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yakatz
Asked: 2019-09-12 14:17:00 +0800 CST

Newly created XFS filesystem shows 78 GB used

  • 772

We have a 12 TB RAID 6 array which is supposed to be set up as a single partition with an XFS file system. On creating the new file system, it says it has 78 GB in use, but there are no files on the drive.

[root@i00a ~]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs         32G     0   32G   0% /dev
tmpfs            32G     0   32G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs            32G   11M   32G   1% /run
tmpfs            32G     0   32G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sdb3       154G  3.9G  150G   3% /
/dev/sdb2      1014M  153M  862M  16% /boot
/dev/sdb1       599M  6.7M  593M   2% /boot/efi
/dev/sdc1       187G  1.6G  185G   1% /var
tmpfs           6.3G     0  6.3G   0% /run/user/0
/dev/sda1        11T   78G   11T   1% /export/libvirt

Did I do something wrong? Is this by design?

It looks like the file system log only takes up about 2 GB, and I can't figure out what else could be using the space.

[root@i00a ~]# xfs_info /export/libvirt/
meta-data=/dev/sda1              isize=512    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=1
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929458688, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0

Partition information:

[root@irb00a ~]# parted /dev/sda1
GNU Parted 3.2
Using /dev/sda1
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/sda1: 12.0TB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags:

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
 1      0.00B  12.0TB  12.0TB  xfs

This is a Dell FX2 with four FC430 compute nodes and two FD332 storage nodes, running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (Ootpa).

storage

2 Answers

  1. All filesystems have an overhead for their own internal data structures. This internal information is used for the filesystem to create files and directories in future, and to keep track of where everything is allocated. This data is collectively known as "metadata". It's data "about" the data on the filesystem. The metadata is considered an overhead, as it takes up space but is not user data. This overhead is an unavoidable side effect of using any filesystem.

    According to this blog post, XFS has an overhead of around 0.5% of the total disk space. (Note that this post is from 2009, but there's no reason this should have drastically changed). He got that result by testing filesystem overhead of over a dozen different filesystems using guestfish.

    0.5% of your 12TB space is 60GB, so it sounds like that's pretty close to the expected usage. I suspect his number should have been slightly higher than 0.5%, but that it was rounded.

    • 25
  2. Best Answer

    For XFS, the empty filesystem "Size Used" as shown by df -h seems to depend a lot on which metadata features you enable at mkfs.xfs time.

    Testing with an empty 12TB file:

    # truncate -s 12TB xfstest.img

    Default settings (on my current ArchLinux system):

    # mkfs.xfs xfstest.img 
meta-data=xfstest.img            isize=512    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=0
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929687500, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
# mount -o loop xfstest.img loop/
# df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   12G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop
# umount loop/

    Using reflink=1:

    # mkfs.xfs -m reflink=1 -f xfstest.img
meta-data=xfstest.img            isize=512    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=1
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929687500, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
# mount -o loop xfstest.img loop/
# df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   78G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop

    Using crc=0, reflink=0: (for some reason, that also turns finobt=0, sparse=0)

    # mkfs.xfs -m reflink=0 -m crc=0 -f xfstest.img 
meta-data=xfstest.img            isize=256    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=0        finobt=0, sparse=0, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=0
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929687500, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
# mount -o loop xfstest.img loop/
# df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   33M   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop

    In short:

    # df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   78G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop (reflink=1, crc=1)
/dev/loop0       11T   12G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop (reflink=0, crc=1)
/dev/loop0       11T   33M   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop (reflink=0, crc=0)

    So "Used" space on a fresh 12TB filesystem is 78G, 12G or as low as 33M depending on which metadata features you enable at mkfs time.

    • 6