xfs.txt

The SGI XFS Filesystem
======================

XFS is a high performance journaling filesystem which originated
on the SGI IRIX platform.  It is completely multi-threaded, can
support large files and large filesystems, extended attributes,
variable block sizes, is extent based, and makes extensive use of
Btrees (directories, extents, free space) to aid both performance
and scalability.

Refer to the documentation at http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/
for further details.  This implementation is on-disk compatible
with the IRIX version of XFS.


Mount Options
=============

When mounting an XFS filesystem, the following options are accepted.

  allocsize=size
	Sets the buffered I/O end-of-file preallocation size when
	doing delayed allocation writeout (default size is 64KiB).
	Valid values for this option are page size (typically 4KiB)
	through to 1GiB, inclusive, in power-of-2 increments.

  attr2/noattr2
	The options enable/disable (default is disabled for backward
	compatibility on-disk) an "opportunistic" improvement to be
	made in the way inline extended attributes are stored on-disk.
	When the new form is used for the first time (by setting or
	removing extended attributes) the on-disk superblock feature
	bit field will be updated to reflect this format being in use.

	CRC enabled filesystems always use the attr2 format, and so
	will reject the noattr2 mount option if it is set.

  barrier
	Enables the use of block layer write barriers for writes into
	the journal and unwritten extent conversion.  This allows for
	drive level write caching to be enabled, for devices that
	support write barriers.

  discard
	Issue command to let the block device reclaim space freed by the
	filesystem.  This is useful for SSD devices, thinly provisioned
	LUNs and virtual machine images, but may have a performance
	impact.

  dmapi
	Enable the DMAPI (Data Management API) event callouts.
	Use with the "mtpt" option.

  grpid/bsdgroups and nogrpid/sysvgroups
	These options define what group ID a newly created file gets.
	When grpid is set, it takes the group ID of the directory in
	which it is created; otherwise (the default) it takes the fsgid
	of the current process, unless the directory has the setgid bit
	set, in which case it takes the gid from the parent directory,
	and also gets the setgid bit set if it is a directory itself.

  ihashsize=value
	In memory inode hashes have been removed, so this option has
	no function as of August 2007. Option is deprecated.

  ikeep/noikeep
	When ikeep is specified, XFS does not delete empty inode clusters
	and keeps them around on disk. ikeep is the traditional XFS
	behaviour. When noikeep is specified, empty inode clusters
	are returned to the free space pool. The default is noikeep for
	non-DMAPI mounts, while ikeep is the default when DMAPI is in use.

  inode64
	Indicates that XFS is allowed to create inodes at any location
	in the filesystem, including those which will result in inode
	numbers occupying more than 32 bits of significance.  This is
	the default allocation option. Applications which do not handle
	inode numbers bigger than 32 bits, should use inode32 option.

  inode32
	Indicates that XFS is limited to create inodes at locations which
	will not result in inode numbers with more than 32 bits of
	significance. This is provided for backwards compatibility, since
	64 bits inode numbers might cause problems for some applications
	that cannot handle large inode numbers.

  largeio/nolargeio
	If "nolargeio" is specified, the optimal I/O reported in
	st_blksize by stat(2) will be as small as possible to allow user
	applications to avoid inefficient read/modify/write I/O.
	If "largeio" specified, a filesystem that has a "swidth" specified
	will return the "swidth" value (in bytes) in st_blksize. If the
	filesystem does not have a "swidth" specified but does specify
	an "allocsize" then "allocsize" (in bytes) will be returned
	instead.
	If neither of these two options are specified, then filesystem
	will behave as if "nolargeio" was specified.

  logbufs=value
	Set the number of in-memory log buffers.  Valid numbers range
	from 2-8 inclusive.
	The default value is 8 buffers for filesystems with a
	blocksize of 64KiB, 4 buffers for filesystems with a blocksize
	of 32KiB, 3 buffers for filesystems with a blocksize of 16KiB
	and 2 buffers for all other configurations.  Increasing the
	number of buffers may increase performance on some workloads
	at the cost of the memory used for the additional log buffers
	and their associated control structures.

  logbsize=value
	Set the size of each in-memory log buffer.
	Size may be specified in bytes, or in kilobytes with a "k" suffix.
	Valid sizes for version 1 and version 2 logs are 16384 (16k) and
	32768 (32k).  Valid sizes for version 2 logs also include
	65536 (64k), 131072 (128k) and 262144 (256k).
	The default value for machines with more than 32MiB of memory
	is 32768, machines with less memory use 16384 by default.

  logdev=device and rtdev=device
	Use an external log (metadata journal) and/or real-time device.
	An XFS filesystem has up to three parts: a data section, a log
	section, and a real-time section.  The real-time section is
	optional, and the log section can be separate from the data
	section or contained within it.

  mtpt=mountpoint
	Use with the "dmapi" option.  The value specified here will be
	included in the DMAPI mount event, and should be the path of
	the actual mountpoint that is used.

  noalign
	Data allocations will not be aligned at stripe unit boundaries.

  noatime
	Access timestamps are not updated when a file is read.

  norecovery
	The filesystem will be mounted without running log recovery.
	If the filesystem was not cleanly unmounted, it is likely to
	be inconsistent when mounted in "norecovery" mode.
	Some files or directories may not be accessible because of this.
	Filesystems mounted "norecovery" must be mounted read-only or
	the mount will fail.

