06fhsm.txt

# Copyright (C) 2011-2019 Junjiro R. Okajima

File-based Hierarchical Storage Management (FHSM)
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Hierarchical Storage Management (or HSM) is a well-known feature in the
storage world. Aufs provides this feature as file-based with multiple
writable branches, based upon the principle of "Colder, the Lower".
Here the word "colder" means that the less used files, and "lower" means
that the position in the order of the stacked branches vertically.
These multiple writable branches are prioritized, ie. the topmost one
should be the fastest drive and be used heavily.

o Characters in aufs FHSM story
- aufs itself and a new branch attribute.
- a new ioctl interface to move-down and to establish a connection with
  the daemon ("move-down" is a converse of "copy-up").
- userspace tool and daemon.

The userspace daemon establishes a connection with aufs and waits for
the notification. The notified information is very similar to struct
statfs containing the number of consumed blocks and inodes.
When the consumed blocks/inodes of a branch exceeds the user-specified
upper watermark, the daemon activates its move-down process until the
consumed blocks/inodes reaches the user-specified lower watermark.

The actual move-down is done by aufs based upon the request from
user-space since we need to maintain the inode number and the internal
pointer arrays in aufs.

Currently aufs FHSM handles the regular files only. Additionally they
must not be hard-linked nor pseudo-linked.


o Cowork of aufs and the user-space daemon
  During the userspace daemon established the connection, aufs sends a
  small notification to it whenever aufs writes something into the
  writable branch. But it may cost high since aufs issues statfs(2)
  internally. So user can specify a new option to cache the
  info. Actually the notification is controlled by these factors.
  + the specified cache time.
  + classified as "force" by aufs internally.
  Until the specified time expires, aufs doesn't send the info
  except the forced cases. When aufs decide forcing, the info is always
  notified to userspace.
  For example, the number of free inodes is generally large enough and
  the shortage of it happens rarely. So aufs doesn't force the
  notification when creating a new file, directory and others. This is
  the typical case which aufs doesn't force.
  When aufs writes the actual filedata and the files consumes any of new
  blocks, the aufs forces notifying.


o Interfaces in aufs
- New branch attribute.
  + fhsm
    Specifies that the branch is managed by FHSM feature. In other word,
    participant in the FHSM.
    When nofhsm is set to the branch, it will not be the source/target
    branch of the move-down operation. This attribute is set
    independently from coo and moo attributes, and if you want full
    FHSM, you should specify them as well.
- New mount option.
  + fhsm_sec
    Specifies a second to suppress many less important info to be
    notified.
- New ioctl.
  + AUFS_CTL_FHSM_FD
    create a new file descriptor which userspace can read the notification
    (a subset of struct statfs) from aufs.
- Module parameter 'brs'
  It has to be set to 1. Otherwise the new mount option 'fhsm' will not
  be set.
- mount helpers /sbin/mount.aufs and /sbin/umount.aufs
  When there are two or more branches with fhsm attributes,
  /sbin/mount.aufs invokes the user-space daemon and /sbin/umount.aufs
  terminates it. As a result of remounting and branch-manipulation, the
  number of branches with fhsm attribute can be one. In this case,
  /sbin/mount.aufs will terminate the user-space daemon.


Finally the operation is done as these steps in kernel-space.
- make sure that,
  + no one else is using the file.
  + the file is not hard-linked.
  + the file is not pseudo-linked.
  + the file is a regular file.
  + the parent dir is not opaqued.
- find the target writable branch.
- make sure the file is not whiteout-ed by the upper (than the target)
  branch.
- make the parent dir on the target branch.
- mutex lock the inode on the branch.
- unlink the whiteout on the target branch (if exists).
- lookup and create the whiteout-ed temporary name on the target branch.
- copy the file as the whiteout-ed temporary name on the target branch.
- rename the whiteout-ed temporary name to the original name.
- unlink the file on the source branch.
- maintain the internal pointer array and the external inode number
  table (XINO).
- maintain the timestamps and other attributes of the parent dir and the
  file.

And of course, in every step, an error may happen. So the operation
should restore the original file state after an error happens.