RE- More BTRFS fun- Multibooting to subvolumes on the same partition.

[rwbehne1]

I have a couple questions to help me understand btrfs a little better...

Oshunluvr said:

2. Rename the new subvolumes to something unique. Since I installed Kubuntu Quantal Quetzal this way, I changed @ to @12_10 and @home to @12_10home. This paves the way for the next install to take the default subvolume names without wiping out the current install.

1) I know how to rename a regular file, but how do I go about renaming a btrfs subvolume like @ and @home?

2) Now if I delete /opt, /srv, and the local directory of /usr/local, then replace them each with a subvolume of the same names, I'm wondering what happens when I have finished installing and booting into a second install.
Will those manually added subvolumes then be instantly available along with their contents in the new install, or does something have to be done to tell the new system to use them instead of the plain directories normally created on install?

[vinnywright]

you must not have read all of @Oshunluvrs info ,,,,,or maybe it was not a situation where he was giving a full instruction on the subject ,,,,IF you change the subvolume names in the situation you are referencing you must also change the /etc/fstab entries in that install to match and the grub entries in whatever OS (if you have more than 1) is controlling grub to match .

as to your /opt and all ,,,,,do you usually set these as separate partitions ? ,,,,this sounds like what you are describing...and as partitions for /opt and all must be added to /etc/fstab to work in the install so must the subvolumes ,,,,,,,,and if you just delete them their contents will be gone .

I am not sure if this (subvolumes for /opt and all )can be created in the installer ,,,,I have never tryed that ,,it can be done after the fact I believe ,,,,,maybe @Oshunluvr will know ,,,,he is the resident expert on btrfs

yes you can rename them like you are used to doing .

VINNY

[rwbehne1]

you must not have read all of @Oshunluvrs info ,,,,,or maybe it was not a situation where he was giving a full instruction on the subject ,,,,

The article didn't mention it, hence, I am asking.

IF you change the subvolume names in the situation you are referencing you must also change the /etc/fstab entries in that install to match and the grub entries in whatever OS (if you have more than 1) is controlling grub to match .

I am aware that is the case with @ and @home, but I'm not asking about changing those two subvolumes names. I am asking how the installer handles only the extant subvolumes which I manually created when doing a new install without formating the partition.

as to your /opt and all ,,,,,do you usually set these as separate partitions ? ,,,,this sounds like what you are describing...

Yes, of course I used to. But since I' m no longer using partitions I have to use another method of preserving the data in those directories, and also making them available to the new install as fast as possible. Since I can manually create subpartitions it seems like a neat solution, provided that they don't mysteriously disappear. And it would be nice to know if the installer will see them, recognize them, and automatically use them. That is the gist of my question.

and as partitions for /opt and all must be added to /etc/fstab to work in the install so must the subvolumes

Why must they be added to /etc/fstab? First, they aren't partitions, they are subvolumes. I now have only one, big, honking, btrfs partition with multiple manually created subvolumes, viz.:

root@behne:/# btrfs subvolume list /home
ID 257 gen 21887 top level 5 path @
ID 258 gen 21887 top level 5 path @home
ID 269 gen 21811 top level 257 path [B]@/opt[/B]
ID 270 gen 21863 top level 257 path [B]@/srv[/B]
ID 271 gen 21814 top level 257 path [B]@/var/www[/B]
ID 272 gen 19660 top level 257 path [B]@/var/ftp[/B]
ID 273 gen 21811 top level 257 path [B]@/var/gopher[/B]
ID 274 gen 21852 top level 257 path [B]@/usr/local[/B]
ID 1981 gen 21223 top level 257 path [B]@/var/webmin[/B]
root@behne:/#

Yet only @ and @home are in fstab as you can see here:

root@behne:/# cat /etc/fstab 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system>                                 <mount point>   <type>  <options>                       <dump>  <pass>
# [B]/[/B] was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=a4d4195d-ddf5-4439-ac41-7dce9f4c20fa      [B] / [/B]              btrfs   defaults,subvol=@    0       1
# [B]/home[/B] was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=a4d4195d-ddf5-4439-ac41-7dce9f4c20fa      [B] /home [/B]          btrfs   defaults,subvol=@home          0       2
/swapfile                                       none            swap    sw                              0       0
root@behne:/#

...and it boots fine without @/opt, @/srv, @/var/www, @/var/ftp, @/var/gopher, @/var/webmin, or @/usr/local being listed in fstab.

And why would the installer need it written in the /etc/fstab file of the renamed @ volume? Does the installer look for renamed @ volumes (like @12_10) and look for and read any /etc/fstab it finds inside? Would it even need to?

In my current understanding of Oshunluvr's writings on the topic I don't believe so.

,,,,,,,,and if you just delete them their contents will be gone .

That's not only an unnecessary to mention axiom, it's also a non sequitur in the instant discussion. I just need assurance that the installer won't delete them too, as it will with any @ and @home it finds.

I am not sure if this (subvolumes for /opt and all )can be created in the installer ,,,,I have never tryed that ,,

Again, a non sequitur, as I'm not talking about the installer creating what already exists. I'm asking if the installer will see it, recognize it, and make intelligent use of it, or must I handle it manually? ...in which case I would need explanatory instructions to read.

it can be done after the fact I believe ,,,,,maybe @Oshunluvr will know ,,,,he is the resident expert on btrfs

Again, I'm not talking about creating what already exists.

yes you can rename them like you are used to doing .

As I'm not used to renaming @ or @home, I'm asking precisely how to do it. I know how to rename /home, but does that also rename @home? And I had no idea that / could be renamed at all, let alone @! That's why I'm asking, and hoping that Oshunluvr will reply.

root@behne:/# rename / /12_10
Search pattern not terminated at (user-supplied code).
root@behne:/#

root@behne:/# rename @ @12_10
Missing right curly or square bracket at (user-supplied code) line 4, at end of line
syntax error at (user-supplied code) line 4, at EOF
root@behne:/#

[vinnywright]

That's why I'm asking, and hoping that Oshunluvr will reply.

yes ,,,that would be best

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

I have a couple questions to help me understand btrfs a little better...
1) I know how to rename a regular file, but how do I go about renaming a btrfs subvolume like @ and @home?

