File Formats - HFS & XFS

[Quazz]

@latelier 7945 is several months old, not sure if XFS quite made it at that point. For the actual XFS partition it should be capturing under XFS mode, not RAW.

I don’t believer resizeable is an option for XFS, though, but could be wrong.

[latelier]

@Wayne-Workman said in File Formats - HFS & XFS:

A good reason to not have fusion drives. I want to control my computer, not the other way around.

Yep, unfortunately they come bundle with the iMacs…
There’s no way out

[Wayne Workman]

Move to the latest RC please, see how that goes.

Additionally, the latest RC has support for net booting Macs - if you’re running DHCP on your FOG server that is.

[latelier]

@Quazz said in File Formats - HFS & XFS:

@latelier 7945 is several months old, not sure if XFS quite made it at that point. For the actual XFS partition it should be capturing under XFS mode, not RAW.

I don’t believer resizeable is an option for XFS, though, but could be wrong.

Ok thanks, I’ll give it a shot.
I’ll try to update to the latest Trunk version and see if it transfers in XFS.

[latelier]

@Wayne-Workman said in File Formats - HFS & XFS:

Move to the latest RC please, see how that goes.

Additionally, the latest RC has support for net booting Macs - if you’re running DHCP on your FOG server that is.

Thanks for the info.
We had OSX net bootin working on our current FOG implementation but we had to modify DHCP config files.
Maybe with this update that fix is not required.

[Wayne Workman]

@latelier said in File Formats - HFS & XFS:

Maybe with this update that fix is not required.

Please let us know how it goes.

[Tom Elliott]

@latelier, @Quazz is absolutely correct. Resizable will not work as you may imagine for the xfs partition. The shrinking down shouldn’t be too hard, but expanding would cause issues. That’s not to say it cannot be done, but I don’t have a clue as to how to implement

[Tom Elliott]

Sorry I mixed that up. You can expand, you can’t shrink. At least not yet.

[jdd49]

I just wanted to take a minute to share what I know about this subject.

XFS
Does not have the ability to shrink period. It can only grow. The only possible solution is to do a file backup using something like xfsdump, then recreate the filesystem. Or make the smallest partition possible when you first install, then grow after imaging.

OSX
There is nothing special about fusion drives, the issue is that fusion drives are coupled with OSX’s core storage feature. Core storage is basically lvm for mac. When using a fusion drive a volume group is created and spread across the two drives, giving you added speed on the ssd portion. I assure you the drive is not hidden and you still control over your drives. It just appears as one drive. You will most likely never be able to image core storage from a linux environment except as raw. It’s like when you want to capture lvm on linux you need to active the lvm first or it will be captured as raw, the only problem is there is no way to activate core storage on linux.

Hope that helps.

[Sebastian Roth]

@latelier There has been a dicussion on core storage before: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7990/apple-fusion-drive/3

As I said in the other thread it should be possible to add core storage/LVM support to FOG. Anyone keen to join this “subproject”? I might be having some time to do that in winter. But only if someone who wants to use it is part of it.

See here on how to convert a core storage drive to normal HFS+ volumes without data loss in just a few seconds (I’ve tested this a couple of times without ever seeing an issue!): http://awesometoast.com/yosemite-core-storage-and-partition-woes/

[latelier]

@Sebastian-Roth said in File Formats - HFS & XFS:

See here on how to convert a core storage drive to normal HFS+ volumes without data loss in just a few seconds (I’ve tested this a couple of times without ever seeing an issue!): http://awesometoast.com/yosemite-core-storage-and-partition-woes/

Unfortunately on that post, it seems he’s using only 1 drive, so it is “core storage” but not in a fusion drive.
See a Fusion drive here as a comparison, It’s not “revertible”.

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group EC2A5908-F8A5-42AF-8F73-D8AAFE586074
    =========================================================
    Name:         Internal Drive
    Status:       Online
    Size:         505527934976 B (505.5 GB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 5F0BF75B-54D5-4B25-ACBA-EAE2AD03C130
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 73046115-73BE-4B41-922F-67CFCAF204E0
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     384539082752 B (384.5 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 44D991B6-0383-4BE7-AFC9-C30028F4560B
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         None
        |
        +-> Logical Volume BDA2815B-A7B1-4E14-B36E-A87EB6C7B42A
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          499672678400 B (499.7 GB)
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
            LVG Type:              Fusion, Sparse

[latelier]

@jdd49 said in File Formats - HFS & XFS:

XFS
Does not have the ability to shrink period. It can only grow. The only possible solution is to do a file backup using something like xfsdump, then recreate the filesystem. Or make the smallest partition possible when you first install, then grow after imaging.

Thanks for the info, I guess it’s the best way to go for XFS (for now).