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Suppose Task A, B, and C are created in that order, and currently running.
Task T acquires Exclusion E. Task B, A, and C attempt to acquire the
same Exclusion, in that order, but fail because Task T holds it.
The result is Task T with a post-exec queue:
T, [ B, A, C ] sort_requested
Now suppose Task U acquires Exclusion F, then Task T attempts to acquire
Exclusion F. Task T fails to acquire F, so T is inserted into U's
post-exec queue. The result at the end of the execution of T is a tree:
U, [ T ] sort_requested
\-> [ B, A, C ] sort_requested
Task T exits after failing to acquire a lock. When T exits, T will
sort its post-exec queue and submit the post-exec queue for execution
immediately:
Worker 1: U, [ T ] sort_requested
Worker 2: A, B, C
This isn't ideal because T, A, B, and C all depend on at least one
common Exclusion, so they are likely to immediately conflict with T
when U exits and T runs again.
Ideally, A, B, and C would at least remain in a common queue with T,
and ideally that queue is sorted.
Instead of inserting T into U's post-exec queue, insert T and all
of T's post-exec queue, which creates a single flattened Task list:
U, [ T, B, A, C ] sort_requested
Then when U exits, it will sort [ T, B, A, C ] into [ A, B, C, T ],
and run all of the queued Tasks in age priority order:
U exited, [ T, B, A, C ] sort_requested
U exited, [ A, B, C, T ]
[ A, B, C, T ] on TaskConsumer queue
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 to scale up to 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 - can use as little as 1 GB hash table per 10 TB unique data (0.1GB/TB)
- Daemon mode - incrementally dedupes new data as it appears
- Largest extents first - recover more free space during fixed maintenance windows
- Works with btrfs compression - dedupe any combination of compressed and uncompressed files
- Whole-filesystem dedupe - scans data only once, even with snapshots and reflinks
- Persistent hash table for rapid restart after shutdown
- Constant hash table size - no increased RAM usage if data set becomes larger
- Works on live data - no scheduled downtime required
- Automatic self-throttling - reduces system load
- btrfs support - recovers more free space from btrfs than naive dedupers
Weaknesses
- Whole-filesystem dedupe - has no include/exclude filters, does not accept file lists
- Requires root privilege (
CAP_SYS_ADMINplus the usual filesystem read/modify caps) - 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 for old kernels
- 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 2015-2025 Zygo Blaxell bees@furryterror.org.
GPL (version 3 or later).