There is no special btrfs subvolume rename function. The rename function is the same. You mount the host volume, then rename the subvolume just like you would any other folder or file. As Vinny pointed out; the difference is only that a subvolume is often (likely) referenced in fstab or in grub.cfg so - as I said in the original post from 2012 - you must also update those or you will not be able to access them at boot up. Also - the naming of a subvolume is no different than any folder or file. The only reason "@" is commonly used is so you can tell at a glance that you're looking at a subvolume instead of a regular directory.

If you're going to use btrfs, you should begin with reading the copious amounts of information about it on the web. In fact, a simple "btrfs su" in a terminal will reveal all the subvolume commands. This is a forum and all (or most anyway) of us enjoy assisting those who have problems or are seeking solutions. That doesn't obviate anyone's responsibility to at least attempt to get information that is readily available.

2) Now if I delete /opt, /srv, and the local directory of /usr/local, then replace them each with a subvolume of the same names, I'm wondering what happens when I have finished installing and booting into a second install.
Will those manually added subvolumes then be instantly available along with their contents in the new install, or does something have to be done to tell the new system to use them instead of the plain directories normally created on install?

I can't imagine why you would want to split out all those directories but, no, nothing you manually re-arrange in any context is "instantly available" to anything - ever. If you're going to use a non-standard installation set up then you will have to manage it. There's no installer I've every heard of that would correctly guess where you want to put things other than the normal locations. The difference in this case, when using btrfs, is; instead of partitions referenced in fstab et. al., you reference subvolumes.

[GreyGeek]

When you use the mv command to move @ to @12_10 and @home to @home12_10, you must update fstab and replace @ with @12_10 and @home with @home12_10, and do the same for grub. When you reboot @12_10 will be your root btrfs subvolume and @home12_10 will be your home btrfs home subvolume. As you install new a distro you change its @ & @home to @whatever and @homewhatever and you update fstab and grub the same way as you did for @12_10 and @home12_10. Consult Oshunluver's post for information on the exact procedure.

There really isn't any value in creating all those extra subvolumes of @ and @home. In fact, it introduces the need for unnecessary steps when making backup snapshots. Why?

When you make a snapshot of @, for example, and browse that snapshot with Dolphin, you noticed that inside it the /home directory is empty. That's because it is contained in @home, which is a different subvolume. Since @/opt, @/srv, @/var/www, @/var/ftp, @/var/gopher, @/usr/local and @/var/webmin are normally under root, as /home is, when you make them subvolumes of "/" they only reside in a snapshot of @ as empty markers. You are then required to make snapshots of all those other subvolumes if you want them to be backed up. Since the installations of many apps spread components all around, if you do not back up all your collection of subvolumes at the same time, you run the risk of unlinking the installation of many apps. To avoid that you will have to time stamp those snapshots, and only work with snapshots bearing the same time stamp.

OpenSuse creates a lot of subvolumes under @, similar to what you attempted. To handle that complexity they use a tool called snapper, which automatically makes pre & post snapshots when ever you run an application manager or use apt in a terminal, or call it manually when ever you want. It also defaults to timely snapshots in the background. I tested snapper on my Kubuntu 16.04 installation and found that the default configuration ate up my HD space at an alarming rate. At the time I had only one HD, 750Gb, on this laptop, running Btrfs. When I abandon snapper I had about 350Gb of snapshots. Moving them to my external HD became a pain. I adjusted snapper to make what it calls "singletons", a single snapshot. Working through snapper was a pain so I uninstalled it and wrote my own bash script to create two singletons, a "PRE" before an event and a "POST" after the event. Must easier. But, using Btrfs on the cli is so easy I've stopped using my script and do everything manually.

[rwbehne1]

Why?

Because I want to understand how it works, and how to solve my problems.

As you know I am used to partitions on ext4. Whenever I had to reinstall, everything I wanted saved was in it's own partition, so when I installed a new system I only formatted the root filesystem. I never had to worry about anything important suddenly disappearing. I consider this to be the major weakness of btrfs.

I allowed you guys to talk me into converting to btrfs. I agree that it's better in many ways, but whoever decided to design it to create @ and @home subvolumes wiping out any preexisting @home subvolume didn't think it through as far as I'm concerned. To me it would be common sense to have the installer look for preexisting subvolumes and have the new install mount them, rather than deleting them or ignoring them.

Now I've been struggling to convert my entire drive over to btrfs and finally succeeded, and have also been working up to 16 hours a day googling to find answers to countless problems, unable to find understandable answers, so I ask here only to be told basically to go rtfm, as though that helps. I'm now also getting asked why I want to have other subvolumes to preserve my files (which is what I presume having subvolumes does during reinstalls - or do they just disappear?), sort of the way I did when I was using partitions. Are subvolumes the right way to go about it? Honestly I don't know! And I'm not getting to know any faster. The documents I've been reading don't explain it, and I can't get a direct answer when I ask a direct question about it. Instead, I feel like I'm either being psychoanalyzed or put down.

I am having many, many different problems, lots which I have been researching and solving on my own, without anyone's help. Those, you don't see. I have got the web server, Gopher server, NFS, and other things working, but still have many things not working that I'm trying to fix. I had the FTP server working, went to bed, and when I got up it wasn't working anymore. I have no idea why. This forum is actually my last, not first, resort, for finding solutions, so I do not appreciate certain remarks amounting to "go rtfm." I've been at the f___ing manuals so long this past month that I'm having severe headaches now. There's just too much to study just to solve what should be a quick and easy thing. More like forty things. Now I have a new problem that just started for no apparent reason.

After a reboot my KDE Plasma desktop is screwed up and instead of getting the launcher menu, I get an error box saying:

Error loading QML file: file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kickoff/contents/ui/Kickoff.qml:31:1: module "org.kde.plasma.private.kicker" is not installed

Crap, all I did was reboot!!! It almost seems that every time I get two things in Kubuntu fixed, something else mysteriously gets broken. So I'm thinking that reinstalling the OS from scratch will fix some things, especially this new problem with plasma. The problem is that I can't get a direct answer to a direct question. I thought It was clear that I want to know how to preserve everything in /home, /usr/local, /opt, /srv, and other places without the reinstall wiping everything out. I'm tired of trying to understand all the files I've been wading through in Google, files which don't explain what I want to know, and which are often obtuse, and I need help with my many problems. I do not consider myself to be a developer or system engineer, but rather an appliance user. I need my appliance to be usable. So when I get exhausted from pouring through obtuse and cryptic pages I ask for help to solve a problem soon, so that I can stop being a flyswatter and resume being an appliance user.

