Debian-8-jessie-KDE

[oshunluvr]

Unfortunately, I've come across no other installer that uses subvolumes automatically at install time except Kubuntu. My idea is to not only have the installer use subvolumes, but to also allow you to specify the subvolume name at install time. Then you can install numerous distros or versions to the same btrfs file system without any of the above shenanigans like Jerry is going through.

[xennex81]

If I want to make a snapshot of /home/jerry I have to first create the subvolume /home-temp and the subvolume /home-temp/jerry-temp. Then I have to use the cp command (with reflink) to copy the contents of /home to /home-temp and /home/jerry to /home/jerry-temp. Then chown /home-temp/jerry-temp to me, delete /home/jerry and /home, then mv /home-temp to /home and /home-temp-jerry-temp to /home/jerry. THEN I can make snapshots of /home or /home/jerry. However, links and sockets are always problematic wihen using cp.

You are seriously saying it is that arduous? Oh, so you can only create snapshots of subvolumes and you want to turn them into subvolumes. And that's what you did here. How come you copied both /home and /home/jerry? Wouldn't that be double?

Obviously I need to rethink the partition and reinstall Jessie using more like what Kubuntu does automatically when installing with Btrfs.

Personally I am still not happy with Linux' data setup. There is /home but I prefer /home to be small, a hub of sorts. When I have a system, and work with a system, I want to use the entirety of the (addressing) space, not confine myself to /home/user, because, for one, the path is too long. /home/user/projects is fine as a symlink but not as a full path. Too arduous to type, to reference. So I will attempt to reduce it to /store/projects. In Windows it'd perhaps be D:/projects. Then there is /usr/local which is interesting from a custom-system pov. You could use it to place extra software (e.g. the Steam client and games). In Ubuntu Steam is installed in $HOME/.steam or $HOME/.local/Steam (depending on package, the Ubuntu package does the former, the Valve package the latter (which I prefer, more organisation)). But you can install games in an additional library (yay, user friendliness) and /usr/local goes pretty much unused. You can also store custom built apps there. But since I don't like the Linux directory structure and its naming, I symlink it to /store/local so I'll have /store/local/Steam or /store/local/games/Steam.

Then I'll have /store/audio and /store/video and possibly /store/download and /store/setup and it'll be like what I had when I used windows .

But then becomes the question of how to encrypt separate volumes and argh.

[GreyGeek]

My first look at using Btrfs in Jessie:
When I created the partition I used the entire disk as "/". Unlike Kubuntu, which creates the subvolumes @/ and @/home which are respresented by "/" and "/home", the ONLY subvolume present in the formated partition on my Jessie installation is "/". All aother directories are just that, directories and not subvolumes.

If I want to make a snapshot of /home/jerry I have to first create the subvolume /home-temp and the subvolume /home-temp/jerry-temp. Then I have to use the cp command (with reflink) to copy the contents of /home to /home-temp and /home/jerry to /home/jerry-temp. Then chown /home-temp/jerry-temp to me, delete /home/jerry and /home, then mv /home-temp to /home and /home-temp-jerry-temp to /home/jerry. THEN I can make snapshots of /home or /home/jerry. However, links and sockets are always problematic wihen using cp.

Obviously I need to rethink the partition and reinstall Jessie using more like what Kubuntu does automatically when installing with Btrfs.

[GreyGeek]

Hold on... a Linux thingy was able to read your mind and figure out what you actually meant? I think this is some kind of new stage of evolution!

Actually it read his fingers when he typed the mount command to manually mount /dev/sdd to /mnt, allowing him to access the fstab file on his btrfs drives. Btrfs is so cool!!!

[SteveRiley]

so I just used /dev/sdd... Lo and behold it mounted flawlessly and let me go get the real mount line

Hold on... a Linux thingy was able to read your mind and figure out what you actually meant? I think this is some kind of new stage of evolution!

[dibl]

After a while I decided to see how Btfs played under JessieKDE.

After I installed Debian 8.1, I needed to edit /etc/fstab to mount my btrfs filesystem, which has all my data including all my "notes to self" about Linux configuration items including btrfs. I could not remember what the mount line in siduction looks like since, with compression options -- I hadn't seen it in years, so I just used /dev/sdd (it is actually on /dev/sdd and /dev/sde, but I already knew you only need to list one of the drives on a multi-device btrfs installation). Lo and behold it mounted flawlessly and let me go get the real mount line. I have had exactly zero issues with it. I symlinked my data folders into my new user's folder on Debian and I was done.

[SteveRiley]

Watching you absorb Linux like a sponge is why I asked you to replace me as an administrator on this forum. And this forum has benefited immensely.

Aww *blush*

[GreyGeek]

That's one way to do it, but you can also give root a password and then modify the installation later to make sudo work normally while still keeping the root password. Later you can undo that.

[MrSteve]

if i install 'jessie' then that’s how i will install it, without a root password ...

from my first post ...

from what i have read about 'jessie' if you do not put in a root password it locks the root account and the first user becomes admin using sudo
very similar to kubuntu i believe ...

[GreyGeek]

i am reading the install instructions for 'jessie' here
http://www.tecmint.com/debian-8-inst...ezy-to-jessie/

the part about root password and sudo is in section number 5.

That happens ONLY if you do not assign a password to root during the installation when setting up the root account.

[MrSteve]

i am reading the install instructions for 'jessie' here
http://www.tecmint.com/debian-8-inst...ezy-to-jessie/

the part about root password and sudo is in section number 5.

[GreyGeek]

from what i have read about 'jessie' if you do not put in a root password it locks the root account and the first user becomes admin using sudo
very similar to kubuntu i believe ...

It didn't lock up on me. It just returned the command prompt.
https://www.linux.com/community/blog...n-introduction

[MrSteve]

from what i have read about 'jessie' if you do not put in a root password it locks the root account and the first user becomes admin using sudo
very similar to kubuntu i believe ...

[GreyGeek]

With that command format, su would think you're trying to switch to the user btrfs. Probably not what you intended

Either of these would work:

su -- -c btrfs filesystem show /

su -c 'btrfs filesystem show /'

But you will, of course, need to know the root password.

You're absolutely right! From 1998 to 2009 I used ditros that had a root password and used "su". Five years with sudo and I forgot entirely the su syntax. I've forgotten so much about Linux, and many other things I used to know and teach. It's sad. Watching you absorb Linux like a sponge is why I asked you to replace me as an administrator on this forum. And this forum has benefited immensely.

[SteveRiley]

Su is fine with me I opened a console and entered su btrfs filesystem show / and was immediately rejected instead of being asked for the root password.

With that command format, su would think you're trying to switch to the user btrfs. Probably not what you intended

Either of these would work:

su -- -c btrfs filesystem show /

su -c 'btrfs filesystem show /'

But you will, of course, need to know the root password.