Provided by: btrfsmaintenance_0.5-5_all bug

NAME

       btrfsmaintenance - automate btrfs maintenance tasks

NOTE

       Refer to /usr/share/doc/btrfsmaintenance/README.Debian in addition to this man page.

DESCRIPTION

       This  is  a  set  of scripts supplementing the btrfs filesystem and aims to automate a few
       maintenance tasks. This means the scrub, balance, trim or defragmentation.

       Each of the tasks can be turned on/off and configured independently.  The  default  config
       values  were  selected  to  fit  the  default  installation profile with btrfs on the root
       filesystem.

       Overall tuning of the default values should give a good balance  between  effects  of  the
       tasks  and low impact of other work on the system. If this does not fit your needs, please
       adjust the settings.

Tasks

       The following sections will describe the tasks in detail. There's one config  option  that
       affects  the  task  concurrency,  BTRFS_ALLOW_CONCURRENCY.  This  is  to  avoid extra high
       resource consumption or unexpected interaction among the tasks and will serialize them  in
       the order they're started by timers.

   scrub
       Description: Scrub operation reads all data and metadata from the devices and verifies the
       checksums. It's not mandatory, but may point out problems with faulty hardware early as it
       touches data that might not be in use and bit rot.

       If there's a redundancy of data/metadata, ie. the DUP or RAID1/5/6 profiles, scrub is able
       to repair the data automatically if there's a good copy available.

       Impact when active: Intense read operations take place and may slow down  or  block  other
       filesystem activies, possibly only for short periods.

       Tuning:

              • the recommended period is once in a month but a weekly period is also acceptable

              • you can turn off the automatic repair (BTRFS_SCRUB_READ_ONLY)

              • the default IO priority is set to idle but scrub may take long to finish, you can
                change priority to normal (BTRFS_SCRUB_PRIORITY)

       Related commands:

              • you can check status of last scrub run (either manual or through the cron job) by
                btrfs scrub status /path

              • you  can  cancel a running scrub anytime if you find it inconvenient (btrfs scrub
                cancel /path), the progress state is saved each 5 seconds  and  next  time  scrub
                will start from that point

   balance
       Description:  The  balance command can do a lot of things, in general moves data around in
       big chunks. Here we use it to reclaim back the space of the underused chunks so it can  be
       allocated again according to current needs.

       The  point  is  to  prevent some corner cases where it's not possible to eg.  allocate new
       metadata chunks because the whole device space is reserved for all  the  chunks,  although
       the total space occupied is smaller and the allocation should succeed.

       The  balance  operation needs enough workspace so it can shuffle data around. By workspace
       we mean device space that has no filesystem chunks on it, not to be confused by free space
       as reported eg. by df.

       Impact  when  active:  Possibly  big. There's a mix of read and write operations, is seek-
       heavy on rotational devices. This can interfere with other work in case the  same  set  of
       blocks is affected.

       The balance command uses filters to do the work in smaller batches.

       Before  kernel  version  5.2,  the  impact  with quota groups enabled can be extreme.  The
       balance operation performs quota group accounting for every extent being relocated,  which
       can have the impact of stalling the file system for an extended period of time.

       Expected  result:  If possible all the underused chunks are removed, the value of total in
       output of btrfs fi df /path should be lower than before.  Check the logs.

       The balance command may fail with no space reason but this is considered a minor fault  as
       the  internal  filesystem  layout  may  prevent the command to find enough workspace. This
       might be a time for manual inspection of space.

       Tuning:

              • you can make the space reclaim more aggressive by  adding  higher  percentage  to
                BTRFS_BALANCE_DUSAGE or BTRFS_BALANCE_MUSAGE. Higher value means bigger impact on
                your system and becomes very noticeable.

              • the metadata chunks usage pattern is different from data and it's  not  necessary
                to  reclaim metadata block groups that are more than 30 full. The default maximum
                is 10 which should not degrade performance too much but may be suboptimal if  the
                metadata usage varies wildly over time. The assumption is that underused metadata
                chunks will get used at some point so it's not  absolutely  required  to  do  the
                reclaim.

              • the  useful  period  highly  depends  on  the  overall data change pattern on the
                filesystem

       Changed defaults since 0.5:

       Versions up to 0.4.2 had usage filter set up to 50% for data and up to 30%  for  metadata.
       Based on user feedback, the numbers have been reduced to 10% (data) and 5% (metadata). The
       system load during the balance service will be smaller and the result of space  compaction
       still  reasonable.  Multiple  data chunks filled to less than 10% can be merged into fewer
       chunks. The file data can change in large volumes, eg. deleting a big file can free a  lot
       of space. If the space is left unused for the given period, it's desirable to make it more
       compact.  Metadata consumption follows a different pattern and reclaiming only the  almost
       unused  chunks  makes  more  sense,  otherwise  there's enough reserved metadata space for
       operations like reflink or snapshotting.

   trim
       Description: The TRIM operation (aka. discard)  can  instruct  the  underlying  device  to
       optimize  blocks  that are not used by the filesystem. This task is performed on-demand by
       the fstrim utility.