  nouuid
	Don't check for double mounted file systems using the file system uuid.
	This is useful to mount LVM snapshot volumes.

  uquota/usrquota/uqnoenforce/quota
	User disk quota accounting enabled, and limits (optionally)
	enforced.  Refer to xfs_quota(8) for further details.

  gquota/grpquota/gqnoenforce
	Group disk quota accounting enabled and limits (optionally)
	enforced.  Refer to xfs_quota(8) for further details.

  pquota/prjquota/pqnoenforce
	Project disk quota accounting enabled and limits (optionally)
	enforced.  Refer to xfs_quota(8) for further details.

  sunit=value and swidth=value
	Used to specify the stripe unit and width for a RAID device or
	a stripe volume.  "value" must be specified in 512-byte block
	units.
	If this option is not specified and the filesystem was made on
	a stripe volume or the stripe width or unit were specified for
	the RAID device at mkfs time, then the mount system call will
	restore the value from the superblock.  For filesystems that
	are made directly on RAID devices, these options can be used
	to override the information in the superblock if the underlying
	disk layout changes after the filesystem has been created.
	The "swidth" option is required if the "sunit" option has been
	specified, and must be a multiple of the "sunit" value.

  swalloc
	Data allocations will be rounded up to stripe width boundaries
	when the current end of file is being extended and the file
	size is larger than the stripe width size.


sysctls
=======

The following sysctls are available for the XFS filesystem:

  fs.xfs.stats_clear		(Min: 0  Default: 0  Max: 1)
	Setting this to "1" clears accumulated XFS statistics
	in /proc/fs/xfs/stat.  It then immediately resets to "0".

  fs.xfs.xfssyncd_centisecs	(Min: 100  Default: 3000  Max: 720000)
  	The interval at which the xfssyncd thread flushes metadata
  	out to disk.  This thread will flush log activity out, and
  	do some processing on unlinked inodes.

  fs.xfs.xfsbufd_centisecs	(Min: 50  Default: 100	Max: 3000)
	The interval at which xfsbufd scans the dirty metadata buffers list.

  fs.xfs.age_buffer_centisecs	(Min: 100  Default: 1500  Max: 720000)
	The age at which xfsbufd flushes dirty metadata buffers to disk.

  fs.xfs.error_level		(Min: 0  Default: 3  Max: 11)
	A volume knob for error reporting when internal errors occur.
	This will generate detailed messages & backtraces for filesystem
	shutdowns, for example.  Current threshold values are:

		XFS_ERRLEVEL_OFF:       0
		XFS_ERRLEVEL_LOW:       1
		XFS_ERRLEVEL_HIGH:      5

  fs.xfs.panic_mask		(Min: 0  Default: 0  Max: 127)
	Causes certain error conditions to call BUG(). Value is a bitmask;
	AND together the tags which represent errors which should cause panics:

		XFS_NO_PTAG                     0
		XFS_PTAG_IFLUSH                 0x00000001
		XFS_PTAG_LOGRES                 0x00000002
		XFS_PTAG_AILDELETE              0x00000004
		XFS_PTAG_ERROR_REPORT           0x00000008
		XFS_PTAG_SHUTDOWN_CORRUPT       0x00000010
		XFS_PTAG_SHUTDOWN_IOERROR       0x00000020
		XFS_PTAG_SHUTDOWN_LOGERROR      0x00000040

	This option is intended for debugging only.

  fs.xfs.irix_symlink_mode	(Min: 0  Default: 0  Max: 1)
	Controls whether symlinks are created with mode 0777 (default)
	or whether their mode is affected by the umask (irix mode).

  fs.xfs.irix_sgid_inherit	(Min: 0  Default: 0  Max: 1)
	Controls files created in SGID directories.
	If the group ID of the new file does not match the effective group
	ID or one of the supplementary group IDs of the parent dir, the
	ISGID bit is cleared if the irix_sgid_inherit compatibility sysctl
	is set.

  fs.xfs.inherit_sync		(Min: 0  Default: 1  Max: 1)
	Setting this to "1" will cause the "sync" flag set
	by the xfs_io(8) chattr command on a directory to be
	inherited by files in that directory.

  fs.xfs.inherit_nodump		(Min: 0  Default: 1  Max: 1)
	Setting this to "1" will cause the "nodump" flag set
	by the xfs_io(8) chattr command on a directory to be
	inherited by files in that directory.

  fs.xfs.inherit_noatime	(Min: 0  Default: 1  Max: 1)
	Setting this to "1" will cause the "noatime" flag set
	by the xfs_io(8) chattr command on a directory to be
	inherited by files in that directory.

  fs.xfs.inherit_nosymlinks	(Min: 0  Default: 1  Max: 1)
	Setting this to "1" will cause the "nosymlinks" flag set
	by the xfs_io(8) chattr command on a directory to be
	inherited by files in that directory.

  fs.xfs.rotorstep		(Min: 1  Default: 1  Max: 256)
	In "inode32" allocation mode, this option determines how many
	files the allocator attempts to allocate in the same allocation
	group before moving to the next allocation group.  The intent
	is to control the rate at which the allocator moves between
	allocation groups when allocating extents for new files.