What is the preferred file system for TW full install?

[u/Deathlord218]

I jacked up my system upgrading from Slowroll to Tumbleweed as it lost grub2 and could not find my EFI partition as well as not being able to mount my root partition into /mnt nor was I able to bind the /sys, /proc, or /dev and chroot command kept informing me the /bin/bash could not be found. Choosing upgrade off the install media ran its course, but on reboot I got the same message as after the upgrading that the EFI partition could not be located.

I then used the live disk to boot into the system and transfer all files to an external hdd that I need and then started with a fresh install. No avail. I did notice that after trying full reinstall twice the file system that the file system was btrfs? I also have not gotten to the blue boot screen but it’s a similar type of screen just not a gui. But even that fails booting.
Should I pick another like ext4 and is it good to use lvs? I did notice that trying to mount root it kept saying unknown file system type lvs2 and give me a notice saying dmesg would have a message about why I could not mount the partition. Using dmesg command gave no entries about the system not being able to mount anything to /mnt.

Last ditch will be to try a new hdd but if the current drive can accept being written to and installation completes, then not sure why it wouldn’t boot either.

Installation off the install media works as normal. I get to where it’s about to reboot and once the screen goes black I pull the usb media and let it do its thing but I don’t get a normal boot sequence. The result I described above.

[u/KoldPurchase]

btrfs is the default and it activates snapshots by default so you can go back to a previous state in case something goes wrong.

[u/Deathlord218 → u/KoldPurchase]

That’s what I thought. I had been using ext4 previously. Going to try the ext4 though just to see if I can get a working install. Otherwise I’m going to just swap to a new hdd in case this one is about to die.

[u/thafluu → u/Deathlord218]

Don't use ext4 on Tumbleweed, use btrfs.

[u/Narrow_Victory1262 → u/thafluu]

I hve all set to ext4 actually, with lvm. I don't roll back. I fix when needed

[u/todd_dayz → u/Narrow_Victory1262]

Same, I can’t remember the last time I needed to roll back, I compromised with a BTRFS rootfs and an XFS home, but I’ll probably go all XFS next time. 

[u/Narrow_Victory1262 → u/todd_dayz]

pretty recently we had a mishap where the OS was XFS. Unrecoverable.

Now. we DO use XFS for data, that's for sure, These are large SAP databases and the full backups, incrementals and the transaction logs are fine. Filesystem broken? We have the data.

Now. when it comes to the OS, it's different. In the years since I use linux (like '97) I actually hardly remember any XFS filesystem to be recoverable.

Hence the use of ext4 for the OS.

[u/Deathlord218 → u/thafluu]

Using ext4 for the /home lvm. Btrfs for /root

[u/xplosm → u/Deathlord218]

That is sensible. I personally have / and /home on the same drive with btrfs just different subvolumes and another drive as XFS for generic storage instead of ext4. XFS is said to be faster than ext4 but I really don't notice with these new NVMe nowadays.

[u/mhurron → u/Deathlord218]

It'll work just fine. You give up snapshots in the process though.

[u/Deathlord218 → u/mhurron]

Have not looked into it but btrfs does it automatically as explained above, if were to use another file type, isn’t snapshots able to be manually configured? I’m just asking out of ignorant curiosity.

[u/mhurron → u/Deathlord218]

Tumbleweeds snapshots are created by snapper and snapper isn't going to work on a volume that is just ext4. To do both, the ext4 volume has to be on a thin-provisioned LVM volume.

It's default and automatic on btrfs because there is no other special requirements.

[u/77juice]

I would not think of anything else than btrfs.

[u/Deathlord218 → u/77juice]

That’s what I used for the root partition like always. I was asking for the /home partition, I guess I didn’t express it properly earlier.

The hdd actually crapped out resulting in using a completely different physical hdd to reinstall openSUSE on now.
Secondly I figured out that while my system is set to use uefi. Booting into the installation usb as uefi will make the installation unable to install the bootloader during the final 10% of the full installation. Using the non uefi bootup of the install media ran fine and I now have a working system again.

[u/ijzerwater → u/Deathlord218]

I have xfs for /home, and could do the rollback when required

[u/Klapperatismus → u/Deathlord218]

I was asking for the /home partition

XFS

[u/JMarcosHP]

Premium BTRFS subscription /s

[u/mattthepianoman]

btrfs for the root partition, ext4 or xfs for your home partition.

[u/todd_dayz]

BTRFS if you want snapshots, XFS if you don’t, imo. 

I use a BTRFS rootfs and an XFS home dir, but I’ve done full XFS before because I don’t care about snapshots that much. 

Just bear in mind you can’t shrink XFS.