       This makes sense for SSD devices or other type of storage  that  can  translate  the  TRIM
       action to something useful (eg. thin-provisioned storage).

       Impact when active: Should be low, but depends on the amount of blocks being trimmed.

       Tuning:

              • the recommended period is weekly, but monthly is also fine

              • the  trim commands might not have an effect and are up to the device, eg. a block
                range  too   small   or   other   constraints   that   may   differ   by   device
                type/vendor/firmware

              • the default configuration is off because of the the system fstrim.timer

   defrag
       Description:  Run  defragmentation  on configured directories. This is for convenience and
       not necessary as defragmentation needs are usually different for various types of data.

       Please note that the defragmentation process does not descend to other  mount  points  and
       nested  subvolumes  or  snapshots.  All  nested  paths  would need to be enumerated in the
       respective config variable. The command utilizes find -xdev, you can use that to verify in
       advance which paths will the defragmentation affect.

Periodic scheduling

       There  are  now  two  ways  how  to  schedule and run the periodic tasks: cron and systemd
       timers. Only one can be active on a system and this should be decided at the  installation
       time.

   Cron
       Cron  takes  care  of  periodic  execution  of  the  scripts, but they can be run any time
       directly  from  /usr/share/btrfsmaintenance/,  respecting   the   configured   values   in
       /etc/defaul/btrfsmaintenance.

       The  changes to configuration file need to be reflected in the /etc/cron directories where
       the scripts are linked for the given period.

       If the period is changed, the cron symlinks have to be refreshed:

              • manually   --   use   systemctl   restart   btrfsmaintenance-refresh   (or    the
                rcbtrfsmaintenance-refresh shortcut)

              • using  a  file  watcher -- if btrfsmaintenance-refresh.path is enabled, this will
                utilize the file monitor to detect changes and will run the refresh

   Systemd timers
       There's a set of timer units  that  run  the  respective  task  script.  The  periods  are
       configured  in  the  /etc/default/btrfsmaintenance  file  as  well.  Please  note that the
       '.timer' and respective '.service' files must be manually enabled before the  timers  will
       work properly.

Quick start

       Refer  to  /usr/share/doc/btrfsmaintenance/README.Debian  for  instructions  to enable the
       Systemd timers.

   cron jobs
       The periodic execution of the tasks is done by the 'cron' service.  Symlinks to  the  task
       scripts are located in the respective directories in /etc/cron.<PERIOD>.

       The script btrfsmaintenance-refresh-cron.sh will synchronize the symlinks according to the
       configuration files. This can be called automatically by a GUI configuration tool if  it's
       capable   of   running   post-change   scripts   or   services.    In  that  case  there's
       btrfsmaintenance-refresh.service systemd service.

       This service can also be automatically started upon any modification of the  configuration
       file   in  /etc/default/btrfsmaintenance  by  enabling  the  btrfsmaintenance-refresh.path
       systemd watcher.

Tuning periodic snapshotting

       There are various tools and handwritten scripts to manage periodic snapshots and cleaning.
       The  common  problem is tuning the retention policy constrained by the filesystem size and
       not running out of space.

       This section will describe factors that affect that, using snapper ⟨https://snapper.io⟩ as
       an example, but adapting to other tools should be straightforward.

   Intro
       Snapper  is  a  tool  to  manage snapshots of btrfs subvolumes. It can create snapshots of
       given subvolume manually, periodically or in a pre/post way for a given command. It can be
       configured to retain existing snapshots according to time-based settings. As the retention
       policy can be very different for various use cases, we need to be able  to  find  matching
       settings.

       The  settings  should  satisfy  user's  expectation  about  storing previous copies of the
       subvolume but not taking too much space. In an extreme,  consuming  the  whole  filesystem
       space and preventing some operations to finish.

       In  order  to avoid such situations, the snapper settings should be tuned according to the
       expected use case and filesystem size.

   Sample problem
       Default settings of snapper on default root partition size can  easily  lead  to  no-space
       conditions  (all  TIMELINE  values  set  to  10).  Frequent  system updates make it happen
       earlier, but this also affects long-term use.

   Factors affecting space consumption
                1. frequency of snapshotting

                2. amount of data changes between snapshots (delta)

                3. snapshot retention settings

                4. size of the filesystem

       Each will be explained below.

       The way how the files are changed affects the space consumption. When a new data overwrite
       existing,  the  new data will be pinned by the following snapshot, while the original data
       will belong to previous snapshot.  This means that the allocated  file  blocks  are  freed
       after the last snapshot pointing to them is gone.

