Community thoughts on BcacheFS
Community thoughts on BcacheFS
So recently it was brought to my attention about a new(ish) filesystem being created. BcacheFS has some really cool features, some for example are
Copy on write (COW) - like zfs or btrfs
Full data and metadata checksumming
Multiple devices
Replication
Erasure coding (not stable)
Caching, data placement
Compression
Encryption
Snapshots
Nocow mode
Reflink
Extended attributes, ACLs, quotas
Scalable - has been tested to 100+ TB, expected to scale far higher
High performance, low tail latency
Already working and stable, with a small community of users
I learned about BcacheFS as i am currently going through an Gentoo install and wanted to try out a new filesystem. i originally went for ZFS until i learned there is no active maintainer for OpenZFS on Gentoo as of now. and looked at Btrfs and eventually found BcacheFS. The features look very amazing, however i couldnt find many people daily driving it? i saw a few posts on Arch wiki about trying to get it to work. and i try installing it, as my main FileSystem, but ran into trouble when trying to install grub. its exact complaints was something along the lines of "cant install grub on /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd ". i was trying to make staggered storage with a 500gb SSD and a 2TB HDD. But eventually gave up after watching a few videos of immolo which he eventually got it working but only thought Unified grub with Systemd. which for my Gentoo systems i really prefer openRC. But enough about me, do any of you fellow linux users use BcacheFS? if so whats your setup and experiences?
also if you have recently looked at lore.kernel.org Mr.Torvald says he regrets merging it into the mainline kernel because of bug fixes. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wj1Oo9-g-yuwWuHQZU8v=VAsBceWCRLhWxy7_-QnSa1Ng@mail.gmail.com/ which i thought rather interesting
Let me quote the Wikipedia page.
Bcachefs describes itself as "working and stable, with a small community of users". When discussing Linux 6.9-rc3 on April 7, 2024, Linus Torvalds touched on the stability of bcachefs, saying "if you thought bcachefs was stable already, I have a bridge to sell you", and in August of 2024 that "nobody sane uses bcachefs and expects it to be stable".
It's been being for a long time. It finally got merged to mainline in Linux 6.7. Sounds like they started a lot of renovations after that. It's still a bit too much in motion for me to consider it.
Performance and features look promising. I'll revisit in 2030 if things have calmed down and they still have maintainers.
I've been running btrfs for 14 years. It has similar features and a proven track record. It doesn't move as fast. That's a good thing for a filesystem.
For what it's worth, Kent said they plan to drop the experimental flag next year.
He also planned to have BcacheFS merged to mainline in 2018. Finally got it merged in 2023 (released in 2024).
Development will likely slow down a bit when things require more review, discussion and scrutiny now that it's mainlined.
Its features hold a lot of promise, but it is very new and not what I would consider stable yet. I wouldn't suggest using it to store anything that you care about until the dust has settled. That will most likely be months from now; maybe years.
I wanted BcachsFS to succeed. ATM it looks like it to unstable for production use.
I hope the BcachsFS have a module layout so other FS can use a well integrated and intelligent caching.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Bcachefs-Fixes-Two-Choices https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Bcachefs-Regrets
Thought bcache is already a thing
Yes it is.
Sadly its a hammer for a task that need a scalpel.
If you don’t know what you want to do with bcachefs, don’t use it.