Open opk12 opened 1 month ago
My script is doing this, is there a better way, sorry I'm a newbie at btrfs
import re
import subprocess
output = subprocess.check_output("btrfs fi usage -b /".split(), stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL)
lines = [x for x in output.decode('utf-8').splitlines() if 'min:' in x]
re.match(".*min: ([0-9]+).*", lines[0]).group(1)
Hi!
This is an interesting puzzle. Some of the btrfs kernel api functions indeed do require root level access, and some don't.
Since btrfs fi usage
and python-btrfs both use the same underlying kernel functions, we can already be sure that it is possible to write a python equivalent of what btrfs fi usage
is doing.
So, if you're in for a fun exercise to quickly learn more about btrfs, then what you could do is:
btrfs fi usage
actually is doing under the hood to give you this (min: xyz)
number you're interested inbtrfs fi usage
might be doing that you're not interested in)This is exactly the type of little programs that this Python btrfs library is intended for to make.
To figure out what btrfs fi usage
is actually using, you can run it using strace: strace btrfs fi usage -b /
I just did that here, the output is not that long. This will already tell you which actual kernel functions it's using. Look for the lines that look like ioctl(3, BTRFS_IOC_XXX_YYY)
.
In the strace output, you can see that one of the first things it tries is calling BTRFS_IOC_TREE_SEARCH
which results in an -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
. Then it will print this "WARNING: cannot read detailed chunk info" and continue with the unprivileged path in the code, which uses BTRFS_IOC_FS_INFO
and BTRFS_IOC_DEV_INFO
and later also BTRFS_IOC_SPACE_INFO
to gather whatever data it can get.
After getting some numbers, the btrfs fi usage
code might do some extra calculations to determine this min: value. When looking at the code for it, you should be able to spot those: https://github.com/kdave/btrfs-progs/blob/devel/cmds/filesystem-usage.c I mean, there should be a place in the code where it prints the "Free (estimated)" and "min:" text, so from there you can for example search back what it did before.
I hope this helps as some starting tips to start playing around!
Some extra things:
In strace output, this is where it tries to search btrfs metadata tree 3 (BTRFS_CHUNK_TREE_OBJECTID
is 3, not the first 3 in the next line, that's file descriptor 3...):
ioctl(3, BTRFS_IOC_TREE_SEARCH, {key={tree_id=BTRFS_CHUNK_TREE_OBJECTID, min_objectid=0, max_objectid=UINT64_MAX, min_offset=0, max_offset=UINT64_MAX, min_transid=0, max_transid=UINT64_MAX, min_type=255, max_type=0, nr_items=4096}}) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
The shortest way to get chunk objects in a list with python-btrfs is:
>>> list(fs.chunks())
[...]
PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted
There you get the same error!
When btrfs fi usage
calls FS_INFO
and DEV_INFO
, it looks a bit like this:
ioctl(3, BTRFS_IOC_FS_INFO, {max_id=1, num_devices=1, fsid=a6a41c77-b726-40a5-a6cc-08cbd6abf1dd, nodesize=16384, sectorsize=4096, clone_alignment=4096, flags=0}) = 0
We can do:
>>> print(fs.fs_info())
max_id 1 num_devices 1 fsid a6a41c77-b726-40a5-a6cc-08cbd6abf1dd nodesize 16384 sectorsize 4096 clone_alignment 4096
From that info it learns that the highest device number in the filesystem is 1 (max_id=1), and then it just tries looking up info about device 0 (number 0 is normally not in use, but it can be e.g. during a device replace operation) and device 1:
ioctl(3, BTRFS_IOC_DEV_INFO, {devid=makedev(0, 0)}) = -1 ENODEV (No such device)
ioctl(3, BTRFS_IOC_DEV_INFO, {devid=makedev(0, 0x1)} => {uuid=5bf9f2d0-4f80-4c0d-ac7e-e67cfa94df1a, bytes_used=143906570240, total_bytes=268435456000, path="/dev/mapper/test"}) = 0
We can do:
>>> print(fs.dev_info(0))
OSError: [Errno 19] No such device
>>> print(fs.dev_info(1))
devid 1 uuid 5bf9f2d0-4f80-4c0d-ac7e-e67cfa94df1a bytes_used 143906570240 total_bytes 268435456000 path /dev/mapper/test
Etcetera... Use the python-btrfs reference docs for info about all the different objects and their fields etc. :)
I would like to warn when the free space is low, in a graphical app. So my script runs unprivileged.
FileSystem.usage()
always requires root. Is it possible to have it work likebtrfs filesystem usage
, which prints the filesystem's grand totals?