Re: snapshot/subvol deletion

Yan, Zheng
2009-08-26T05:25:09Z

On 08/25/2009 11:03 PM, Chris Mason wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 10:38:01PM +0800, Yan, Zheng wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I will send a series patches that add snapshot/subvol deletion soon.
>> But the way to delete snapshot/subvol is far from people's expectancy.
>> To delete a snapshot/subvol, we need four steps: 1) snapshot/subvol
>> deletion ioctl or rmdir; 2) umount; 3) btrfsck; 4) mount the fs.
>>
>> The reason for this is bug in root back & forward references. In simple
>> terms, the bug prevents us from knowing how many places a snapshot/subvol
>> is referenced. So it's unsafe delete corresponding fs tree immediately
>> after a link to snapshot/subvol is removed.
>
> Thanks for working on this, its a major feature. The problem with the
> forward/backward reference counting is that our links to a subvolume or
> snapshot are really more like symbolic links than active references.
>
> If a directory entry points to a subvolume and someone uses rm -rf to
> delete the files inside that subvolume or snapshot, you get the same kind of
> semantics as deleting the subvolume with the ioctl.
>

I don't think so. For each links to a subvolume, there is a separate dentry.
For all symbolic links to a directory, there is only one dentry. So the
semantics are different, at least from VFS' point of view.

> So, we should be able to delete the snapshot without the unmount step.
> It may create an invalid reference but the code to follow snapshot
> directory items will have to be changed to deal with that.
>
> If we later on allow root ids to be reused, the directory item pointing
> to a subvol will again be like a symbolic link. You'll end up in the
> new subvol instead of the old.
>

The extent back reference does not allow reusing objectid of deleted
root.

Yan, Zheng