Re: Improve btrfs man page

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Per Nystrom posted on Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:38:21 -0700 as excerpted:

> I am going through the process of replacing a bad drive in a RAID 1
> mirror.  The filesystem wouldn't mount because of the missing device,
> and the btrfs man pages were not helpful in resolving it.  Specifically,
> it would have been very useful to me if this part of the wiki were
> included somewhere:
> 
> https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/
Using_Btrfs_with_Multiple_Devices#Replacing_failed_devices
> 
> There is no mention in the man pages of the -o degraded mount option,
> which is needed to even manipulate the filesystem; nor is there any
> mention of the special option "missing" for device delete.
> 
> I'm sure I'm not the only one who would turn to man btrfs first when
> facing a failed drive.

Of course traditionally, mount options are covered in the mount manpage.  
But btrfs is new enough I guess it's not in that manpage yet, which has 
frustrated me too, since that's intuitively where I look.

The mount-manpage alternatives are either the wiki, or the
Documentation/filesystems/btrfs.txt file in the kernel sources.

But you're absolutely correct about btrfs device delete missing.  Btrfs 
device delete is of course in the btrfs manpage, but the one-sentence 
description lacks any hint that "missing" can be used if the device 
simply isn't there any longer.  Fleshing that out a bit beyond the single 
sentence would definitely be useful!

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman