starting sector number, 4532393984 exceeds the msdos-partition-table-imposed maximum

[rwbehne1]

I think I caused it by having a space beside the comma. I'll try again being certain to not typing a space, as is force of habit. Live and learn!

[vinnywright]

one that works looks like this

#TB-drive
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/btrfs    btrfs     rw,relatime,space_cache,compress=lzo     0    0

VINNY

[vinnywright]

I decided to try removing the "compress" option from /etc/fstab then reboot. That fixed it. Now I'm wondering why enabling compress disabled my system.

what did your fstab look like with the "compress" option in it ,,,,,,,

VINNY

[rwbehne1]

I decided to try removing the "compress" option from /etc/fstab then reboot. That fixed it. Now I'm wondering why enabling compress disabled my system.

[rwbehne1]

Ok. I couldn't get my one external drive to be reliable enough to use as a temporary backup, it is just not cooperating, so I tried working on the other four dead drives and found one that the KDE partition manager was able to access. Got it working reliably well.

Next I waited until this holiday weekend (here in the Philippines) because I knew there would likely be one blackout on Friday morning, and none for at least 48 hours, unless a storm approached. The blackout happened just as I expected, so I waited until after 9pm, then since I had lots of unused space at the end of the drive, I proceeded to move sda3 all the way to the end of the drive, putting all that empty space between sda2 and sda3. It took almost 9 hours to complete. Success! Then I grew the btrfs partition (sda2) to use all available space. I then moved as much files as possible from sda3 to sda2. Now, what remained on sda3 was small enough to fit onto the external drive, so I moved it all leaving sda3 completely empty. I then deleted sda3and grew sda2 to fill up the entire drive, then moved all the files from the external drive into sda2. All well and good so far, then I added the compression option to /etc/fstab and rebooted. Well at least I tried to.

X won't start, there's just an underbar on a black screen.
I can use <ctl><alt><f1> to log in as root on a term. I found that the system is mounted read only. Here's a photo of the screen immediately after I logged in:

What happened, and what should I do now?

ADDITIONAL INFO:
I did cd /home, expecting to find my home directory /home/russ and a few other files, but instead I found /home/@ and /home/@home. Both are writable.

[rwbehne1]

Since you would also mv @ to @16_04 there wouldn't be an @/opt, etc. Your new install works create a new @ and @home. Remember what oshunluver said about fstab and grub. You'll use the correct UUID's in fstab.

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So, what I now understand is that everything I put in /opt /src /usr/local etc., is just gone, or are they still somewhere in @16_04, and thus recoverable? Can I access them somehow and move their contents to the new @?

[GreyGeek]

Since you would also mv @ to @16_04 there wouldn't be an @/opt, etc. Your new install works create a new @ and @home. Remember what oshunluver said about fstab and grub. You'll use the correct UUID's in fstab.


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[rwbehne1]

No, you'll rename @ and @home to something like @16_04 and @home16_04 to allow the future installations of other distros, which you will also rename, etc.

At the risk of repeating myself, I first want to point out that I am not asking about "dual booting", I am asking about simply changing to another distro, wiping out the current one during the install, but without wiping out my data. In ext4 I easily did this by formating just the / partition - but not the /home, /opt, /srv, /var/www, /var/ftp, /var/gopher, or /usr/local partitions where data is stored.

So if I have this in my btrfs:

root@behne:~# cd /
root@behne:/# btrfs subvolume list home
ID 257 gen 12036 top level 5 path @
ID 258 gen 12036 top level 5 path @home
ID 269 gen 11927 top level 257 path @/opt
ID 270 gen 11920 top level 257 path @/srv
ID 271 gen 8952 top level 257 path @/var/www
ID 272 gen 8952 top level 257 path @/var/ftp
ID 273 gen 8952 top level 257 path @/var/gopher
ID 274 gen 11785 top level 257 path @/usr/local
root@behne:/#

Are you and he saying that after renaming @home to @home16_04 I can then install a single new (non dual-booting) and different distro which will then overwrite @ and create a new @home, while not touching @home16_04, @/opt, @/srv, @/var/www, @/var/ftp, @/var/gopher, and @/usr/local

If not, then how can I wipe out all of @ during a new install without also wiping out all the contents of @home16_04, @/opt, @/srv, @/var/www, @/var/ftp, @/var/gopher, and @/usr/local in the process of doing a new install?

