Re: [sshfs] inode problem when using git on a sshfs filesystem

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011, Yann Droneaud wrote:

quoted

The VFS (part of the linux kernel that implements the generic
filesystem logic) clears the directory entry from the cache prior to
actually trying to remove the directory.  This has the effect that any
children of the directory are also cleared from the cache, hence the
behavior you see in rmdir.

I tried to check that behavor: if the VFS is dropping dentry before doing
a rmdir(), them lookup files under this directory should be slower than
before rmdir().

On a ext4 filesystem, directory with 338 sub directories and 1992 files, 
i've tried the following commands:

/* drop all */
# echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
# time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
real	0m0.140s
user	0m0.000s
sys	0m0.080s

/* drop cache */
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
# time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
real	0m0.119s
user	0m0.000s
sys	0m0.072s

/* drop dentry and inode */
# echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
# time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
real	0m0.089s
user	0m0.016s
sys	0m0.040s

/* read from cache */
# time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
real	0m0.063s
user	0m0.004s
sys	0m0.036s

$ rmdir directory
rmdir: failed to remove `directory': Directory not empty

/* re read from cache */
$ time ls -alR directory > /dev/null
real	0m0.065s
user	0m0.012s
sys	0m0.036s

As you can see, after doing rmdir(), the time taken to walk trough the
directories is the same than before calling it, so the dentry seems not
flushed out of the cache after the rmdir().

tucsk:~ # time find /usr -ls > /dev/null

real    0m1.922s
user    0m1.104s
sys     0m0.800s
tucsk:~ # rmdir /usr
rmdir: failed to remove `/usr': Directory not empty
tucsk:~ # time find /usr -ls > /dev/null

real    0m2.637s
user    0m1.172s
sys     0m1.448s
tucsk:~ # time find /usr -ls > /dev/null

real    0m1.943s
user    0m1.068s
sys     0m0.848s
tucsk:~ # 

As you can see it does get significantly slower after the rmdir.

I really prefer this behavior. The one you explained would be a real pain:
if one user call rmdir on / inside a loop, the full dentry cache will be
dropped each time: this would affect performance for the whole system.

Yes.  But in practice this doesn't really matter, removing non-empty
directories happens rarely.

Thanks,
Miklos