Bubbel
June 3rd, 2010, 06:19 AM
Thumbs up HOWTO: Install LessFS (De-duplication FileSystem) on 10.04/lucid
LessFS is a relatively new FS. The primary goal for LessFS is an on-disk backup & archiving filesystem.
Features of LessFS:
On-line De-duplication
On-line Compression
I created a similar howto for the 9.10 version. But time has changed, and so did Ubuntu, as well as my hardware setup. This week it was time to reinstall a fresh OS, with lessfs.
LessFS creates a growable file that represents the LessFS filesystem.
My configuration is as follows: 5 Harddisks of varying sizes, concatenated to two disks/volumes using LVM2. The data partition formatted as btrfs. Although the btrfs is experimental it has a unique advantage to other filesystems and that is the snapshotting feature. I use it to create point-in-time copies of the lessfs filesystem.
I've installed LessFS as follows:
Open a Terminal on your server.
* Get the prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libselinux1-dev libsepol1-dev checkinstall pkg-config libfuse-dev libmhash-dev libtokyocabinet-dev
Download & Extract LessFS: Download .tar.gz package from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lessfs/files/. Extract like
tar xzf *.tar.gz
Other Option, All-in one (Note: check for the newest version number at wwww.lessfs.com):
wget -O- http://sourceforge.net/projects/lessfs/files/lessfs/lessfs-1.0.8/lessfs-1.0.8.tar.gz/download | tar xz
cd into lessfs folder and run
./configure
This gives a lot of text. Check for errors.
Run
make && sudo checkinstall
Checkinstall asks a few trivial questions. The defaults will suffice, mostly.
You are done installing. Now configuring:
** note: The next piece of text needs to be cleaned. Will do that soon. **
LessFS isn't made natively on Debian/Ubuntu. That is to see in the startup scipt. I tweaked it a bit, but I must say it's a quick-and-dirty hack. The tweaked script is provided as an attachment (lessfs.sh).
Download it and save it to /etc/init.d
Edit the file if you want to change the mountpoint to something other than /data.
Then do:
Code:
sudo update-rc.d lessfs.sh enable
This creates the correct startup scripts. This isn't nessecary. You can always hand-start lessfs.
The next part is important though:
From the lessfs source folder copy the etc/lessfs.cfg file. Copy it to /etc
Then edit the new /etc/lessfs.cfg
change the file paths to your liking (tip: Do the data folder 'dta' as the only one on your large partition. For performance reason)
Alter the cache settings in a way that it fits your memory.
After saving the file, create the mta, dta subfolders at the places you stated above.
Also create the mount point folder.
do the following to create the folder:
Code:
sudo mklessfs -c /etc/lessfs.cfg
And you're done Start Lessfs with:
Code:
sudo invoke-rc.d lessfs.sh start
or restart.
Happy Less-ing
Bubbel
PS: Thanks to PhracturedBlue for filtering out some errors.
LessFS is a relatively new FS. The primary goal for LessFS is an on-disk backup & archiving filesystem.
Features of LessFS:
On-line De-duplication
On-line Compression
I created a similar howto for the 9.10 version. But time has changed, and so did Ubuntu, as well as my hardware setup. This week it was time to reinstall a fresh OS, with lessfs.
LessFS creates a growable file that represents the LessFS filesystem.
My configuration is as follows: 5 Harddisks of varying sizes, concatenated to two disks/volumes using LVM2. The data partition formatted as btrfs. Although the btrfs is experimental it has a unique advantage to other filesystems and that is the snapshotting feature. I use it to create point-in-time copies of the lessfs filesystem.
I've installed LessFS as follows:
Open a Terminal on your server.
* Get the prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libselinux1-dev libsepol1-dev checkinstall pkg-config libfuse-dev libmhash-dev libtokyocabinet-dev
Download & Extract LessFS: Download .tar.gz package from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lessfs/files/. Extract like
tar xzf *.tar.gz
Other Option, All-in one (Note: check for the newest version number at wwww.lessfs.com):
wget -O- http://sourceforge.net/projects/lessfs/files/lessfs/lessfs-1.0.8/lessfs-1.0.8.tar.gz/download | tar xz
cd into lessfs folder and run
./configure
This gives a lot of text. Check for errors.
Run
make && sudo checkinstall
Checkinstall asks a few trivial questions. The defaults will suffice, mostly.
You are done installing. Now configuring:
** note: The next piece of text needs to be cleaned. Will do that soon. **
LessFS isn't made natively on Debian/Ubuntu. That is to see in the startup scipt. I tweaked it a bit, but I must say it's a quick-and-dirty hack. The tweaked script is provided as an attachment (lessfs.sh).
Download it and save it to /etc/init.d
Edit the file if you want to change the mountpoint to something other than /data.
Then do:
Code:
sudo update-rc.d lessfs.sh enable
This creates the correct startup scripts. This isn't nessecary. You can always hand-start lessfs.
The next part is important though:
From the lessfs source folder copy the etc/lessfs.cfg file. Copy it to /etc
Then edit the new /etc/lessfs.cfg
change the file paths to your liking (tip: Do the data folder 'dta' as the only one on your large partition. For performance reason)
Alter the cache settings in a way that it fits your memory.
After saving the file, create the mta, dta subfolders at the places you stated above.
Also create the mount point folder.
do the following to create the folder:
Code:
sudo mklessfs -c /etc/lessfs.cfg
And you're done Start Lessfs with:
Code:
sudo invoke-rc.d lessfs.sh start
or restart.
Happy Less-ing
Bubbel
PS: Thanks to PhracturedBlue for filtering out some errors.