That's why I need to know how I can reinstall without loosing anything. What are the options? What are the steps? Can I use subvolumes and just mount them after the reinstall? What happens to snapshots during a reinstall? I can't rename (mv) @ because I'm going to need a step-by-stem tutorial that I can learn from, but I can't find it on the net. You must be presuming that I know the steps and that it's intuitive, but I don't and it's not, and to top it off I'm both mentally and physically exhausted, too much to think it through, and I'm on time constraints with a lot of pressure on me to finish quickly. That makes the perfect conditions for a disaster, which I want to avoid.

[GreyGeek]

My "Why?" was a rhetorical question which I answered in the subsequent paragraph. It was not a question to you.

but whoever decided to design it to create @ and @home subvolumes wiping out any preexisting @home subvolume didn't think it through as far as I'm concerned.

You can't have a "pre-existing" @home subvolume on an HD that had only the EXT4 fs because it does not use "@home" or the subvolume technology. All it offers you is folders and files. You are using your EXT4 thinking while working with Btrfs. That is what is getting you into trouble.

Do yourself a big favor and back up your data to an external storage device(s). Then, do a clean install of Kubuntu, selecting btrfs as the file system and give it a "/" mounting point. Don't stick your fingers into the pie and mess things up trying to be clever before you've learned the ins & outs. THAT'S what is messing you up.

During the install you will get fresh @ and @home subvolumes. with your home account as /home/youracct. You won't see a @ or @home from within your system because even when you "sudo -" in a konsole you only have root priviledges, which do not include access to @ and @home unless you mount your installation device to /mnt, for example:

sudo -i
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
Vdir /mnt
@
@home
At this mount you can
mkdir /mnt/snapshots
and create a snapshots subdirectory. Then you can
btrfs su snapshot -r /mnt/@ /mnt/snapshots/@_bkup20170906
btrfs su snapshot -r /mnt/@home /mnt/snapshots/@home_bkup20170906
sync
and that will create a snapshot of @ and @home and store them in /mnt/snapshots

If you want to delete a snapshot you can do
btrfs su snapshot -r /mnt/@ /mnt/snapshots/@_bkup20170823
sync
I always create my snapshots in pairs and delete them in pairs.


If you are done then you can
umount /mnt
and exit root
exit

Now, while still in the Konsole, if you do
vdir /mnt
you will only see
/mnt
because the root of your btrfs system, and the snapshots directory is on /dev/sda1, ABOVE your mounted / and /home (fstab mounts @ as / and @home as /home), so you can't see either @, @home or snapshots from within your system using Dolphin, for example, or mc, or Krusader or even using vdir within a Konsole UNLESS you mount your device to /mnt, as shown above.

If you have another drive you can mount (Internal or external) you can copy your snapshots to it. I mount my 3rd internal drive as /backup
mount /dev/sdb1 /backup

(Note that even though my 3rd drive was initially sdc when I formatted it, the sdX names are not honored anymore and can change without notice. On my system sdc became sdb1 and sdb1 became sdc. So, my RAID1 was with sda1 and sdc. That is why the uuid is used in fstab. The uuid is always tagged to the device. You'll notice that eth0 has given way to device names tagged specifically to your hardware so that even if you plug another ethernet dongle into your computer the device name will always point to its hardware. What was my eth0 is now enx8cae4cffce31, and my wifi is now wlp13s0)

Now, with /backup mounted I can send my @home backup to the other drive:
btrfs send /mnt/snapshots/@home_bkup20170906 | btrfs receive /backup/
sync

It must be done that way because @ & @home are in my system pool and /backup is another entirely different pool. The send & receive commands allow sending snapshots between pools. If I want to return that snapshot back to my system pool I must reverse the source and destination.

While a snapshot takes only seconds, usually less than three, the transmission of a snapshot to another pool (either a locally mounted drive or a remote drive) can take a lot longer, depending on the size of your system. My data is about 115 Gb. It takes about 30 minutes to do a send.

Don't attempt to send a snapshot to a non-Btrfs system. My 3rd drive was formatted with Btrfs. There is an option in the send & recieve sequence that allows sending your snapshots as ASCII. That can be copied to an EXT4 drive.

[rwbehne1]

My "Why?" was a rhetorical question which I answered in the subsequent paragraph. It was not a question to you.

This then would be one problem I'm having: too much reading material to dig through for answers. I don't need to sort through rhetoric, I just need short, direct answers for now.

You can't have a "pre-existing" @home subvolume on an HD that had only the EXT4 fs because it does not use "@home" or the subvolume technology. All it offers you is folders and files. You are using your EXT4 thinking while working with Btrfs. That is what is getting you into trouble.

Why Not? "Had" is past tense. I had ext4. I no longer have ext4. At all. I only have btrfs now, even on my tiny, useless external drives. This is what I HAVE NOW (present tense):

russ@behne:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /dev
tmpfs           1.6G  9.5M  1.6G   1% /run
/dev/sda2       2.8T  1.5T  1.3T  54%[B] /[/B]
tmpfs           7.8G  168K  7.8G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda2       2.8T  1.5T  1.3T  54% [B]/home[/B]
tmpfs           1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /run/user/119
tmpfs           1.6G   12K  1.6G   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdc1       932G  513M  930G   1% [B]/media/russ/BTRFS[/B]    <-----<<< My only reliable, albeit tiny and useless, external drive
russ@behne:~$

So, since I have ONLY btrfs on /dev/sda2, if I were to do a reinstall at this instant I would most certainly have a preexisting @ and @home, wouldn't I?

In my previous post I only mentioned ext4 as an example of how I installed a new system or reinstalled, without loosing anything in /home or other partitions. So, my question stands completly unanswered:
How can I REinstall on this single partition btrfs drive without having access to a large enough external backup available to me, and without loosing certain directories? So far every comment you have made has managed to steer a wide path around this question without directly addressing it, and only it. So I'm still uncertain. But on the bright side, I am learning some things from you that the online docs don't exactly make clear yet. And that's good. I appreciate it. But...

