Re: Deleting mounted subvolumes

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On 07/03/2017 12:30 AM, Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
> On 07/02/2017 11:33 PM, Pete wrote:
>> I found that I can delete a mounted subvolume using:
>> btrfs subvolume delete <mounted sub volume>
>>
>> This works.  Is this the intended action?  To me it would seem like a
>> warning and the command exiting would make sense?
> 
> Yes, you can do that. It's a bit similar to the fact that you can also
> delete a regular file when it's still open by another program.

I was expecting it to behave somewhat like trying to unmount an active
filesystem, where you are prevented from doing so.

Aside: the way I found out was that the backup script I was writing,
rather than deleting the read only snapshots deleted the source
subvolumes, nearly everything on the system apart from the snapshots...

> But, still having a file open (inode, filedescriptor, what's it
> called...) does actually block the cleaner process from progressing
> beyond that point.
> 
> You can also delete a subvolume which is not separately mounted, while a
> process still has open files in it.
> 

You'd have to do that from within the mounted parent subvolume, I think,
so that looks more normal?



> In case of deleting a mounted subvolume... it's a bit different. As long
> as it's mounted, even if nothing else is using a file within, it won't
> be actually completely deleted in the background, unless the final
> umount is done. What can happen (I just tried it) is that the mount
> point ends up looking completely empty already in the meantime, as soon
> as no files are open and after I cd .. out of it. If I cd back into the
> mount point, there's nothing any more and any action to create something
> new within will end up with a "No such file or directory".
> 
> Only when doing the umount, the subvolume completely disappears.
>

So provided I did not unmount the deleted subvols then I could actually
have undeleted them? Of does that require developer level skills?  Too
late now, and I recovered from snapshots and a little data from the
backup drive.  Also I'd think dangerous to offer this option as people
might assume they could rely on it which might be a dangerous assumption.



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