[Package Request] - btrfs

[blkqi]

What package is missing from Amazon Linux 2023? Please describe and include package name.

• btrfs-progs - Userspace programs for btrfs
• btrfs-progs-devel - btrfs filesystem-specific libraries and headers
• libbtrfs - btrfs filesystem-specific runtime libraries
• libbtrfsutil - btrfs filesystem-specific runtime utility libraries
• python3-btrfsutil - Python 3 bindings for libbtrfsutil

Is this an update to existing package or new package request?

New

Is this package available in Amazon Linux 2? If it is available via external sources such as EPEL, please specify.

Yes

Any additional information you'd like to include. (use-cases, etc)

Useful tool for striping data volumes on EC2. The main alternative - mdadm - has too many mysterious and random behaviors that make it clumsy to automate.

[kuulasmaa]

EBS autoscaling (https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-ebs-autoscale) requires btrfs-progs or at least BTRFS seems to work much better than LVM+EXT4 alternative. Please add BTRFS support to AL2023.

[awsyouare]

please let us know once btrfs package is released.

[kmoad]

The btrfs cli can be compiled from source if you're feeling brave

sudo dnf install -y \
    git \
    automake \
    gcc \
    python3-sphinx \
    e2fsprogs-devel \
    libuuid-devel \
    libudev-devel \
    lzo-devel \
    libblkid-devel \
    libzstd-devel \
    python3-devel
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kdave/btrfs-progs.git
cd btrfs-progs
git checkout 'v6.1.3'
./autogen.sh
./configure
make -j`nproc`
sudo make install

Disclaimers

• I've only done minimal testing. Put a raid0 volume on the local disks. Hasn't broken yet.
• The tag to checkout will have to change in new kernels.
• Tab completion of commands doesn't work.

[stewartsmith]

We can try and work with the maintainers of https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-ebs-autoscale to ensure that there's similar functionality that can be done with XFS.

File systems are, of course, complex pieces of software, with a high quality bar, thus we prefer to focus, and that focus is currently directed towards XFS and ext4.

We'd love to know the use cases you have for btrfs in EC2 that isn't solved with XFS or ext4.

[thedoc31]

We can try and work with the maintainers of https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-ebs-autoscale to ensure that there's similar functionality that can be done with XFS.

File systems are, of course, complex pieces of software, with a high quality bar, thus we prefer to focus, and that focus is currently directed towards XFS and ext4.

We'd love to know the use cases you have for btrfs in EC2 that isn't solved with XFS or ext4.

My team uses btrfs because of its snapshot and checksumming functionality. Neither XFS nor ext4 support this natively. Interestingly, Fedora is using btrfs as their default filesystem but RHEL deprecated it and removed it from RHEL8 and above. The only alternative with snapshot functionality is ZFS, but is an add-on and not part of the kernel.

The lack of btrfs support is absolutely a roadblock to our team being able to upgrade to Amazon Linux 2023 (and RHEL8/Rocky Linux 8 for that matter).

[microbioticajon]

Just a side note, https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-ebs-autoscale appears to be a dead project and has not seen a release in 2 years. There is currently a bug in the code that prevents it working properly with imdv2 that has not been addressed.

[omerxx]

Hi, we use BTRFS with its FS resizing capabilities and would very much like to have it back!

[michaelamar1991]

Hi all, we are using with BTRFS to resize filesystem on flight (shrunk and expands) and it become a blocker from migrating to AL2023... will appreciate to have it back as default.