Re: [PATCH] btrfs: statfs: Don't reset f_bavail if we're over committing metadata space

David Sterba
2020-01-29T15:39:00Z

On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 10:22:46PM +0800, Qu Wenruo wrote:
> >>>> If it gets removed you are trading one bug for another. With the changed
> >>>> logic in the referenced commit, the metadata exhaustion is more likely
> >>>> but it's also temporary.
> >>
> >> Furthermore, the point of the patch is, current check doesn't play well
> >> with metadata over-commit.
> >
> > The recent overcommit updates broke statfs in a new way and left us
> > almost nothing to make it better.
>
> It's not impossible to solve in fact.
>
> Exporting can_overcommit() can do pretty well in this particular case.

can_overcommit will be exported by the block group reado-only fixes,
pending for 5.6, so it might be used for statfs if need be.

> >> If it's before v5.4, I won't touch the check considering it will never
> >> hit anyway.
> >>
> >> But now for v5.4, either:
> >> - We over-commit metadata
> >> Meaning we have unallocated space, nothing to worry
> >
> > Can we estimate how much unallocated data are there? I don't know how,
> > and "nothing to worry" always worries me.
>
> Data never over-commit. We always ensure there are enough data chunk
> allocated before we allocate data extents.
>
> >
> >> - No more space for over-commit
> >> But in that case, we still have global rsv to update essential trees.
> >> Please note that, btrfs should never fall into a status where no files
> >> can be deleted.
> >
> > Of course, the global reserve is there for last resort actions and will
> > be used for deletion and updating essential trees. What statfs says is
> > how much data is there left for the user. New files, writing more data
> > etc.
> >
> >> Consider all these, we're no longer able to really hit that case.
> >>
> >> So that's why I'm purposing deleting that. I see no reason why that
> >> magic number 4M would still work nowadays.
> >
> > So, the corner case that resulted in the guesswork needs to be
> > reevaluated then, the space reservations and related updates clearly
> > affect that. That's out of 5.5-rc timeframe though.
>
> Although we can still solve the problem only using facility in v5.5, I'm
> still not happy enough with the idea of "one exhausted resource would
> result a different resource exhausted"
>
> I still believe in that we should report different things independently.
> (Which obviously makes our lives easier in statfs case).
>
> That's also why we require reporters to include 'btrfs fi df' result
> other than vanilla 'df', because we have different internals.
>
> Or, can we reuse the f_files/f_free facility to report metadata space,
> and forgot all these mess?

Requiring filesystem-specific interpretation of f_files is a mess too.
That statfs, which is a syscall and we can't change anything on the
interface level, is a severe limitation for presenting the space is a
well known problem, yeah.

The patch is still in game, I got a feedback some feedback on IRC.
Comparing the 2 corner cases, the one I was aiming to fix is harder to
hit than the inflated metadata during balance.