Re: [sshfs] inode problem when using git on a sshfs filesystem

From: Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu>
Date: Feb 17, 2011, 19:59 UTC
Message-ID: <E1PqA19-00080P-Dy@pomaz-ex.szeredi.hu>
In-Reply-To: <ac00e83c1b57e2eeda1c6631ec611e75.squirrel@webmail.ocsa-data.net>

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011, Yann Droneaud wrote:

Show 53 quoted lines

> > The VFS (part of the linux kernel that implements the generic
> > filesystem logic) clears the directory entry from the cache prior to
> > actually trying to remove the directory.  This has the effect that any
> > children of the directory are also cleared from the cache, hence the
> > behavior you see in rmdir.
> >
> 
> I tried to check that behavor: if the VFS is dropping dentry before doing
> a rmdir(), them lookup files under this directory should be slower than
> before rmdir().
> 
> On a ext4 filesystem, directory with 338 sub directories and 1992 files, 
> i've tried the following commands:
> 
> /* drop all */
> # echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
> # time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
> real	0m0.140s
> user	0m0.000s
> sys	0m0.080s
> 
> /* drop cache */
> # echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
> # time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
> real	0m0.119s
> user	0m0.000s
> sys	0m0.072s
> 
> /* drop dentry and inode */
> # echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
> # time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
> real	0m0.089s
> user	0m0.016s
> sys	0m0.040s
> 
> /* read from cache */
> # time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
> real	0m0.063s
> user	0m0.004s
> sys	0m0.036s
> 
> $ rmdir directory
> rmdir: failed to remove `directory': Directory not empty
> 
> /* re read from cache */
> $ time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
> real	0m0.065s
> user	0m0.012s
> sys	0m0.036s
> 
> As you can see, after doing rmdir(), the time taken to walk trough the
> directories is the same than before calling it, so the dentry seems not
> flushed out of the cache after the rmdir().

tucsk:~ # time find /usr -ls > /dev/null

real 0m1.922s user 0m1.104s sys 0m0.800s tucsk:~ # rmdir /usr rmdir: failed to remove `/usr': Directory not empty tucsk:~ # time find /usr -ls > /dev/null

real 0m2.637s user 0m1.172s sys 0m1.448s tucsk:~ # time find /usr -ls > /dev/null

real 0m1.943s user 0m1.068s sys 0m0.848s tucsk:~ #

As you can see it does get significantly slower after the rmdir.

> I really prefer this behavior. The one you explained would be a real pain:
> if one user call rmdir on / inside a loop, the full dentry cache will be
> dropped each time: this would affect performance for the whole system.

Yes. But in practice this doesn't really matter, removing non-empty directories happens rarely.

Thanks, Miklos