We have sliced our harddisk into 3 pieces but we did not format the root partition yet.
mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda3
We need to mount our created partitions into our linux hierarchy. First we need to mount sda3 (root) into /mnt.
We create subvolumes to better organize our data and to exclude them from btrfs snapshots.
It may differ with older videos.
- @ – This is the main root subvolume /.
- @home – This is the home directory. This consists of most of your data including Desktop and Downloads.
- @log – Contains logs, temp. files, caches, games, etc.
- @pkg – Contains all the pacman packages
- @tmp – Contains certain temporory files and caches
- @snapshots – Directory to store snapshots.
su = subvolume
cr = create
li = list
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
btrfs su cr /mnt/@
btrfs su cr /mnt/@home
btrfs su cr /mnt/@root
btrfs su cr /mnt/@srv
btrfs su cr /mnt/@log
btrfs su cr /mnt/@cache
btrfs su cr /mnt/@tmp
btrfs su li /mnt
Now we see all the subvolumes we created.
Let us unmount /mnt and remount all subvolumes.
cd /
umount /mnt
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,commit=120,subvol=@ /dev/sda3 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/home
mkdir /mnt/root
mkdir /mnt/srv
mkdir -p /mnt/var/log
mkdir -p /mnt/var/cache/
mkdir /mnt/tmp
Or a one-liner
mkdir -p /mnt/{home,root,srv,var/log,var/cache,tmp}
Type this command to check your work.
lsblk
Then we mount the subvolumes.
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,commit=120,subvol=@home /dev/sda3 /mnt/home
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,commit=120,subvol=@root /dev/sda3 /mnt/root
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,commit=120,subvol=@srv /dev/sda3 /mnt/srv
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,commit=120,subvol=@log /dev/sda3 /mnt/var/log
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,commit=120,subvol=@cache /dev/sda3 /mnt/var/cache
mount -o defaults,noatime,compress=zstd,commit=120,subvol=@tmp /dev/sda3 /mnt/tmp
Now we continue with the “normal procedure”.
Mounting the boot partition in /boot folder
mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
Btrfs options:
- noatime – No access time. Improves system performace by not writing time when the file was accessed.
- commit – Periodic interval (in sec) in which data is synchronized to permanent storage.
- compress – Choosing the algorithm for compress. I have set zstd as it has good compression level and speed.
- subvol – Choosing the subvol to mount.
Go back to the previous article.
And follow it after INSTALLATION
But REMEMBER
Remember to add any specific Btrfs packages in this phase of the installation or you do it later.
pacstrap /mnt btrfs-progs
FSTAB
Check that your fstab is correct.
nano /mnt/etc/fstab