Do yourself a big favor and back up your data to an external storage device(s). Then, do a clean install of Kubuntu, selecting btrfs as the file system and give it a "/" mounting point. Don't stick your fingers into the pie and mess things up trying to be clever before you've learned the ins & outs. THAT'S what is messing you up.

The only functional external drive I have is mounted as /dev/sdc1, which is formatted as btrfs, 930G. Can I back up ALL my data to that? @ and @home? Will it all fit? What's the best method of backing up to a too-small external drive?

If it can't fit then you're repeatedly giving me well meaning albeit useless advice to do something which is beyond my means. Please try to understand that I have to deal with what I do have, not with what I don't have or what I 'should' have. Because of this limitation I really wish (albeit respectfully) that you'd please stop with the "external drive" mantra. I need other solutions.

During the install you will get fresh @ and @home subvolumes. with your home account as /home/youracct. You won't see a @ or @home from within your system because even when you "sudo -" in a konsole you only have root priviledges, which do not include access to @ and @home unless you mount your installation device to /mnt, for example:

Since I will get fresh @ and @home subvolumes, what happens to the pre-existing @ and @home subvolumes which I have right now? As I understanf from oshunluver they'll be replaced - unless I rename them as per his instructions. If I rename them according to his incomplete instructions (including editing the fstab and grub,) will the renamed versions still be there after a reinstall?

sudo -i
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
Vdir /mnt
@
@home
At this mount you can
mkdir /mnt/snapshots
and create a snapshots subdirectory. Then you can
btrfs su snapshot -r /mnt/@ /mnt/snapshots/@_bkup20170906
btrfs su snapshot -r /mnt/@home /mnt/snapshots/@home_bkup20170906
sync
and that will create a snapshot of @ and @home and store them in /mnt/snapshots

Now THIS is something you and oshunluver neglected to mention before when I asked precisely how to go about renaming @ and @home, (the steps involved.) NOW I finally have a useful idea how to go about renaming them; mount by doing "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt" first! That finally answers one question - how to go about rename @.

Done mounting. 2 snapshots created.

root@behne:/mnt# pwd
/mnt
root@behne:/mnt# vdir
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 234 Sep  6 00:26 [B]@[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 242 Sep  5 20:03 [B]@home[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  64 Sep  8 19:23 [I]snapshots[/I]
root@behne:/mnt# vdir snapshots
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 234 Sep  6 00:26 [B]@_bkup20170908[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 242 Sep  5 20:03 [B]@home_bkup20170908[/B]
root@behne:/mnt#

Following your instructions I was able to send the snapshot of @ to my little working external drive, but @home's snapshot won't fit. I tried to send it to my other exterrnal drive, (the flakey one,) and it's been going for the past 16 hours now, with no indication if this is normal or if the drive is just still just being flakey.

So, now that I have mounted /dev/sda1 and learned that I can do things like create a snapshots directory, and renaming things there too, I have some questions of great importance: If I follow oshunluver's instructions in "More-BTRFS-fun-Multibooting-to-subvolumes-on-the-same-partition", after renaming the @ and @home, and after editing the fstab and grub, and after rebooting, if I then do a "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt" and cd to /mnt/, what exactly will be there? I'm assuming that I'll see something like (as in similar to) this in sofar as directory names are concerned:

root@behne:/mnt# vdir
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 234 Sep  6 00:26 [B]@[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 234 Sep  6 00:26  [B]@12_10[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 242 Sep  5 20:03 [B]@home[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 242 Sep  5 20:03 [B]@12_10home[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  64 Sep  8 19:23 [B]snapshots[/B]
root@behne:/mnt#

Then,
1) Is that a correct assumption? [YES or NO]:

2) Is all my data in @12_10 and @12_10home still there intact? [YES or NO]:

3) Can I transfer the contents of certain directories from @12_10 to the new @? [YES or NO]:

4) Can I delete the new @home and rename @home12_10 to @home? [YES or NO]:

5) If #4 is yes, then I assume that I will have to edit /etc/fstab to reflect the correct uuid for the renamed drive, correct? [YES or NO]:

6) As to the snapshots directory, will it also still be there after a new install? [YES or NO]:

7) Can the snapshot be used to SELECTIVELY restore only certain directories to the new install? [YES or NO]:

If answers to the above are all yes, then no further explanation is necessary. I'll only need explanations if the answer is no.

[vinnywright]

So, now that I have mounted /dev/sda1 and learned that I can do things like create a snapshots directory, and renaming things there too, I have some questions of great importance: If I follow oshunluver's instructions in "More-BTRFS-fun-Multibooting-to-subvolumes-on-the-same-partition", after renaming the @ and @home, and after editing the fstab and grub, and after rebooting, if I then do a "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt" and cd to /mnt/, what exactly will be there? I'm assuming that I'll see something like (as in similar to) this in sofar as directory names are concerned:

root@behne:/mnt# vdir
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 234 Sep  6 00:26 [B]@[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 234 Sep  6 00:26  [B]@12_10[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 242 Sep  5 20:03 [B]@home[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 242 Sep  5 20:03 [B]@12_10home[/B]
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  64 Sep  8 19:23 [B]snapshots[/B]
root@behne:/mnt#

Then,
1) Is that a correct assumption? [YES or NO]:

2) Is all my data in @12_10 and @12_10home still there intact? [YES or NO]:

3) Can I transfer the contents of certain directories from @12_10 to the new @? [YES or NO]:

4) Can I delete the new @home and rename @home12_10 to @home? [YES or NO]:

5) If #4 is yes, then I assume that I will have to edit /etc/fstab to reflect the correct uuid for the renamed drive, correct? [YES or NO]:

6) As to the snapshots directory, will it also still be there after a new install? [YES or NO]:

7) Can the snapshot be used to SELECTIVELY restore only certain directories to the new install? [YES or NO]:

If answers to the above are all yes, then no further explanation is necessary. I'll only need explanations if the answer is no.

1) ,,,,,yes

hear is my /dev/sda1 witch is a btrfs partition with 2 installes and some snapshots of 1 of them

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ ls /mnt/test
@  @17.04  @17.04snap  @home  @home17.04  @home17.04snap  ubiquity-apt-clone  var

the @ and @home are neon-LTS ,,,,@17.04 is Kubuntu-17.04

2),,,,yes

3),,,,yes

4),,,,,yes ,,,but if it's a diferent distro their may be problems ,,,,,just like using the old /home/you would cause in a partition scheme if it was from a different system.

