XFS – Newly Created XFS Filesystem Shows 78 GB Used

partitionrhel8storagexfs

We have a 12 TB RAID 6 array which is supposed to be set up as a single partition with an XFS file system. On creating the new file system, it says it has 78 GB in use, but there are no files on the drive.

[root@i00a ~]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs         32G     0   32G   0% /dev
tmpfs            32G     0   32G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs            32G   11M   32G   1% /run
tmpfs            32G     0   32G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sdb3       154G  3.9G  150G   3% /
/dev/sdb2      1014M  153M  862M  16% /boot
/dev/sdb1       599M  6.7M  593M   2% /boot/efi
/dev/sdc1       187G  1.6G  185G   1% /var
tmpfs           6.3G     0  6.3G   0% /run/user/0
/dev/sda1        11T   78G   11T   1% /export/libvirt

Did I do something wrong? Is this by design?

It looks like the file system log only takes up about 2 GB, and I can't figure out what else could be using the space.

[root@i00a ~]# xfs_info /export/libvirt/
meta-data=/dev/sda1              isize=512    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=1
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929458688, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0

Partition information:

[root@irb00a ~]# parted /dev/sda1
GNU Parted 3.2
Using /dev/sda1
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: Unknown (unknown)
Disk /dev/sda1: 12.0TB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags:

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
 1      0.00B  12.0TB  12.0TB  xfs

This is a Dell FX2 with four FC430 compute nodes and two FD332 storage nodes, running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (Ootpa).

Best Answer

For XFS, the empty filesystem "Size Used" as shown by df -h seems to depend a lot on which metadata features you enable at mkfs.xfs time.

Testing with an empty 12TB file:

# truncate -s 12TB xfstest.img

Default settings (on my current ArchLinux system):

# mkfs.xfs xfstest.img 
meta-data=xfstest.img            isize=512    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=0
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929687500, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
# mount -o loop xfstest.img loop/
# df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   12G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop
# umount loop/

Using reflink=1:

# mkfs.xfs -m reflink=1 -f xfstest.img
meta-data=xfstest.img            isize=512    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=1
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929687500, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
# mount -o loop xfstest.img loop/
# df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   78G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop

Using crc=0, reflink=0: (for some reason, that also turns finobt=0, sparse=0)

# mkfs.xfs -m reflink=0 -m crc=0 -f xfstest.img 
meta-data=xfstest.img            isize=256    agcount=11, agsize=268435455 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=0        finobt=0, sparse=0, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=0
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2929687500, imaxpct=5
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=521728, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
# mount -o loop xfstest.img loop/
# df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   33M   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop

In short:

# df -h loop/
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0       11T   78G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop (reflink=1, crc=1)
/dev/loop0       11T   12G   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop (reflink=0, crc=1)
/dev/loop0       11T   33M   11T   1% /dev/shm/loop (reflink=0, crc=0)

So "Used" space on a fresh 12TB filesystem is 78G, 12G or as low as 33M depending on which metadata features you enable at mkfs time.

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