[gentoo-user] btrfs: subvol without compression

[gentoo-user] btrfs: subvol without compression

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

... I am quite happy now with the performance of that new server I am
preparing.

See thread "Intel(R) C600 SAS Controller" for that story:

https://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg146119.html

Right now I get quite good results when doing backups of the 2 existing
VMs (which have their virtio-disks on LVM-LVs on the host) ... up to
200MB/s ... I can show for reference, if someone is interested.

I think that is around the possible maximum.

--->

The issue I want to share with you is related to a btrfs subvol I have here.

Block device sda builds the btrfs-pool containing the root-fs:

# btrfs fi show
Label: ROOT  uuid: 9133c469-df1e-45f5-a09f-d1b9c75c69da
	Total devices 1 FS bytes used 29.47GiB
	devid    1 size 500.00GiB used 278.04GiB path /dev/sda

Btrfs v3.12

These are the subvolumes (I could/should rm some, but it doesn't matter
for this issue, afaik):

# btrfs su list /
ID 257 gen 4282 top level 5 path __active
ID 258 gen 4874 top level 5 path __active/root
ID 266 gen 4772 top level 258 path images
ID 267 gen 838 top level 258 path images/otrs
ID 289 gen 4285 top level 258 path images/windows
ID 538 gen 4874 top level 5 path __active/virt-backup


fstab has:

# grep btrfs /etc/fstab
LABEL=ROOT	/		btrfs	defaults,noatime,compress=lzo	0 0
LABEL=ROOT	/mnt/virt-backup	btrfs	compress=no,noatime,subvolid=538 0 0


... so I want to mount subvolid 538 with disabled compression (to speed
up backups as the files written to it are compressed on the fly via pigz
already).


But after booting I get that dir mounted with compress=lzo (which is
default).

# mount | grep btrfs
/dev/sda on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache)
/dev/sda on /mnt/virt-backup type btrfs
(rw,noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache)

remounting works, though:

booze ~ # mount -o remount,compress=no /mnt/virt-backup/

booze ~ # mount | grep btrfs
/dev/sda on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,space_cache)
/dev/sda on /mnt/virt-backup type btrfs (rw,noatime,space_cache)

BUT it remounts / without compression as well ... !

Is it a bug? A mistake or misunderstanding?

Could someone test this on his gentoo-btrfs-box?

--

Additional info:

# cat /proc/version
Linux version 3.12.21-gentoo-r1 ...

sys-fs/btrfs-progs-3.12-r1

# btrfs su get-default /
ID 258 gen 4886 top level 5 path __active/root

# line in grub.cfg mounts default subvol (because no specific subvol is
specified)

linux	/boot/vmlinuz-3.12.21-gentoo-r1
root=UUID=9133c469-df1e-45f5-a09f-d1b9c75c69da ro

Thanks, regards, Stefan

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs: subvol without compression

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 17.06.2014 13:04, schrieb Stefan G. Weichinger:

> BUT it remounts / without compression as well ... !
> 
> Is it a bug? A mistake or misunderstanding?

maybe also related to this bug I filed a while ago:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=510148

Stefan

Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs: subvol without compression

[Marc Joliet]

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I don't know if you eventually found an answer yourself, but since nobody else
has replied, here's what I found:

Am Tue, 17 Jun 2014 13:04:08 +0200
schrieb "Stefan G. Weichinger" <lists@xunil.at>:

