<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'>Yikes! I have btrfs partitions in XenServer guests all over the place! Oh, but not for the /boot partition.<div><br></div><div>I do remember seeing this </div><div>http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/38323-102-715588/XenServer-6.5.0_VM%20User's%20Guide.pdf (p7)<br><div><br></div><div>"Note: Customers should note that the Btrfs filesystem, the default in SLES 12, is not supported by XenServer.
Customers should instead select a supported filesystem such as EXT3 or EXT4 for the /boot partition."</div><div><br></div><div>I took that to mean *just* the /boot partition shouldn't be btrfs. It seems a bit ambiguous because the first sentence would imply it's not supported at all, but then why would the second sentence specify just the "/boot" partition? Btrfs isn't mentioned anywhere else in the User's Guide. Were you going by the same two sentences? Do I need to avoid btrfs for any partition inside a XenServer guest VM?</div><div><br></div><div>Scott<br><br><hr id="zwchr"><div style="color:#000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;"><b>From: </b>"Allen Beddingfield" <allen@ua.edu><br><b>To: </b>"Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale@ale.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Monday, October 17, 2016 2:54:11 PM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [ale] Xen Server adding a virtual disk to a VM<br><br>Oh, FYI - BTRFS is not supported in a XenServer guest...so ignore my second one there :D<br><br>--<br>Allen Beddingfield<br>Systems Engineer<br>Office of Information Technology<br>The University of Alabama<br>Office 205-348-2251<br>allen@ua.edu<br><br>On 10/17/16, 1:52 PM, "ale-bounces@ale.org on behalf of Beddingfield, Allen" <ale-bounces@ale.org on behalf of allen@ua.edu> wrote:<br><br> I usually do:<br> <br> /dev/sda1 - /boot (ext3)<br> /dev/sda2 - swap<br> /dev/sda3 - / (XFS)<br> <br> or if btrfs<br> <br> /dev/sda1 - swap<br> /dev/sda2 / (btrfs)<br> <br> --<br> Allen Beddingfield<br> Systems Engineer<br> Office of Information Technology<br> The University of Alabama<br> Office 205-348-2251<br> allen@ua.edu<br> <br> On 10/17/16, 1:49 PM, "ale-bounces@ale.org on behalf of Scott Plante" <ale-bounces@ale.org on behalf of splante@insightsys.com> wrote:<br> <br> <br> Thanks guys. This thread has been very informative.<br> <br> <br> So you don't LVM inside a VM, but do you partition? I've always partitioned because it's how I was taught (pre-VM), but suppose you have a Linux VM, and you want to add a 200GB partition for some application. You go into your VM software and create the<br> virtual disk and attach it to the VM. Inside the VM it appears as a new device, say /dev/xvde. You could create a partition and /dev/xvde1 would appear and you could mkfs /dev/xvde1 or you could skip the partitioning and just mkfs /dev/xvde. One reason you<br> generally partition is for the sector alignment stuff, but (correct me if I'm wrong) that doesn't apply to a virtual disk. The sector alignment would be taken care of when you partition the drive inside XenServer, VMWare or whatever's running on the bare metal.<br> Another reason you might normally partition a drive is to separate your OS from your data, to make sure run-away log files don't crash your database, etc., but that doesn't apply here because you've already created a separate virtual disk for that purpose.<br> <br> <br> I asked a friend at the pub Friday night who works with lots of VMs and he says he partitions just as a reminder to himself that he has or hasn't done something with the virtual disk. So he might go add a new disk to a half-dozen VMs, and when he goes<br> into each one he can more easily tell whether he has taken care of it yet or something like that. If I add or remove a disk once a month it's a lot, so that's not a big selling point for me. Still, I suppose it could be useful as some longer term "documentation"<br> kind of thing.<br> <br> <br> So those of you on the list who deal with VMs: do you partition your virtual disks?<br> <br> <br> Scott<br> <br> <br> p.s. my recent VM experience is mostly with XenServer, so forgive me if my question and/or terminology doesn't make sense for ESXi, KVM, or other VM environments.<br> <br> ________________________________________<br> From: "Phil Turmel" <philip@turmel.org><br> To: ale@ale.org<br> Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 11:08:35 AM<br> Subject: Re: [ale] Xen Server adding a virtual disk to a VM<br> <br> On 10/14/2016 05:13 PM, DJ-Pfulio wrote:<br> > Ok, so fdisk was patched, but I'm still waiting for that patch to<br> > actually make it into every distro I see. I keep seeing fdisk complain<br> > about GPT disks - easier to just use parted, IMHO. Parted also aligns<br> > partitions correctly, as does gparted. fdisk does not. If you use only<br> > SSDs, don't think that it matters, but on spinning disks, there can be a<br> > real, noticeable, performance hit.<br> <br> Interesting. I've been using 'gdisk' for quite some time now. Same<br> style of interface but supports GPT, plus conversions to/from MBR and<br> BSD. I thought is was packaged with util-linux, but I just found out<br> otherwise.<br> <br> It is part of the base install of Ubuntu Server at least since 14.04.<br> It came in as a default dependency of udisks on my gentoo systems, which<br> is pulled in by a variety of things. So I assumed it was part of the<br> system set.<br> <br> I like gdisk *way* more than parted.<br> <br> > GPT has many upgrades over MBR, like duplication at the front/end of the<br> > storage, not only at the beginning. Plus not having to deal with<br> > "logical/extended" partitions ever again is nice. Wikipdeia has more.<br> > <br> > Inside a VM, I don't don't use LVM. Only outside on the hostOS. There<br> > are multiple pros/cons to either method. I can understand if folks want<br> > LVM inside a VM and why they wouldn't. Do some research.<br> <br> I do the same. LVM on bare metal, not in VMs. All of my VM disks are<br> LVs, not files. Virt-manager makes that easy, btw -- you can make any<br> volume group in a host a "pool" for VM allocations. It was one of the<br> final straws that got me off of virtualbox.<br> <br> > Haven't touched btrfs. Seems there is always some "issue" that is<br> > important to me with it. Whether that is true or not is completely<br> > irrelevant. It is a hassle that I don't need. Understand many people<br> > love btrfs, which is great. More users will eventually fix the issues I<br> > have! Thanks!<br> <br> Yup. I played with it once. Haven't touched it since.<br> <br> > lsblk is nice. Plus, it doesn't need sudo to work (at least not on any<br> > systems I manage).<br> <br> I wrote lsdrv[1] because I didn't like the way lsblk repeated trees when<br> raid arrays were present, and I wanted something that would document<br> controller ports, device SNs, and UUIDs for later recovery tasks.<br> Basically lsblk + blkid + lspci + lsusb in one report.<br> <br> Phil<br> <br> [1] https://github.com/pturmel/lsblk<br> <br> _______________________________________________<br> Ale mailing list<br> Ale@ale.org<br> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale<br> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> _______________________________________________<br> Ale mailing list<br> Ale@ale.org<br> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale<br> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo<br> <br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Ale mailing list<br>Ale@ale.org<br>http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale<br>See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo<br></div><br></div></div></div></body></html>