   Tuning
       The  administrator/user  is  supposed  to  know  the approximate use of the partition with
       snapshots enabled.

       The decision criteria for tuning is space consumption and  we're  optimizing  to  maximize
       retention without running out of space.

       All  the  factors  are intertwined and we cannot give definite answers but rather describe
       the tendencies.

   Snapshotting frequencyautomatic: if turned on with the TIMELINE config option, the  periodic  snapshots
                are  taken  hourly.  The  daily/weekly/monthly/yearly periods will keep the first
                hourly snapshot in the given period.

              • at package update: package manager with  snapper  support  will  create  pre/post
                snapshots before/after an update happens.

              • manual: the user can create a snapshot manually with snapper create, with a given
                snapshot type (ie. single, pre, post).

   Amount of data change
       This is a parameter hard to predict and calculate.  We  work  with  rough  estimates,  eg.
       megabytes, gigabytes etc.

   Retention settings
       The  user  is  supposed to know possible needs of recovery or examination of previous file
       copies stored in snapshots.

       It's not recommended to keep too old snapshots, eg. monthly or even yearly if  there's  no
       apparent need for that. The yearly snapshots should not substitute backups, as they reside
       on the same partition and cannot be used for recovery.

   Filesystem size
       Bigger filesystem allows for longer retention, higher frequency updates and amount of data
       changes.

       As  an  example  of a system root partition, the recommended size is 30 GiB, but 50 GiB is
       selected by the installer if the snapshots are turned on.

       For non-system partition it is  recommended  to  watch  remaining  free  space.   Although
       getting  an  accurate  value  on btrfs is tricky, due to shared extents and snapshots, the
       output of df gives a rough idea. Low space, like under a few gigabytes is more  likely  to
       lead  to  no-space  conditions,  so it's a good time to delete old snapshots or review the
       snapper settings.

   Typical use cases
   A rolling distro
              • frequency of updates: high, multiple times per week

              • amount of data changed between updates: high

       Suggested values:

              TIMELINE_LIMIT_HOURLY="12"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_DAILY="5"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_WEEKLY="2"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_MONTHLY="1"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_YEARLY="0"

       The size of root partition should be at least 30GiB, but more is better.

   Regular/enterprise distro
              • frequency of updates: low, a few times per month

              • amount of data changed between updates: low to moderate

       Most data changes come probably from the package updates, in  the  range  of  hundreds  of
       megabytes per update.

       Suggested values:

              TIMELINE_LIMIT_HOURLY="12"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_DAILY="7"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_WEEKLY="4"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_MONTHLY="6"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_YEARLY="1"

   Big file storage
              • frequency of updates: moderate to high

              • amount of data changed between updates: no changes in files, new files added, old
                deleted

       Suggested values:

              TIMELINE_LIMIT_HOURLY="12"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_DAILY="7"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_WEEKLY="4"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_MONTHLY="6"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_YEARLY="0"

       Note, that deleting a big file that has been snapshotted will not free the space until all
       relevant snapshots are deleted.

   Mixed
              • frequency of updates: unpredictable

              • amount of data changed between updates: unpredictable

       Examples:

              • home directory with small files (in range of kilobytes to megabytes), large files
                (hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes).

              • git trees, bare and checked out repositories

       Not possible to suggest config numbers as it really depends on user expectations.  Keeping
       a few hourly snapshots should not consume too much space and provides a copy of files, eg.
       to restore after accidental deletion.

       Starting point:

              TIMELINE_LIMIT_HOURLY="12"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_DAILY="7"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_WEEKLY="1"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_MONTHLY="0"
              TIMELINE_LIMIT_YEARLY="0"

   Summary
       ┌──────────┬────────┬───────┬────────┬─────────┬────────┐
       │TypeHourlyDailyWeeklyMonthlyYearly │
       ├──────────┼────────┼───────┼────────┼─────────┼────────┤
       │Rolling   │ 12     │ 5     │ 2      │ 1       │ 0      │
       ├──────────┼────────┼───────┼────────┼─────────┼────────┤
       │Regular   │ 12     │ 7     │ 4      │ 6       │ 1      │
       ├──────────┼────────┼───────┼────────┼─────────┼────────┤
       │Big files │ 12     │ 7     │ 4      │ 6       │ 0      │
       ├──────────┼────────┼───────┼────────┼─────────┼────────┤
       │Mixed     │ 12     │ 7     │ 1      │ 0       │ 0      │
       └──────────┴────────┴───────┴────────┴─────────┴────────┘

About

       The goal of this project is to help administering btrfs filesystems. It is not supposed to
       be  distribution  specific. Common scripts/configs are preferred but per-distro exceptions
       will be added when necessary.

       License: GPL 2 ⟨https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html⟩

       Contributing guide ⟨CONTRIBUTING.md⟩.