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3c5e13c885
There was a bug in kernel 6.3 where LOGICAL_INO with IGNORE_OFFSET sometimes fails to ignore the offset. That bug is now fixed, but LOGICAL_INO still returns 0 refs much more often than seems appropriate. This is most likely because bees frequently deletes extents while there is still work waiting for them in Task queues. In this case, LOGICAL_INO correctly returns an empty list, because every reference to some extent is deleted, but the new extent tree with that extent removed is not yet committed in btrfs. Add a DEBUG-level log message and an event counter to track these events. In the absence of a kernel bug, the debug message may indicate CPU time was wasted performing a search whose outcome could have been predicted. Signed-off-by: Zygo Blaxell <bees@furryterror.org>
BEES
Best-Effort Extent-Same, a btrfs deduplication agent.
About bees
bees is a block-oriented userspace deduplication agent designed for large btrfs filesystems. It is an offline dedupe combined with an incremental data scan capability to minimize time data spends on disk from write to dedupe.
Strengths
- Space-efficient hash table and matching algorithms - can use as little as 1 GB hash table per 10 TB unique data (0.1GB/TB)
- Daemon incrementally dedupes new data using btrfs tree search
- Works with btrfs compression - dedupe any combination of compressed and uncompressed files
- Works around btrfs filesystem structure to free more disk space
- Persistent hash table for rapid restart after shutdown
- Whole-filesystem dedupe - including snapshots
- Constant hash table size - no increased RAM usage if data set becomes larger
- Works on live data - no scheduled downtime required
- Automatic self-throttling based on system load
Weaknesses
- Whole-filesystem dedupe - has no include/exclude filters, does not accept file lists
- Requires root privilege (or
CAP_SYS_ADMIN) - First run may require temporary disk space for extent reorganization
- First run may increase metadata space usage if many snapshots exist
- Constant hash table size - no decreased RAM usage if data set becomes smaller
- btrfs only
Installation and Usage
Recommended Reading
- bees Gotchas
- btrfs kernel bugs - especially DATA CORRUPTION WARNING
- bees vs. other btrfs features
- What to do when something goes wrong
More Information
Bug Reports and Contributions
Email bug reports and patches to Zygo Blaxell bees@furryterror.org.
You can also use Github:
https://github.com/Zygo/bees
Copyright & License
Copyright 2015-2023 Zygo Blaxell bees@furryterror.org.
GPL (version 3 or later).