5),,,,probably not as the fstab should allready be pointing to @home

hear is the fstab from the 17.04 (@17.04) in the ubuve konsole output

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=ff5d66d4-35b6-4c9c-a64e-8dfbe2aa1e31 /               btrfs   defaults,subvol=@17.04 0       1
[COLOR=#ff0000]# /home was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=ff5d66d4-35b6-4c9c-a64e-8dfbe2aa1e31 /home           btrfs   defaults,subvol=@home17.04 0       2[/COLOR]
# swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=98d20e91-1908-48a9-b713-c4aa0fd8b055 none            swap    sw              0       0

#TB-drive
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1    btrfs     rw,relatime,space_cache,compress=lzo     0    0

if I was to rename the snapshot @home17.04snap to @home17.04 (after deleting @home17.04) their would be no reason to edit the fstab as it's already pointing to @home17.04 ,,,and rebooting will get it used ,,,or remounting ,,,,,

6) ,,,,yes

7),,,,,yes

hear are some screenshots to furthur your understanding ,,,,,,I hope ,,,,,and I do hope I am not upseting you furthur ,,,I meen no ofence

hear I have mounted one of my btrfs partitions that contains 2 installes ,,,,,,,



I can now open dolphin to do the work of moving ,renaming , deleting ,,,whatever you could do in dolphin (to sufff vinny owens,,,not root ) for that you would need a file manager that will still open as root ,,,like krusader.

in this one I (becus I owne the directorys) can drag and drop from one pain to the other watever I want .



again I opolagise if I have overstept the bounds of what you wanted ,,,,or did not adress it as you asked.

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

This then would be one problem I'm having: too much reading material to dig through for answers. I don't need to sort through rhetoric, I just need short, direct answers for now.

Well, cry me a river. How do you think I or the others on this forum who are freely and willingly volunteering to answer your questions, despite your criticisms, learned this info? Osmosis? We spent the time in research and study of what we found. We asked for help on the hard spots, not everything, and we didn't make demands as to how the answer were to be presented. You want to be spoon fed to the last detail and are so instantly willing to blame anyone else for any problems you encounter.

...
I only have btrfs now, even on my tiny, useless external drives. This is what I HAVE NOW (present tense):
[CODE]russ@behne:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/sda2 2.8T 1.5T 1.3T 54% /
...
/dev/sda2 2.8T 1.5T 1.3T 54% /home
....
/dev/sdc1 932G 513M 930G 1% /media/russ/BTRFS <-----<<< My only reliable, albeit tiny and useless, external drive
...

I elipsed out the devices that are of NO concern to you and which you should leave alone. All that's left is /, /home and your 930GB external drive, which is hardly tiny or useless.

.....

The only functional external drive I have is mounted as /dev/sdc1, which is formatted as btrfs, 930G. Can I back up ALL my data to that? @ and @home? Will it all fit? What's the best method of backing up to a too-small external drive?

Note true. You have sda2 in addition to sdc1. (What did you do to sda1 ?) Both / and /home are functioning or YOU wouldn't have been able to log into /home or execute the "dh -h" command. Your own listing shows that your external drive is only 1% occupied. That amounts to 9.3GB of data. That external drive is a different pool from the one / and /home are in. You can use Dolphin to drag files back and forth between them, but NOT subvolume snapshots. For that you need to use the btrfs send & receive commands, like a showed in my previous post.

Your listing also shows that / and /home are using 54% of sdb2 You don't add the percentages of those two listings because that percentage represents the Btrfs pool on sdb2, in which / and /home (@ and @home) reside. So yes, you have plent of room left to copy your data from your external drive to some location on /home. And, you don't need to create another partition to do it.

If it can't fit then you're repeatedly giving me well meaning albeit useless advice to do something which is beyond my means. Please try to understand that I have to deal with what I do have, not with what I don't have or what I 'should' have. Because of this limitation I really wish (albeit respectfully) that you'd please stop with the "external drive" mantra. I need other solutions.

So, you are so knowledgeable that you can identify useless "mantra" and solutions but can't help yourself out of the holes you keep digging for yourself? That external drive is, more than likely, where your precious data is. You've apparently installed a fresh copy of Kubuntu onto sdb1 using Btrfs as the fs and you've mounted an external drive on your /media mount point. You also have something on sda1 but it is not in the btrfs pool that @ and @home are in.

As far as your demands are concerned just answer me this, "Have you stopped beating your wife?". Just yes or no.

See the problem with your DEMANDS?

One last time. Don't touch your /media/russ/Btrfs external drive. According to you your data is on it.

Here is my suggestion.
Boot into a LiveUSB and using kparted delete the partitions on sda and sdb. Create sdb1 and sdb2, giving them the whole space remaining on the drive. Install Kubuntu on sda1. Boot into it. Format sdb1 with Btrfs. Now you have two choices: 1) Leave sdb1 as a second drive which you can mount and store snapshots on when you need to, otherwise it remains unmounted. or 2) Use btrfs to add sdb1 to the pool on sda1, creating on large pool residing on both drives. Update fstab appropriately.

Now, copy your data from /media/russ/Btrfs into some existing or newly created subdirectory under /home/youraccount.

Take it or leave it. Either way, I'm obviously not smart enough to help you, so I'm done.

[rwbehne1]

1) ,,,,,yes

hear is my /dev/sda1 witch is a btrfs partition with 2 installes and some snapshots of 1 of them

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ ls /mnt/test
@  @17.04  @17.04snap  @home  @home17.04  @home17.04snap  ubiquity-apt-clone  var

the @ and @home are neon-LTS ,,,,@17.04 is Kubuntu-17.04

2),,,,yes

3),,,,yes

4),,,,,yes ,,,but if it's a diferent distro their may be problems ,,,,,just like using the old /home/you would cause in a partition scheme if it was from a different system.

