Provided by: btrfs-progs_6.6.3-1.2_amd64 bug

NAME

       btrfs-balance - balance block groups on a btrfs filesystem

SYNOPSIS

       btrfs balance <subcommand> <args>

DESCRIPTION

       The primary purpose of the balance feature is to spread block groups across all devices so
       they match constraints defined by  the  respective  profiles.  See  mkfs.btrfs(8)  section
       PROFILES for more details.  The scope of the balancing process can be further tuned by use
       of filters that can select the block groups to process. Balance works only  on  a  mounted
       filesystem.   Extent  sharing  is  preserved  and  reflinks are not broken.  Files are not
       defragmented nor recompressed, file extents are preserved but  the  physical  location  on
       devices will change.

       The  balance  operation is cancellable by the user. The on-disk state of the filesystem is
       always consistent so an unexpected interruption  (e.g.  system  crash,  reboot)  does  not
       corrupt  the filesystem. The progress of the balance operation is temporarily stored as an
       internal state and will be resumed upon mount, unless the  mount  option  skip_balance  is
       specified.

       WARNING:
          Running  balance  without  filters  will  take  a  lot  of  time  as  it basically move
          data/metadata from the whole filesystem and needs to update all block pointers.

       The filters can be used to perform following actions:

       • convert block group profiles (filter convert)

       • make block group usage more compact  (filter usage)

       • perform actions only on a given device (filters devid, drange)

       The filters can be applied to a combination of block group types (data, metadata, system).
       Note  that  changing  only  the  system type needs the force option. Otherwise system gets
       automatically converted whenever metadata profile is converted.

       When metadata redundancy is reduced (e.g. from RAID1 to single) the force option  is  also
       required and it is noted in system log.

       NOTE:
          The  balance operation needs enough work space, i.e. space that is completely unused in
          the filesystem, otherwise this may lead to ENOSPC reports.  See the section ENOSPC  for
          more details.

COMPATIBILITY

       NOTE:
          The  balance  subcommand  also exists under the btrfs filesystem namespace.  This still
          works for backward compatibility but is deprecated and should not be used any more.

       NOTE:
          A short syntax btrfs  balance  <path>  works  due  to  backward  compatibility  but  is
          deprecated and should not be used any more. Use btrfs balance start command instead.

PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS

       Balancing  operations are very IO intensive and can also be quite CPU intensive, impacting
       other ongoing filesystem operations. Typically large amounts of data are copied  from  one
       location to another, with corresponding metadata updates.

       Depending  upon  the  block  group  layout,  it  can  also  be  seek heavy. Performance on
       rotational devices is noticeably worse compared to SSDs or fast arrays.

SUBCOMMAND

       cancel <path>
              cancels a running or paused balance, the command will  block  and  wait  until  the
              current block group being processed completes

              Since  kernel  5.7 the response time of the cancellation is significantly improved,
              on older kernels it might take a long  time  until  currently  processed  chunk  is
              completely finished.

       pause <path>
              pause  running balance operation, this will store the state of the balance progress
              and used filters to the filesystem

       resume <path>
              resume interrupted balance, the balance status must be  stored  on  the  filesystem
              from  previous  run,  e.g.  after it was paused or forcibly interrupted and mounted
              again with skip_balance

       start [options] <path>
              start the balance operation according to the specified filters, without any filters
              the  data and metadata from the whole filesystem are moved. The process runs in the
              foreground.

              NOTE:
                 The balance command without  filters  will  basically  move  everything  in  the
                 filesystem  to  a  new physical location on devices (i.e. it does not affect the
                 logical properties  of  file  extents  like  offsets  within  files  and  extent
                 sharing).   The  run  time is potentially very long, depending on the filesystem
                 size. To prevent starting a full balance by accident, the user is warned and has
                 a  few  seconds to cancel the operation before it starts.  The warning and delay
                 can be skipped with --full-balance option.

