Snapshot progress

sage

If things seem a bit slow lately, it’s because I’ve been primarily working
on implementing the snapshot mechanism for the last few weeks.  This is
coming along pretty well: I can take snapshots and access snapshotted
content.  The interaction with recursive accounting has been tricky
because delayed propagation means changes may propagate into recent
snapshot as changes work their way up the hierarchy, but I think I have
that one nailed.

Here’s how it works:

$ tar jxf ~/src/linux-2.6.24.tar.bz2 & [1] 18715 $ mkdir linux-2.6.24/.snap/1   # create a few snapshots $ mkdir linux-2.6.24/.snap/2 $ mkdir linux-2.6.24/.snap/3 $ kill %1 $ ls -al linux-2.6.24/.snap    # see that dir sizes increased over time total 3 drwxr-xr-x 1 sage sage 1205808 Jul 24 10:23 ./ drwxr-xr-x 1 sage sage 1205808 Jul 24 10:23 ../   # live copy drwxr-xr-x 1 sage sage 1028511 Jul 24 10:23 1/ drwxr-xr-x 1 sage sage 1144455 Jul 24 10:23 2/ drwxr-xr-x 1 sage sage 1177913 Jul 24 10:23 3/ [1]+  Terminated              tar jxf ~/src/linux-2.6.24.tar.bz2 $ ls linux-2.6.24/.snap/1/Documentation/ | wc 23      24     472 $ ls linux-2.6.24/.snap/3/Documentation/ | wc 32      33     680

Etc.  The ‘.snap’ hidden dir is accessible from anywhere (like .snapshot
on a Netapp).  Snapshots can be created for any directory at any time,
however, and recursively apply to all nested content.

Still left to do:

  • properly handle directory renames (which interact in interesting ways with the snapshot realm tree).
  • snapshot deletion
  • garbage collection (metadata and data)
  • update kernel client (I’m currently working just with the fuse clientfor faster prototyping)