[systemd-devel] systemd and nested Btrfs subvolumes

[Chris Murphy]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 10:50 PM, Lennart Poettering
<mzerqung at 0pointer.de> wrote:
> On Thu, 19.03.15 19:27, Chris Murphy (lists at colorremedies.com) wrote:
>
>> Short version:
>> ------------------
>>   Instead of machinectl clone using btrfs snapshots, or even needing
>> to store things in a var/lib/machines Btrfs subvolume, does it meet
>> the requirements for Btrfs optimization to do this with cp -a
>> --reflink instead?
>
> No. That is neither atomic nor efficient (since it requires opening
> every single file in the tree), not particularly discoverable: I think
> it's a good idea that users can enumerate subvolumes.
>
>> Why? Nested subvolumes are confusing. And nested subvolumes are
>> excluded from snapshots. Subvolume B inside of Subvolume A, will not
>> be snapshot or rolled back, if I snapshot Subvolume A and subsequently
>> rollback to the snapshot of A. Is this the intended workflow?
>
> I am pretty sure the right answer to this problem to get recursive
> snapshotting and subvolume deletion into place, so that the issues go
> away.
>
> The right place to fix this in the kernel, but I figure in the worst
> case this could even be emulated in userspace...

There is such a patch but there are concerns. And it looks like
snapshot creation isn't atomic right now either. If a subvolume has
heavy writes occurring, and is snapshot, it's uncertain what actually
will end up in the snapshot.
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg29551.html


-- 
Chris Murphy