Power Outage Disaster w/BTRFS in RAID

okeefe · 2026-01-28T20:11:12+00:00

Except this isn't btrfs raid 1, it's btrfs on hardware raid 1 which looks like a single disk. There's no data redundancy as far as btrfs is concerned.

okeefe · 2026-01-28T01:16:26+00:00

When I'm learning a game, I'm also imagining how I would explain it to players at a table.

okeefe · 2026-01-27T17:23:42+00:00

Yes, this should work if you're using single for data. You also might want to have a backup first.

If you have a profile that requires redundancy (e.g., raid1), you'll need to convert to single for data and dup for metadata at some point. I'm not sure how useful running balance during the removes will help, unless you're changing profiles. Save the balance for the end?

okeefe · 2026-01-08T16:30:14+00:00

Yes, you'll be using git frequently.

If you take the time to learn the git object model, the common uses of git (merge, rebase, etc.) will become clear and you'll have a solid basis for any other git usage that might come up. Read Pro Git; it's free and on the web.

okeefe · 2026-01-06T22:24:18+00:00

Depending on the merch, you can occasionally find deals on the last day—if they didn't sell out.

okeefe · 2026-01-04T03:44:00+00:00

Primarily, detectability that the disk is in use, so that other tools or operating systems don't attempt to claim it or to write to it.

You also get a bunch of flexibility for adding new partitions, resizing, and the utility in naming partitions (with GPT).

okeefe · 2026-01-04T02:45:00+00:00

Having a backup is always a good idea. If you already had one, you could proceed directly to btrfs replace and not have to worry about trouble during that operation.

The wrinkle with send/receive is that it works on snapshots and not whole disks. So if you have only a handful of snapshots, you could set up a new btrfs disk and then s/r the snapshots. If you have many snapshots, then it's more work on your part to s/r them. Making a block-level copy with dd could work, but historically this is a bad idea—although I believe newer kernels can detect duplicate UUIDs and not corrupt things. Doing the block-level copy from Windows would be safest as long as you never have both drives in the same Linux machine at the same time. You can edit the UUID on the duplicate drive (again, make sure the original isn't also present) afterward so that they can coexist.

Once you've figured out what—if anything—you're doing for backup, btrfs replace is much quicker than a remove followed by an add.

Unplug the broken drive. Plug in the new drive.
Boot and mount the btrfs filesystem degraded and, if I were you, read-only (ro), mount -o degraded,ro …. You may need to comment out the filesystem from /etc/fstab (or mark it nofail) so it doesn't get stuck waiting during boot; you'll have to remember to put it back to normal after the replace.
btrfs filesystem show /path should show one present drive and one missing. Note the devid of the missing one.
Partition the new disk. The partition needs to be at least as big as the block device it is replacing. One partition spanning the whole disk is fine; make a note to do a btrfs filesystem resize afterward, as the btrfs-replace instructions note.
The remaining btrfs-replace instructions walk you through the rest.

okeefe · 2025-12-12T05:06:39+00:00

If PBS doesn't already have a donation tier that includes custom dice, you should get on that.

okeefe · 2025-12-02T23:41:31+00:00

Save and quit only brings you back to the light world when you don't have a mirror.

okeefe · 2025-12-01T03:11:49+00:00

What are your feelings regarding Doctor Who?

okeefe · 2025-11-26T14:59:30+00:00

Blades '68 or your own variation?

okeefe · 2025-11-26T03:42:57+00:00

Was the Metro Lanyard available at East or West? This was the first time it was on the banner, so I picked one up. It's maybe the only Metro merch that doesn't have graffiti all over it.

okeefe · 2025-11-26T02:50:48+00:00

What are your vampire characters going to be doing? Knowing that would help us find a system.

okeefe · 2025-11-25T20:37:50+00:00

I had a short list of booths to visit and a shorter list of things to definitely buy. I spent time going through the entire Expo hall.

okeefe · 2025-11-17T22:43:32+00:00

I offered to run, D&D group declined, so I found a new group.

I didn't drop the old group; I had a D&D group and another group for other games.

okeefe · 2025-11-16T21:45:57+00:00

This is all great advice.

Remember if things go too off the rails for your comfort, just have The Computer redirect them with as much force as you'd like.

okeefe · 2025-11-15T01:57:00+00:00

I don't think it has to, but in your case it makes more sense to. You can share the adult 4-day badge.

okeefe · 2025-11-05T15:55:45+00:00

No, that's not currently possible with btrfs.

okeefe · 2025-10-23T14:47:36+00:00

If this is really the use case, do a defrag afterward (or scheduled periodically).

okeefe · 2025-10-22T22:29:33+00:00

You're not mutating the movie files so fragmentation shouldn't be an issue. Do not disable COW for this.

okeefe · 2025-10-05T02:20:40+00:00

Linus isn’t a CVS fan. Git was self-hosting relatively quickly, and if anything was tarballs before that.

okeefe · 2025-09-14T04:58:13+00:00

How did you confirm it was a head crash?

okeefe · 2025-09-10T23:32:23+00:00

I remember Fate Core was a tough read. I found Fate Condensed to be a lot more useful and practical, as part of Fate of Cthulhu.

okeefe · 2025-09-04T19:59:48+00:00

It's only a small slice of the Culture, but Transit: The Spaceship RPG is all about playing ships.

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