> 
> ... I am quite happy now with the performance of that new server I am
> preparing.
> 
> See thread "Intel(R) C600 SAS Controller" for that story:
> 
> https://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg146119.html
> 
> Right now I get quite good results when doing backups of the 2 existing
> VMs (which have their virtio-disks on LVM-LVs on the host) ... up to
> 200MB/s ... I can show for reference, if someone is interested.
> 
> I think that is around the possible maximum.
> 
> --->
> 
> The issue I want to share with you is related to a btrfs subvol I have here.
> 
> Block device sda builds the btrfs-pool containing the root-fs:
> 
> # btrfs fi show
> Label: ROOT  uuid: 9133c469-df1e-45f5-a09f-d1b9c75c69da
> 	Total devices 1 FS bytes used 29.47GiB
> 	devid    1 size 500.00GiB used 278.04GiB path /dev/sda
> 
> Btrfs v3.12
> 
> These are the subvolumes (I could/should rm some, but it doesn't matter
> for this issue, afaik):
> 
> # btrfs su list /
> ID 257 gen 4282 top level 5 path __active
> ID 258 gen 4874 top level 5 path __active/root
> ID 266 gen 4772 top level 258 path images
> ID 267 gen 838 top level 258 path images/otrs
> ID 289 gen 4285 top level 258 path images/windows
> ID 538 gen 4874 top level 5 path __active/virt-backup
> 
> 
> fstab has:
> 
> # grep btrfs /etc/fstab
> LABEL=ROOT	/		btrfs	defaults,noatime,compress=lzo	0 0
> LABEL=ROOT	/mnt/virt-backup	btrfs	compress=no,noatime,subvolid=538 0 0
> 
> 
> ... so I want to mount subvolid 538 with disabled compression (to speed
> up backups as the files written to it are compressed on the fly via pigz
> already).

So far nothing in particular stands out, that is, it looks like everything is
correct.

> But after booting I get that dir mounted with compress=lzo (which is
> default).
> 
> # mount | grep btrfs
> /dev/sda on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache)
> /dev/sda on /mnt/virt-backup type btrfs
> (rw,noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache)
> 
> remounting works, though:
> 
> booze ~ # mount -o remount,compress=no /mnt/virt-backup/
> 
> booze ~ # mount | grep btrfs
> /dev/sda on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,space_cache)
> /dev/sda on /mnt/virt-backup type btrfs (rw,noatime,space_cache)
> 
> BUT it remounts / without compression as well ... !
> 
> Is it a bug? A mistake or misunderstanding?

From my own google search, at least up to 2011 per-subvolume compression
settings were not possible.  Then, after subsequently searching on the btrfs
wiki for a while, I finally found an answer: no.  See this FAQ entry:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Can_I_mount_subvolumes_with_different_mount_options.3F

[...]

HTH
-- 
Marc Joliet
--
"People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we
don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup

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Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs: subvol without compression

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

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Am 20.06.2014 12:07, schrieb Marc Joliet:
> I don't know if you eventually found an answer yourself, but since
> nobody else has replied, here's what I found:

[..]

> From my own google search, at least up to 2011 per-subvolume
> compression settings were not possible.  Then, after subsequently
> searching on the btrfs wiki for a while, I finally found an answer:
> no.  See this FAQ entry:
> 
> https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Can_I_mount_subvolumes_with_different_mount_options.3F
>
>  [...]


Nice, thanks.

I think btrfs is clever enough anyway to detect that the blocks aren't
compressible anymore ... so I can leave it at defaults.

Stefan
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Re: [gentoo-user] btrfs: subvol without compression

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 20.06.2014 12:07, schrieb Marc Joliet:

> From my own google search, at least up to 2011 per-subvolume
> compression settings were not possible.  Then, after subsequently
> searching on the btrfs wiki for a while, I finally found an answer:
> no.  See this FAQ entry:
> 
> https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Can_I_mount_subvolumes_with_different_mount_options.3F
>
>  [...]

This seems to be the same for the option nodatacow.

I wanted to test this with VM-images in a separate subvolume, and with
this script:

https://github.com/stsquad/scripts/blob/master/uncow.py

It was mentioned here:

https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Can_copy-on-write_be_turned_off_for_data_blocks.3F

Does somebody already have experience with turning off COW for
specific files like VM images?

I would like to take 2 demo VMs with me on my thinkpad, and there I
don't have that much flexibility to add another hdd w/ ext4 or something.

As far as I have seen so far, for demoing the performance isn't too
bad anyway.

Stefan