How to view transaction log chronologically, human-readable?

How to view transaction log chronologically, human-readable?

[Marcel Partap]

Dear BTFRS devs,
I have a 1TB btrfs volume mounted read-only since two years because I
deleted a bunch of files and didn't want to give up on them.
Now with latest btrfs-find-root and btrfs restore --dry-run -t in a
loop, I generated the full list of files contained in the last several
hundred root trees. However, diffing these, I find the current one being
the same until 94 root trees back, and the ones before contain earlier
changes. Maybe by my own fault that is..whatever.

Is there a way to just view the transaction history in a human-readable way?

#Regards

Re: How to view transaction log chronologically, human-readable?

[Marcel Partap]

[...]
Theoretically, there should be someone on this mailing list capable of
answering this question, no?
Please feel invited to share your insights ;)
#Regards



On 01/03/14 02:21, Marcel Partap wrote:
> Dear BTFRS devs,
> I have a 1TB btrfs volume mounted read-only since two years because I
> deleted a bunch of files and didn't want to give up on them.
> Now with latest btrfs-find-root and btrfs restore --dry-run -t in a
> loop, I generated the full list of files contained in the last several
> hundred root trees. However, diffing these, I find the current one being
> the same until 94 root trees back, and the ones before contain earlier
> changes. Maybe by my own fault that is..whatever.
> 
> Is there a way to just view the transaction history in a human-readable way?
> 
> #Regards
> 

Re: How to view transaction log chronologically, human-readable?

[Marcel Partap]

This is the BTRFS development list, right? Someone here should know how
to achieve this I hope?
#Regards

> On 01/03/14 02:21, Marcel Partap wrote:
>> Dear BTFRS devs,
>> I have a 1TB btrfs volume mounted read-only since two years because I
>> deleted a bunch of files and didn't want to give up on them.
>> Now with latest btrfs-find-root and btrfs restore --dry-run -t in a
>> loop, I generated the full list of files contained in the last several
>> hundred root trees. However, diffing these, I find the current one being
>> the same until 94 root trees back, and the ones before contain earlier
>> changes. Maybe by my own fault that is..whatever.
>>
>> Is there a way to just view the transaction history in a human-readable way?
>>
>> #Regards
>>

Re: How to view transaction log chronologically, human-readable?

[Mitch Harder]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Marcel Partap <mpartap@gmx.net> wrote:
> This is the BTRFS development list, right? Someone here should know how
> to achieve this I hope?
> #Regards
>
>> On 01/03/14 02:21, Marcel Partap wrote:
>>> Dear BTFRS devs,
>>> I have a 1TB btrfs volume mounted read-only since two years because I
>>> deleted a bunch of files and didn't want to give up on them.
>>> Now with latest btrfs-find-root and btrfs restore --dry-run -t in a
>>> loop, I generated the full list of files contained in the last several
>>> hundred root trees. However, diffing these, I find the current one being
>>> the same until 94 root trees back, and the ones before contain earlier
>>> changes. Maybe by my own fault that is..whatever.
>>>
>>> Is there a way to just view the transaction history in a human-readable way?
>>>
>>> #Regards
>>>

I am not a "dev", but since BTRFS utilizes a COW (Copy On Write)
architecture, it doesn't keep a journal or history of transactions
that can be unwound.

With respect to un-deleting files on BTRFS, the btrfs-find-root/'btrfs
restore' combination are the most effective user-space tools I know
of.

It sounds like you've effectively tried this manually, but here's a
link to an btrfs undelete script that also makes use of
btrfs-find-root and 'btrfs restore':

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.btrfs/22560

Re: How to view transaction log chronologically, human-readable?

[Marcel Partap]

> I am not a "dev", but since BTRFS utilizes a COW (Copy On Write)
> architecture, it doesn't keep a journal or history of transactions
> that can be unwound.
Ok, thanks for making that clear, I wasn't aware of that.
But shouldn't the chain of recent root trees kinda allow similar
functionality?

> It sounds like you've effectively tried this manually, but here's a
> link to an btrfs undelete script that also makes use of
> btrfs-find-root and 'btrfs restore':
Actually I was using that script as a starting point.. Unfortunately,
the files I was looking for were nowhere to be found..
>From a journal-type functionality I was hoping for a way to actually see
the most recent file system actions..
Is there no hope to recreate that information from the roots
btrfs-find-root comes up with?

#Regards