linux-ext4 - RE: Phantom full ext4 root filesystems on 4.1 through 4.14 kernels

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Date:   Thu, 11 Jul 2019 14:40:43 +0000
From:   Geoffrey Thomas <Geoffrey.Thomas@...sigma.com>
To:     'Jan Kara' <jack@...e.cz>,
        Thomas Walker <Thomas.Walker@...sigma.com>
CC:     "'linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org'" <linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org>,
        "Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@...cle.com>,
        "'tytso@....edu'" <tytso@....edu>
Subject: RE: Phantom full ext4 root filesystems on 4.1 through 4.14 kernels

On Thursday, July 11, 2019 5:23 AM, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz> wrote: 
> On Wed 26-06-19 11:17:54, Thomas Walker wrote:
> > Sorry to revive a rather old thread, but Elana mentioned that there might
> > have been a related fix recently?  Possibly something to do with
> > truncate?  A quick scan of the last month or so turned up
> > https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ext4/msg65772.html but none of these
> > seemed obviously applicable to me.  We do still experience this phantom
> > space usage quite frequently (although the remount workaround below has
> > lowered the priority).
> 
> I don't recall any fix for this. But seeing that remount "fixes" the issue
> for you can you try whether one of the following has a similar effect?
> 
> 1) Try "sync"
> 2) Try "fsfreeze -f / && fsfreeze -u /"
> 3) Try "echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"
> 
> Also what is the contents of
> /sys/fs/ext4/<problematic-device>/delayed_allocation_blocks
> when the issue happens?

We just had one of these today, and no luck from any of those. delayed_allocation_blocks is 1:

# df -h /
Filesystem                                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/disk/by-uuid/523c8243-5a25-40eb-8627-f3bbf98ec299   50G   47G  455M 100% /
# ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/523c8243-5a25-40eb-8627-f3bbf98ec299
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar  8 16:03 /dev/disk/by-uuid/523c8243-5a25-40eb-8627-f3bbf98ec299 -> ../../sda3
# cat /sys/fs/ext4/sda3/delayed_allocation_blocks
1
# sync; sync; sync
# df -h /
Filesystem                                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/disk/by-uuid/523c8243-5a25-40eb-8627-f3bbf98ec299   50G   47G  455M 100% /
# fsfreeze -f /; fsfreeze -u /
# df -h /
Filesystem                                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/disk/by-uuid/523c8243-5a25-40eb-8627-f3bbf98ec299   50G   47G  455M 100% /
# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
[blocks for about 10 seconds]
# df -h /
Filesystem                                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/disk/by-uuid/523c8243-5a25-40eb-8627-f3bbf98ec299   50G   47G  454M 100% /
# umount /
[blocks for about 2 seconds]
umount: /: device is busy.
        (In some cases useful info about processes that use
         the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))
# df -h /
Filesystem                                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/disk/by-uuid/523c8243-5a25-40eb-8627-f3bbf98ec299   50G   16G   32G  33% /
# uname -r
4.14.67-ts1

-- 
Geoffrey Thomas
geofft@...sigma.com