5),,,,probably not as the fstab should allready be pointing to @home

hear is the fstab from the 17.04 (@17.04) in the ubuve konsole output

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=ff5d66d4-35b6-4c9c-a64e-8dfbe2aa1e31 /               btrfs   defaults,subvol=@17.04 0       1
[COLOR=#ff0000]# /home was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=ff5d66d4-35b6-4c9c-a64e-8dfbe2aa1e31 /home           btrfs   defaults,subvol=@home17.04 0       2[/COLOR]
# swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=98d20e91-1908-48a9-b713-c4aa0fd8b055 none            swap    sw              0       0

#TB-drive
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1    btrfs     rw,relatime,space_cache,compress=lzo     0    0

if I was to rename the snapshot @home17.04snap to @home17.04 (after deleting @home17.04) their would be no reason to edit the fstab as it's already pointing to @home17.04 ,,,and rebooting will get it used ,,,or remounting ,,,,,

6) ,,,,yes

7),,,,,yes

hear are some screenshots to furthur your understanding ,,,,,,I hope ,,,,,and I do hope I am not upseting you furthur ,,,I meen no ofence
{SNIP}

I'm not offended at all, I'm happy that your answers are confirming my understanding, and helping me understand more. Thanks!

I can now open dolphin to do the work of moving ,renaming , deleting ,,,whatever you could do in dolphin (to sufff vinny owens,,,not root ) for that you would need a file manager that will still open as root ,,,like krusader.

in this one I (becus I owne the directorys) can drag and drop from one pain to the other watever I want .

{SNIP}

I'm using dolphin as root without any problem on Ubuntu 17.04. Here's the steps I used, in case they will work for you:
1) Open a terminal.
I noticed that su - wouldn't work, So next do
2) sudo su -
and that gets you root. Next enter
3) passwd
to change the root password. Once you have changed it, exit the root shell and you'll be back as a regular user, and from then on you can use su - to gain root.
4) Now you can do su - to become root without having to use sudo.
5) as root type nohup dolphin & and you are using dolphin as root. Done!

See if that works for you on your install.

again I opolagise if I have overstept the bounds of what you wanted ,,,,or did not adress it as you asked.
VINNY

No need to apologize, you're helping. I just want to be sure I know what I'm doing before trying anything else.
Now I have to hit the sack because it's 4am here and I have to quit reading and testing and troubleshooting for a while. Thanks for the answers!

[vinnywright]

I'm using dolphin as root without any problem on Ubuntu 17.04. Here's the steps I used, in case they will work for you:
1) Open a terminal.
I noticed that su - wouldn't work, So next do
2) sudo su -
and that gets you root. Next enter
3) passwd
to change the root password. Once you have changed it, exit the root shell and you'll be back as a regular user, and from then on you can use su - to gain root.
4) Now you can do su - to become root without having to use sudo.
5) as root type nohup dolphin & and you are using dolphin as root. Done!

See if that works for you on your install.

you may have found a hack around the no root dolphin that was instituted in the latest versions of it ,,,,,,,,however I do not want to add a root acct, with password @hear so am not going to test it ...but thank you for the info.

I have crusader for that for now ,,,,,,,,,you can edit root files from the newer no root dolphin ,,,it will (kate)ask for your password on saving the file...and they are working (I think) on something like that for dolphin to make delete move things in root owned areas .

VINNY

[rwbehne1]

Well, cry me a river. How do you think I or the others on this forum who are freely and willingly volunteering to answer your questions, despite your criticisms, learned this info? Osmosis? We spent the time in research and study of what we found. We asked for help on the hard spots, not everything, and we didn't make demands as to how the answer were to be presented. You want to be spoon fed to the last detail and are so instantly willing to blame anyone else for any problems you encounter.

That's a rather emotional and conceited response. Can't you leave your emotions out of this? Learn to be more stoic like the rest of us. Since your profile shows you as a "retired administrator" It would follow that you had formal education in computer science, which I have not had, and of which benefits you greatly; you've been at this longer than I have, and are familiar with nomenclature which is often a mystery to me.

I elipsed out the devices that are of NO concern to you and which you should leave alone. All that's left is /, /home and your 930GB external drive, which is hardly tiny or useless. Note true. You have sda2 in addition to sdc1. (What did you do to sda1 ?)

I did with sda1 precisely what oshunluvr advised me to do, step-by-step: I made it the grub boot. Therefore my system is installed on sda2.

Both / and /home are functioning or YOU wouldn't have been able to log into /home or execute the "dh -h" command.

Non sequitur; I never said that / and /home weren't functioning. What I DID say was that the @home snapshot will not ALSO fit on that external drive because it's too small.

Your own listing shows that your external drive is only 1% occupied. That amounts to 9.3GB of data. That external drive is a different pool from the one / and /home are in. You can use Dolphin to drag files back and forth between them, but NOT subvolume snapshots. For that you need to use the btrfs send & receive commands, like a showed in my previous post.

As I indicated, that's precisely what I did with the snapshot of @ - in pedantic compliance with your directions. I merely stated that the @home snapshot will not ALSO fit on that external drive.

[/QUOTE]Your listing also shows that / and /home are using 54% of sdb2 You don't add the percentages of those two listings because that percentage represents the Btrfs pool on sdb2, in which / and /home (@ and @home) reside. So yes, you have plent of room left to copy your data from your external drive to some location on /home. And, you don't need to create another partition to do it.[/QUOTE]

First, and you're confusing my sda (internal hard drive) with my optical drive on sdb.
Second, you've got things backwards. The instructions you gave were to SEND the snapshots to my external drive. Now you're talking about going the wrong way with the wrong drive! ...and you're bringing up that partition fetish again!!! Who said anything about another partition?? Not me, that's for certain!

Ok, I'll give you the benefit of a doubt and assume that I'm wrong about the external drive being too small, so here we go...

root@behne:~#[B] btrfs send /mnt/snapshots/@home_bkup20170908/ | btrfs receive /media/root/BTRFS/[/B]
At subvol /mnt/snapshots/@home_bkup20170908/
At subvol @home_bkup20170908
[B]ERROR:[/B] writing to russ/public_video/-=SciFi/Star Trek/Star Trek Voyager/Season 2/E07 Parturition.mkv failed: [B]No space left on device[/B]
root@behne:~#

OPS!!!! Well, damn! I really was right after all! There just isn't enough space on that tiny external drive! Quod erat demonstrandum.

So, you are so knowledgeable that you can identify useless "mantra" and solutions but can't help yourself out of the holes you keep digging for yourself? That external drive is, more than likely, where your precious data is. You've apparently installed a fresh copy of Kubuntu onto sdb1 using Btrfs as the fs and you've mounted an external drive on your /media mount point. You also have something on sda1 but it is not in the btrfs pool that @ and @home are in.

