Re: Testing release for BTRFS/Snapshots feature

[Adolf Belka <adolf.belka@ipfire.org>]

Hi Stefan,

On 29/04/2026 19:25, Stefan Schantl wrote:
> Hello list followers,
> 
> a lot of time has been passed since the initial support for BTRFS has
> been introduced in IPFire. Sadly the further development process has
> been slowed down significantly - mainly because of personal reasons and
> as a result of them, the lack of spare time on my side.
> 
> All the more I'm very happy to announce the next milestone on this list
> and share the current development state. The roadmap on our wiki page
> can be found here: https://www.ipfire.org/docs/roadmap/btrfs
> 
> The code to take snapshots, manage them, boot into a certain snapshot
> or to restore them finally has been arrived. All these actions easily
> can be accessed from the CGI page for backups on the IPFire WUI. On
> this page a new section called "Snapshots" will be displayed in case
> BTRFS has been chosen during the install process of IPFire.
> 
> The page layout and style is not final yet, but everything is expected
> to work properly. In case you have any ideas how to improve the look
> and feel of the CGI page please provide some feedback here.
> 
> The grub boot menu automatically will be extended when the first
> snapshot has been created with an additional entry to access and boot
> into a select-able snapshot in case the system broke or for any other
> testing purposes.
> 
> I've also extend the code of the pakfire package manager to create a
> snapshot before installing a core update.
> 
> To summarize the above the snapshot feature would be a big step
> forward, because it a allows anybody to go back if some unexpected
> error occur after an update, a testing update breaks anything, for
> hunting when a certain bug has been seen for the first time, etc...
> 
> To took the last remaining steps and get the feature into the
> distribution some more testing and feedback is required. Therefore I've
> backed and uploaded an ISO image for all who are interested and want to
> join testing.
> 
> Sadly IPFire has to be re-installed with BTRFS because there is no way
> to migrate an existing installation to a different file system.

IPFire has to be installed from fresh to get the btrfs filesystem but can you confirm that then you can do a restore from an IPFire backup from an ext4 filesystem to get all settings, without any issues due to the filesystem.

My understanding is that bis the case but I would just like to have it confirmed.

Regards,

Adolf.

> 
> The current (and may later) images can be found here:
> 
> https://people.ipfire.org/~stevee/BTRFS/
> 
> According to testing and feedback there are some additional questions
> which appeared during development and needs some attention:
> 
> * Should BTRFS become the default selected file system during
> installation? (At the moment this is ext4)
> 
> * Should the pre-generated images use BTRFS? (At the moment they are
> also ext4)
> 
> * Do we want an automatic snapshot for each single core update, or do
> we want a single one in case multiple core updates will be installed in
> one go? (Currently I've implemented a snapshot for each single update)
> 
> * Maybe I missed something - feel free to ask any questions or share
> your opinions here.
> 
> A big thanks in advance to anyone who wants to contribute and helps to
> finalize this amazing feature.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -Stefan
>