              Please note that the filters must be written  together  with  the  -d,  -m  and  -s
              options, because they're optional and bare -d and -m also work and mean no filters.

              NOTE:
                 When  the  target  profile  for  conversion  filter is raid5 or raid6, there's a
                 safety timeout of 10 seconds to warn users about the status of the feature

              Options

              -d[<filters>]
                     act on data block groups, see section FILTERS for details about filters

              -m[<filters>]
                     act on metadata chunks, see FILTERS for details about filters

              -s[<filters>]
                     act on system chunks (requires -f), see FILTERS for details about filters.

              -f     force a reduction of metadata integrity,  e.g.  when  going  from  raid1  to
                     single,  or  skip safety timeout when the target conversion profile is raid5
                     or raid6

              --background|--bg
                     run the balance operation asynchronously in the background, uses fork(2)  to
                     start the process that calls the kernel ioctl

              --enqueue
                     wait if there's another exclusive operation running, otherwise continue

              -v     (deprecated) alias for global '-v' option

       status [-v] <path>
              Show status of running or paused balance.

              Options

              -v     (deprecated) alias for global -v option

FILTERS

       From  kernel  3.3  onwards,  BTRFS  balance  can limit its action to a subset of the whole
       filesystem, and can be used to change the replication configuration  (e.g.   convert  data
       from single to RAID1).

       Balance can be limited to a block group profile with the following options:

       • -d for data block groups

       • -m for metadata block groups (also implicitly applies to -s)

       • -s for system block groups

       The  options  have  an  optional parameter which means that the parameter must start right
       after the option without a space (this  is  mandatory  getopt  syntax),  like  -dusage=10.
       Options for all block group types can be specified in one command.

       A filter has the following structure: filter[=params][,filter=...]

       To combine multiple filters use ,, without spaces. Example: -dconvert=raid1,soft

       BTRFS  can  have  different  profiles  on  a single device or the same profile on multiple
       device.

       The main reason why you want to have different  profiles  for  data  and  metadata  is  to
       provide  additional  protection  of  the  filesystem's metadata when devices fail, since a
       single sector of unrecoverable metadata will break the filesystem, while a  single  sector
       of lost data can be trivially recovered by deleting the broken file.

       Before  changing  profiles, make sure there is enough unallocated space on existing drives
       to create  new  metadata  block  groups  (for  filesystems  over  50GiB,  this  is  1GB  *
       (number_of_devices + 2)).

       Default profiles on BTRFS are:

       • data: singlemetadata:

                • single devices: dup

                • multiple devices: raid1

       The available filter types are:

   Filter types
       profiles=<profiles>
              Balances  only  block  groups  with  the  given  profiles. Parameters are a list of
              profile names separated by | (pipe).

       usage=<percent>, usage=<range>
              Balances only block groups with usage under the given percentage. The value of 0 is
              allowed  and  will clean up completely unused block groups, this should not require
              any new work space allocated. You may want  to  use  usage=0  in  case  balance  is
              returning ENOSPC and your filesystem is not too full.

              The  argument  may be a single value or a range. The single value N means at most N
              percent used, equivalent to ..N range syntax. Kernels prior to 4.4 accept only  the
              single  value  format.   The  minimum  range  boundary  is  inclusive,  maximum  is
              exclusive.

       devid=<id>
              Balances only block groups which have at least one chunk on the  given  device.  To
              list devices with ids use btrfs filesystem show.

       drange=<range>
              Balance  only  block  groups which overlap with the given byte range on any device.
              Use in conjunction with devid to filter on a specific device. The  parameter  is  a
              range specified as start..end.

       vrange=<range>
              Balance  only  block  groups  which  overlap  with  the  given  byte  range  in the
              filesystem's internal virtual address space. This is the address  space  that  most
              reports  from  btrfs  in  the kernel log use. The parameter is a range specified as
              start..end.

       convert=<profile>
              Convert each  selected  block  group  to  the  given  profile  name  identified  by
              parameters.