[GreyGeek]

No, you'll rename @ and @home to something like @16_04 and @home16_04 to allow the future installations of other distros, which you will also rename, etc.

Notice also that he installed to sdX and not to sdX1

You need to read oshunluver' post more carefully.


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[rwbehne1]

*buntu's install to @ and @home subvolumes by default. To install multiple OSs to a single btrfs file system: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...trfs+multiboot

Does that mean that my @home is always going to get overwritten/deleted by default? That doesn't sound right. What about other subvolumes I create? Will they just vanish when @ gets formatted?

I don't want to install multiple OS's at this time, but I want to know what happens if I were to decide to change distros. (I do so every so often.) I want to replace everything in @ but I don't want anything in @home lost. That's why when using ext4 I had multiple partitions - So I could format / but leave /home and other partitions untouched, preserving their contents. From what I'm reading, this sort of thing is not possible in btrfs. I certainly can't find anything posted that talks about it. If that's true, then it's better to drop btrfs and resume using ext4 where I can set aside partitions to remain unformatted by a new install.

[oshunluvr]

*buntu's install to @ and @home subvolumes by default. To install multiple OSs to a single btrfs file system: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...trfs+multiboot

Re. KDEneon:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forumd...p/242-KDE-neon
https://neon.kde.org

[rwbehne1]

Ok, I found out how to make subvolumes, and more. but still have questions. If I want to install a new OS in this btrfs, how does it work? Can everything in @ be wiped out for the reinstall without touching anything in subvolumes? I haven't yet been able to find anything on that topic.

I'm also wondering where all the server software is to be found. I tried that "Discovery" program, and I think it inhales vigorously with considerable force, if you get my meaning. I like the traditional software installers much better. So How do I find the software I want? I can't find anything for NFS, Apache, proFTPd, and many other things, and there doesn't seem to be any GUI config program like OpenSUSE's Yast.

Dragon player doesn't play videos. It just sits there, looking so microsoft! Doesn't even give me a clue as to why nothing's happening.

There also used to be a program for setting up a free IPV6 tunnel. It was called Miredo and ran as a Teredo client. What happened to that?

It used to be touted as the easiest system to use, but in the few years I've been away from Kubuntu it seems to have gone downhill a tad bit.

[GreyGeek]

Yup. It's gonna be fun. But it's only temporary, I hope, until I can find a way to get a bigger drive. I hope to also get a box, motherboard, power supply, and plenty of memory so I can put together a headless server with both drives, this drive will end up holding those snapshots. Then this box will get a 500G drive and become an exclusively desktop station. The problem is I'm disabled, can't work a job, have no business, no income, and am living in the boondocks of the Philippines on a meager income from my wife's farm. So I have come to the point where I'll accept donations, Hint, hint!

Yes, it's in as / and has @home as you said it would. Now I want to learn how to make additional subvolumes.

Right now I have the best GE90 Turbofan in any Cessna Skyhawk.

LOL!!!


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[rwbehne1]

I believe you'll come to regret putting Btrfs onto such a small partition. It's like jamming a GE90 Turbofan onto a Cessna Skyhawk frame. A 1Tb Btrfs partition would have been better. I'm assuming you made the Btfs partition as "/".

You won't be able to snapshot anything on the EXT4 partition so you will be forced to use old paradigms to back up or restore any data you have on it.

Yup. It's gonna be fun. But it's only temporary, I hope, until I can find a way to get a bigger drive. I hope to also get a box, motherboard, power supply, and plenty of memory so I can put together a headless server with both drives, this drive will end up holding those snapshots. Then this box will get a 500G drive and become an exclusively desktop station. The problem is I'm disabled, can't work a job, have no business, no income, and am living in the boondocks of the Philippines on a meager income from my wife's farm. So I have come to the point where I'll accept donations, Hint, hint!

Yes, it's in as / and has @home as you said it would. Now I want to learn how to make additional subvolumes.

Right now I have the best GE90 Turbofan in any Cessna Skyhawk.

[rwbehne1]

22,000... seriously?

Seriously.

I do like to read, and I like to share too. Obviously I don't read them all myself, especially the kiddie books, or the ones the ladies like, so I organize them and put them online using Calibre. Books in plain text format I just put in my gopher server.

See https://calibre-ebook.com/