As far as your demands are concerned just answer me this, "Have you stopped beating your wife?". Just yes or no.

See the problem with your DEMANDS?

Have you been drinking? The questions I asked are not loaded questions, so your "Have you stopped beating your wife?" response is equally a non sequitur, inane, and needlessly insulting, all at the same time. Clearly, either you were absent when the logic fallacies were being taught in college, or you intentionally misapplied the loaded question fallacy only for the purpose of causing ill will. Either way shame on you!

How emotional you are! I didn't "demand" anything. I simply wanted to ask several closed end questions, and avoid a long, protracted, off-course monologue about non sequiturs. You're a smart guy, you certainly do know a lot, but all your knowledge is being negated by two simple facts:
1) you can't simply answer a direct, closed-ended question with a simple yes or no, instead you have to talk around the questions actually being asked, completely avoiding the simpler task of just answering them, instead talking about something else entirely. Only two people replied, you and the person who actually answered my questions. You didn't at all, quod erat demonstrandum.
2) you fail to control your emotions, therefore your emotions are controlling you; By allowing your emotions to control you, all your responses are becoming arrogant and sloppy: you're giving conflicting and errant advice without first thinking about what you're saying. You blurt out. You're confused about what my situation is. Although my df -h listing shows my @ and @home are firmly situated on sda2, you think it says sdb2 - my cdrom drive! WHAT?!!!

This is why I question everything I read, regardless of the source. I want confirmation from multiple sources, to be more certain that I'm not getting emotionally-driven responses. This is why I prefer getting answers from several people, especially when what I read elsewhere online hasn't been clear to me. So if my questions really bother you that much, too bad. It's not about you. It's about me trying to learn from multiple sources, and asking questions when I still don't understand. I couldn't care less about what anyone thinks about my wanting a simple, brief, clear, and concise yes or no answer to clear things up for me. If you don't want to answer my questions, then simply don't! If answering directly with only yes or no is just too much work for you, or too emotionally taxing for you, then just don't answer! It's that simple.

Just look at how many people in this forum DIDN'T respond! It was apparently too much for them! So they did the right thing: they didn't respond when they didn't know the answer. You should learn from them; if you can't answer a direct question with a direct, on point answer, then don't respond at all.

I'd rather get NO answer than drawn-out monologues which are emotionally-driven, wrong, and which completely avoid the crux of the issue which I need answers to.

One last time. Don't touch your /media/russ/Btrfs external drive. According to you your data is on it.

I made no such statement. Your emotions have clouded your memory. What I DID say previously is that I had formatted that drive and installed a btrfs on it once I was done transferring my data to the sda2, thus leaving that external drive empty. I did not say all my data was on it. You're simply not paying attention. Which is understandable, as it is rather difficult to concentrate, even on simple tasks, when you're over-emotional about things.

You don't even understand why I asked those several yes or no questions; because you're too busy defending your ego, which is NOT the issue - but that's what you're making it into. Jesus!

Here is my suggestion.
Boot into a LiveUSB and using kparted delete the partitions on sda and sdb. Create sdb1 and sdb2, giving them the whole space remaining on the drive. Install Kubuntu on sda1. Boot into it. Format sdb1 with Btrfs. Now you have two choices: 1) Leave sdb1 as a second drive which you can mount and store snapshots on when you need to, otherwise it remains unmounted. or 2) Use btrfs to add sdb1 to the pool on sda1, creating on large pool residing on both drives. Update fstab appropriately.

Now, copy your data from /media/russ/Btrfs into some existing or newly created subdirectory under /home/youraccount.

Take it or leave it. Either way, I'm obviously not smart enough to help you, so I'm done.

You're now telling me to destroy my grub boot partition (sda1) and all my files which are now residing on sda2, AND to format my cdrom (sdb) with btrfs!

AYFKM?!!

Do you seriously think I'm going to follow that "suggestion"? What will you suggest next? Perhaps rm -f / I'll wager! Do you really think I'm that stupid - to follow such "advice" without thinking about it first? Perhaps you're trying to sabotage me because you think I ask too many questions that you can't answer. But if that's what you're going to tell me to do, then no, It's not going to happen,

It would have been much easier and wiser to have just answered simply yes or no like I asked. Had you done so your image would still be intact. But no, you had to go all emotional on me, and destroy your own credibility in the process!

And you still didn't answer my questions. (Not that I'd readily trust your answers at this point.) Luckily someone else did answer, and did so without the emotional outbursts or exaggerated butthurt.

Control your emotions, otherwise your emotions will control you. ...and when that happens, you're out of control.

[rwbehne1]

Well, cry me a river. How do you think I or the others on this forum who are freely and willingly volunteering to answer your questions, despite your criticisms, learned this info? Osmosis? We spent the time in research and study of what we found. We asked for help on the hard spots, not everything, and we didn't make demands as to how the answer were to be presented. You want to be spoon fed to the last detail and are so instantly willing to blame anyone else for any problems you encounter.

That's a rather emotional and conceited response. Can't you leave your emotions out of this? Learn to be more stoic like the rest of us. Since your profile shows you as a "retired administrator" It would follow that you had formal education in computer science, which I have not had, and of which benefits you greatly; you've been at this longer than I have, and are familiar with nomenclature which is often a mystery to me.

I elipsed out the devices that are of NO concern to you and which you should leave alone. All that's left is /, /home and your 930GB external drive, which is hardly tiny or useless. Note true. You have sda2 in addition to sdc1. (What did you do to sda1 ?)

I did with sda1 precisely what oshunluvr advised me to do, step-by-step: I made it the grub boot. Therefore my system is installed on sda2.

Both / and /home are functioning or YOU wouldn't have been able to log into /home or execute the "dh -h" command.

Non sequitur; I never said that / and /home weren't functioning. What I DID say was that the @home snapshot will not ALSO fit on that external drive because it's too small.

Your own listing shows that your external drive is only 1% occupied. That amounts to 9.3GB of data. That external drive is a different pool from the one / and /home are in. You can use Dolphin to drag files back and forth between them, but NOT subvolume snapshots. For that you need to use the btrfs send & receive commands, like a showed in my previous post.

