[linux-lvm] access or interface to list of blocks that have, changed via C.O.W.?

[Linda Walsh]

Mark Woodward wrote:
> On 10/03/2012 10:52 PM, Linda Walsh wrote:
>> Mark Woodward wrote:
>>> There are a couple projects that do this. They are pretty much based 
>>> on ddsnap. You can google it.
>>> In LVM2 world, it is fairly trivial to do what you want to do.
>> ---
>>    I figured it was likely -- I as LVM2 has to to know what blocks
>> change to make realtime snapshots.  I just am trying to figure out how
>> to get a list of those blocks -- can I query some util and get the 
>> blocks
>> that are different at that point?   I was figuring on using that with
>> a blockmap of the fs, to get files that have changed, as I'm wanting 
>> to export
>> the files for smb(win client ) usage.
> Well, I can honestly say that you are doing it the hard way. If you 
> are connecting to a Linux box through samba, you can log the file 
> changes.
----
    Changes can come in via samba or locally so logging through samba 
wouldn't
cut it.
>
>>>
>>> (1) create a virtual disk.
>>> (2) take the "old" snapshot.
>>> (3) write to lvdisk
>>> (4) take the "new" snapshot.
>>>
>>>
>>> At this stage the COW device of the "old" snapshot has all the data 
>>> that has changed up to and including the "new" snapshot. You can 
>>> back that up. As a differential. Then delete the "old" snapshot. The 
>>> "new" snapshot is now renamed to the old snapshot.
>> ----
>>    Now here's a confusion -- back it up as a differential?  Do you
>> mean from a backup utility or going from some list of blocks that 
>> have changed?
> I was talking about backing up the raw block level device.
----
    I'm not sure that would work for me -- as I'm planning on just storing
the files that have changed for ~ a month and rotating them out...

That's why I'm hoping to get the block numbers that have changed -- if I can
map those to 1 or more inodes -- I could just back them up rather than 
walking
a 5Million+ file tree.


>>
>>
>>>
>>> Take the next "new" snapshot. The renamed "old" snapshot has the 
>>> changes since the previous snapshot up to and including the latest 
>>> "new" snapshot. Just repeat this process, and you can do incremental 
>>> backups of your LVM disks.
>> ----
>>    I'm sorta already doing the above -- it's just that I'm doing my 
>> 'diff'
>> with 'rsync' and it's dog-slow.  100-120 minutes for ~800GB resulting in
>> about 2.5G of diff.  Then I shuffle that off to another static vol 
>> sized for
>> the content -- and the 'cp' usually takes about 60-70 seconds.
>>
>>    What's hurting me is that "incremental backup" by having to scan 
>> the file
>> system.
> The file system is the hard way.
----
    Yep... tell me about it...

>>>
>>> The biggest issue with performance is the COW aspect of snapshots. I 
>>> have found using 64K chunk sizes greatly increase performance by 
>>> reducing COW to snapshots. The default size if 4K.
>> ----
>>    I didn't know it was that low as a default -- but am using 64K 
>> already --
>> as that's my RAID's 'chunksize' (I thought about experimenting with 
>> larger sizes, but would like it to run in a reasonable time first.
>>
>>    Also I a relevant question 0-- when I do a dmsetup list, I see a 
>> bunch of
>> cow volumes for drives that I **had** snaps going from at one point.  
>> Seems like
>> the COW volumes didn't go away when halted...though it looks like, 
>> from the dates, that maybe they get cleaned up at a boot(?)
>>
>> I only have 1 snapshot going but I see 14 cow partitions....looking like
>>
>> VG-Home (254, 3)
>> VG-Home--2012.09.30--00.52.54   (254, 50)
>> VG-Home--2012.09.30--00.52.54-cow       (254, 51)
>> VG-Home--2012.10.01--04.58.11   (254, 52)
>> VG-Home--2012.10.01--04.58.11-cow       (254, 53)
>> VG-Home--2012.10.02--07.22.14   (254, 54)
>> VG-Home--2012.10.02--07.22.14-cow       (254, 55)
>> VG-Home--2012.10.03--09.08.27   (254, 56)
>> VG-Home--2012.10.03--09.08.27-cow       (254, 57)
>> VG-Home-real    (254, 2)
>>
>> So would those be the list of blocks that changed upto the point they
>> were halted?
>>
>> Do I need to worry about those "cow" vols taking up space?
>>
> If they are active, not only are they taking up space, but they are 
> also being updated with every write.
----
    I doubt that -- their corresponding snapshot volumes are gone
Odd that they cow volumesdon't go as well.


    When I delete an active snap, I first remove the snapshot volume
with dmsetup remove -- then I lvremove it.  Seems to work without me getting
warnings about removing an active volume -- I'd assume when I lvremove'd
a snap, that'd be all I need to do...

    FWIW -- only cow files are the ones since the last reboot.  That's 
why I
wondered if a reboot cleaned out the spurious entries..

    I try to only keep one active snapshot going at a time due to the write
penalty...