \/home<\/code> filesystem on \/mnt<\/code> on the Live system but that failed. The filesystem also failed to mount on reboot and that forced the virtual machine into maintenance mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reverting to the snapshot, I tried again — and again — and — you get the idea. I changed something in my command each time I tried, but the end result was always the same. To be clear, the man page for the btrfs-convert<\/strong> command did indicate that the conversion would not always work. One can always hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been unable to locate any specific information about converting an EXT4 filesystem on a logical volume, and I think that’s the problem. So I tried again by creating a new virtual drive for the virtual machine and configuring part of it as EXT4 on a raw partition with no LVM and that worked fine. If you try this, be sure to change the entry for the filesystem mount in \/etc\/fstab<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next step<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Since all my systems use logical volume management (LVM) this conversion tool won’t work for me. It seems I’ll need to do complete reinstallations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My problem now is that I need to convert a system that I use regularly in order to fully prove to myself that BtrFS might be ready for use in my lab. But I’m still not going to go all-in until I’ve converted a lesser used system for preliminary testing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stay tuned for the next episode. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Full Series<\/h2>\n\n\n\n