As I indicated, that's precisely what I did with the snapshot of @ - in pedantic compliance with your directions. I merely stated that the @home snapshot will not ALSO fit on that external drive.

Your listing also shows that / and /home are using 54% of sdb2 You don't add the percentages of those two listings because that percentage represents the Btrfs pool on sdb2, in which / and /home (@ and @home) reside. So yes, you have plent of room left to copy your data from your external drive to some location on /home. And, you don't need to create another partition to do it.

First, you're confusing my sda (internal hard drive) with my optical drive on sdb.
Second, you've got things backwards. The instructions you gave were to SEND the snapshots to my external drive. Now you're talking about going the wrong way with the wrong drive! ...and you're bringing up that partition fetish again!!! Who said anything about another partition?? Not me, that's for certain!

Ok, I'll give you the benefit of a doubt and assume that I'm wrong about the external drive being too small, so here we go...

root@behne:~#[B] btrfs send /mnt/snapshots/@home_bkup20170908/ | btrfs receive /media/root/BTRFS/[/B]
At subvol /mnt/snapshots/@home_bkup20170908/
At subvol @home_bkup20170908
[B]ERROR:[/B] writing to russ/public_video/-=SciFi/Star Trek/Star Trek Voyager/Season 2/E07 Parturition.mkv failed: [B]No space left on device[/B]
root@behne:~#

OPS!!!! Well, damn! I really was right after all! There just isn't enough space on that tiny external drive! Quod erat demonstrandum.

So, you are so knowledgeable that you can identify useless "mantra" and solutions but can't help yourself out of the holes you keep digging for yourself? That external drive is, more than likely, where your precious data is. You've apparently installed a fresh copy of Kubuntu onto sdb1 using Btrfs as the fs and you've mounted an external drive on your /media mount point. You also have something on sda1 but it is not in the btrfs pool that @ and @home are in.

As far as your demands are concerned just answer me this, "Have you stopped beating your wife?". Just yes or no.

See the problem with your DEMANDS?

Have you been drinking? The questions I asked are not loaded questions, so your "Have you stopped beating your wife?" response is equally a non sequitur, inane, and needlessly insulting, all at the same time. Clearly, either you were absent when the logic fallacies were being taught in college, or you intentionally misapplied the loaded question fallacy only for the purpose of causing ill will. Either way shame on you!

How emotional you are! I didn't "demand" anything. I simply wanted to ask several closed end questions, and avoid a long, protracted, off-course monologue about non sequiturs. You're a smart guy, you certainly do know a lot, but all your knowledge is being negated by two simple facts:
1) you can't simply answer a direct, closed-ended question with a simple yes or no, instead you have to talk around the questions actually being asked, completely avoiding the simpler task of just answering them, instead talking about something else entirely. Only two people replied, you and the person who actually answered my questions. You didn't at all, quod erat demonstrandum.
2) you fail to control your emotions, therefore your emotions are controlling you; By allowing your emotions to control you, all your responses are becoming arrogant and sloppy: you're giving conflicting and errant advice without first thinking about what you're saying. You blurt out. You're confused about what my situation is. Although my df -h listing shows my @ and @home are firmly situated on sda2, you think it says sdb2 - my cdrom drive! WHAT?!!!

This is why I question everything I read, regardless of the source. I want confirmation from multiple sources, to be more certain that I'm not getting emotionally-driven responses. This is why I prefer getting answers from several people, especially when what I read elsewhere online hasn't been clear to me. So if my questions really bother you that much, too bad. It's not about you. It's about me trying to learn from multiple sources, and asking questions when I still don't understand. I couldn't care less about what anyone thinks about my wanting a simple, brief, clear, and concise yes or no answer to clear things up for me. If you don't want to answer my questions, then simply don't! If answering directly with only yes or no is just too much work for you, or too emotionally taxing for you, then just don't answer! It's that simple.

Just look at how many people in this forum DIDN'T respond! It was apparently too much for them! So they did the right thing: they didn't respond when they didn't know the answer. You should learn from them; if you can't answer a direct question with a direct, on point answer, then don't respond at all.

I'd rather get NO answer than drawn-out monologues which are emotionally-driven, wrong, and which completely avoid the crux of the issue which I need answers to.

One last time. Don't touch your /media/russ/Btrfs external drive. According to you your data is on it.

I made no such statement. Your emotions have clouded your memory. What I DID say previously is that I had formatted that drive and installed a btrfs on it once I was done transferring my data to the sda2, thus leaving that external drive empty. I did not say all my data was on it. You're simply not paying attention. Which is understandable, as it is rather difficult to concentrate, even on simple tasks, when you're over-emotional about things.

You don't even understand why I asked those several yes or no questions; because you're too busy defending your ego, which is NOT the issue - but that's what you're making it into. Jesus!

Here is my suggestion.
Boot into a LiveUSB and using kparted delete the partitions on sda and sdb. Create sdb1 and sdb2, giving them the whole space remaining on the drive. Install Kubuntu on sda1. Boot into it. Format sdb1 with Btrfs. Now you have two choices: 1) Leave sdb1 as a second drive which you can mount and store snapshots on when you need to, otherwise it remains unmounted. or 2) Use btrfs to add sdb1 to the pool on sda1, creating on large pool residing on both drives. Update fstab appropriately.

Now, copy your data from /media/russ/Btrfs into some existing or newly created subdirectory under /home/youraccount.

Take it or leave it. Either way, I'm obviously not smart enough to help you, so I'm done.

You're now telling me to destroy my grub boot partition (sda1) and all my files which are now residing on sda2, AND to format my cdrom (sdb) with btrfs!

AYFKM?!!

Do you seriously think I'm going to follow that "suggestion"? What will you suggest next? Perhaps rm -f / I'll wager! Do you really think I'm that stupid - to follow such "advice" without thinking about it first? Perhaps you're trying to sabotage me because you think I ask too many questions that you can't answer. But if that's what you're going to tell me to do, then no, It's not going to happen,

It would have been much easier and wiser to have just answered simply yes or no like I asked. Had you done so your image would still be intact. But no, you had to go all emotional on me, and destroy your own credibility in the process!

And you still didn't answer my questions. (Not that I'd readily trust your answers at this point.) Luckily someone else did answer, and did so without the emotional outbursts or exaggerated butthurt.

Control your emotions, otherwise your emotions will control you. ...and when that happens, you're out of control.