              NOTE:
                 Starting  with  kernel  4.5,  the  data  chunks can be converted to/from the DUP
                 profile on a single device.

              NOTE:
                 Starting with  kernel  4.6,  all  profiles  can  be  converted  to/from  DUP  on
                 multi-device filesystems.

       limit=<number>, limit=<range>
              Process  only  given  number  of chunks, after all filters are applied. This can be
              used to specifically target a chunk  in  connection  with  other  filters  (drange,
              vrange) or just simply limit the amount of work done by a single balance run.

              The  argument  may be a single value or a range. The single value N means at most N
              chunks, equivalent to ..N range syntax. Kernels prior to 4.4 accept only the single
              value format.  The range minimum and maximum are inclusive.

       stripes=<range>
              Balance  only block groups which have the given number of stripes. The parameter is
              a range specified as start..end. Makes sense for block group profiles that  utilize
              striping, i.e. RAID0/10/5/6.  The range minimum and maximum are inclusive.

       soft   Takes  no  parameters.  Only  has meaning when converting between profiles, or When
              doing convert from one profile to another and soft mode is on, chunks that  already
              have  the  target profile are left untouched.  This is useful e.g. when half of the
              filesystem was converted earlier but got cancelled.

              The soft mode switch is (like every other  filter)  per-type.   For  example,  this
              means  that  we  can  convert  metadata chunks the "hard" way while converting data
              chunks selectively with soft switch.

       Profile names, used in profiles and convert are one of:

       • raid0raid1raid1c3raid1c4raid10raid5raid6dupsingle

       The mixed data/metadata profiles can be converted in the same way, but conversion  between
       mixed  and  non-mixed is not implemented. For the constraints of the profiles please refer
       to mkfs.btrfs(8) section PROFILES.

ENOSPC

       The way balance operates, it usually needs to temporarily create a  new  block  group  and
       move the old data there, before the old block group can be removed.  For that it needs the
       work space, otherwise it fails for ENOSPC reasons.  This is not the same ENOSPC as if  the
       free  space is exhausted. This refers to the space on the level of block groups, which are
       bigger parts of the filesystem that contain many file extents.

       The free work space can be calculated  from  the  output  of  the  btrfs  filesystem  show
       command:

          Label: 'BTRFS'  uuid: 8a9d72cd-ead3-469d-b371-9c7203276265
                  Total devices 2 FS bytes used 77.03GiB
                  devid    1 size 53.90GiB used 51.90GiB path /dev/sdc2
                  devid    2 size 53.90GiB used 51.90GiB path /dev/sde1

       size - used = free work space

       53.90GiB - 51.90GiB = 2.00GiB

       An  example of a filter that does not require workspace is usage=0. This will scan through
       all unused block groups of a given type and will reclaim the space. After that it might be
       possible to run other filters.

       CONVERSIONS ON MULTIPLE DEVICES

       Conversion  to  profiles based on striping (RAID0, RAID5/6) require the work space on each
       device. An interrupted balance may leave partially filled block groups  that  consume  the
       work space.

EXAMPLES

       A  more  comprehensive  example  when going from one to multiple devices, and back, can be
       found in section TYPICAL USECASES of btrfs-device(8).

   MAKING BLOCK GROUP LAYOUT MORE COMPACT
       The layout of block groups is not normally visible;  most  tools  report  only  summarized
       numbers of free or used space, but there are still some hints provided.

       Let's use the following real life example and start with the output:

          $ btrfs filesystem df /path
          Data, single: total=75.81GiB, used=64.44GiB
          System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
          Metadata, RAID1: total=15.87GiB, used=8.84GiB
          GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B

       Roughly  calculating for data, 75G - 64G = 11G, the used/total ratio is about 85%. How can
       we can interpret that:

       • chunks are filled by 85% on average, i.e. the usage filter with anything smaller than 85
         will likely not affect anything

       • in a more realistic scenario, the space is distributed unevenly, we can assume there are
         completely used chunks and the remaining are partially filled

       Compacting the layout could be used on both. In the former case it would spread data of  a
       given  chunk  to  the others and removing it. Here we can estimate that roughly 850 MiB of
       data have to be moved (85% of a 1 GiB chunk).

