It's been a while since bcache made its way into the Linux kernel, but the installers of most distributions have not yet caught up to allow users to install to a bcache-backed volume, and user-land tools necessary to make use of bcache are not yet installed by default.  There has been a tutorial on how to convert the root of an existing installation into bcache with a tool named blocks, but the code base and the depending code bases are either too old or too new  to be directly usable with the default python 3.4 setup of Ubuntu 14.04.  After a frustrating process of fixing all compatibility issues, I was able to make the code run, but I don't trust my own patch (and the stability of github forked code) enough to apply that on my real data.  I ended up this not-so-drastic, but cleaner and safer way to get a bcache-backed root filesystem with minimal external dependencies.

The idea is to (1) install Ubuntu into a normal partition (>= 5GB) which would later be converted to the swap space, (2) setup the bcache, and (3) migrate / to the bcache device.

In my case (lenovo U430P), /dev/sda is a 16G SSD, and /dev/sdb is a 1T HDD.

1. Initial Installation

Install Ubuntu 14.04 using the following disk partitioning scheme - 64MB EFI partition /dev/sda1, fat32, mounted at /boot/efi. This is not necessary if the machine is booted in the traditional BIOS way. - 200MB ext4 partition /dev/sda2 to be mounted on /boot.  It is necessary to make /boot on a separate partition.  I made this on SSD to make it faster for the kernel to be loaded (haven't compared, but I guess the speedup over HDD -- if not slowdown -- won't be that obvious as the kernel is a multi-megabyte file.) - 16GB ext4 partition /dev/sdb1 to be mounted as / in installation.  We'll later convert that to be a swap partition. - An empty big partition /dev/sdb2 later to be used as root (/dev/sda2).  Create this partition, but do not use it for now. - An empty partition /dev/sda3 on SSD later to be used as the cache.  Create this partition, but do not use it for now.

The installer will complain about not having a swap space.  Ignore that.

2. Setting Up Bcache

After installation, boot into the newly installed system, install bcache-tools (in PPA) and setup the system:

$ sudo bash
# add-apt-repository ppa:g2p/storage
# apt-get update
# apt-get install bcache-tools
# make-bcache -C /dev/sda3 -B /dev/sdb2
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/bcache0

3. Migrating Root Filesystem

Keep working in the newly installed system.

$ sudo bash
$ mkdir OLD NEW
# mount /dev/sdb1 OLD    # the old root
# mount /dev/bcache0 NEW # this would be our new root
# rsync -a OLD/ NEW/     # now NEW contains the root
# ### mount a serious directory in preparation for grub-install
# mount /dev/sda2 NEW/boot
# mount /dev/sda1 NEW/boot/efi
# mount -o bind /dev NEW/dev
# mount -t proc none NEW/proc
# mount -t sysfs none NEW/sys
# chroot NEW
# #### find out the UUID of /dev/bcache0 and /dev/sdb1
# ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/ | grep bcache0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 May 29 21:49 4c492013-e8a3-40b5-b5cd-9220ed2e0195 -> ../../bcache0
# ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/ | grep sdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 May 29 21:49 765d6fc0-9ff4-4cf4-95f9-17a6e76ae80c -> ../../sdb1
# vi NEW/etc/fstab NEW/boot/grub.cfg #### edit the files NEW/etc/fstab and NEW/boot/grub.cfg, replace all UUID of sdb1 to that of bcache0.
# grub-install /dev/sda

4. Final Configurations in New System

Reboot into the newly installed system. Now the root is on /dev/bcache0. The old data on /dev/sdb1 is not used, and /dev/sdb1 can be converted to the swap space.

$ sudo bash
# mkswap /dev/sdb1
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 15624188 KiB
no label, UUID=e35bc636-9944-4dd5-ab3d-6c371b0cb7a8
# swapon /dev/sdb1
##### make sure to change the UUID of the command below
echo "UUID=e35bc636-9944-4dd5-ab3d-6c371b0cb7a8 none swap defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

Now I'm having my Ubuntu running happily on bcache, and I hope it's not going to cause and data loss.


© 2017 Wei Dong