       In the latter case, targeting the partially used chunks will have to move  less  data  and
       thus will be faster. A typical filter command would look like:

          # btrfs balance start -dusage=50 /path
          Done, had to relocate 2 out of 97 chunks

          $ btrfs filesystem df /path
          Data, single: total=74.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
          System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
          Metadata, RAID1: total=15.87GiB, used=8.84GiB
          GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B

       As  you can see, the total amount of data is decreased by just 1 GiB, which is an expected
       result. Let's see what will happen when we increase the estimated usage filter.

          # btrfs balance start -dusage=85 /path
          Done, had to relocate 13 out of 95 chunks

          $ btrfs filesystem df /path
          Data, single: total=68.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
          System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
          Metadata, RAID1: total=15.87GiB, used=8.85GiB
          GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B

       Now the used/total ratio is about 94% and we moved about 74G - 68G = 6G  of  data  to  the
       remaining  block  groups,  i.e. the 6GiB are now free of filesystem structures, and can be
       reused for new data or metadata block groups.

       We can do a similar exercise with the metadata block groups, but this should not typically
       be necessary, unless the used/total ratio is really off. Here the ratio is roughly 50% but
       the difference as an absolute number is "a few gigabytes", which can be considered  normal
       for a workload with snapshots or reflinks updated frequently.

          # btrfs balance start -musage=50 /path
          Done, had to relocate 4 out of 89 chunks

          $ btrfs filesystem df /path
          Data, single: total=68.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
          System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
          Metadata, RAID1: total=14.87GiB, used=8.85GiB
          GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B

       Just  1  GiB  decrease, which possibly means there are block groups with good utilization.
       Making the metadata layout more compact would  in  turn  require  updating  more  metadata
       structures,  i.e.  lots  of IO. As running out of metadata space is a more severe problem,
       it's not necessary to keep the utilization  ratio  too  high.  For  the  purpose  of  this
       example, let's see the effects of further compaction:

          # btrfs balance start -musage=70 /path
          Done, had to relocate 13 out of 88 chunks

          $ btrfs filesystem df .
          Data, single: total=68.03GiB, used=64.43GiB
          System, RAID1: total=32.00MiB, used=20.00KiB
          Metadata, RAID1: total=11.97GiB, used=8.83GiB
          GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B

   GETTING RID OF COMPLETELY UNUSED BLOCK GROUPS
       Normally the balance operation needs a work space, to temporarily move the data before the
       old block groups gets removed. If there's no work space, it ends with no space left.

       There's a special case when the block groups are completely unused,  possibly  left  after
       removing  lots  of  files  or deleting snapshots. Removing empty block groups is automatic
       since 3.18. The same can be achieved manually with a notable exception that this operation
       does  not  require  the  work space. Thus it can be used to reclaim unused block groups to
       make it available.

          # btrfs balance start -dusage=0 /path

       This should lead to decrease in the total numbers in the btrfs filesystem df output.

EXIT STATUS

       Unless indicated otherwise below, all btrfs balance subcommands return a zero exit  status
       if they succeed, and non zero in case of failure.

       The  pause,  cancel, and resume subcommands exit with a status of 2 if they fail because a
       balance operation was not running.

       The status subcommand exits with a status of 0 if a balance operation is not running, 1 if
       the  command-line  usage  is  incorrect  or a balance operation is still running, and 2 on
       other errors.

AVAILABILITY

       btrfs   is   part   of   btrfs-progs.    Please   refer   to    the    documentation    at
       https://btrfs.readthedocs.io.

SEE ALSO

       mkfs.btrfs(8), btrfs-device(8)