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diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/filesystem-monitoring.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/filesystem-monitoring.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..ab8dba76283c --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/filesystem-monitoring.rst @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 + +==================================== +File system Monitoring with fanotify +==================================== + +File system Error Reporting +=========================== + +Fanotify supports the FAN_FS_ERROR event type for file system-wide error +reporting. It is meant to be used by file system health monitoring +daemons, which listen for these events and take actions (notify +sysadmin, start recovery) when a file system problem is detected. + +By design, a FAN_FS_ERROR notification exposes sufficient information +for a monitoring tool to know a problem in the file system has happened. +It doesn't necessarily provide a user space application with semantics +to verify an IO operation was successfully executed. That is out of +scope for this feature. Instead, it is only meant as a framework for +early file system problem detection and reporting recovery tools. + +When a file system operation fails, it is common for dozens of kernel +errors to cascade after the initial failure, hiding the original failure +log, which is usually the most useful debug data to troubleshoot the +problem. For this reason, FAN_FS_ERROR tries to report only the first +error that occurred for a file system since the last notification, and +it simply counts additional errors. This ensures that the most +important pieces of information are never lost. + +FAN_FS_ERROR requires the fanotify group to be setup with the +FAN_REPORT_FID flag. + +At the time of this writing, the only file system that emits FAN_FS_ERROR +notifications is Ext4. + +A FAN_FS_ERROR Notification has the following format:: + + :: + + [ Notification Metadata (Mandatory) ] + [ Generic Error Record (Mandatory) ] + [ FID record (Mandatory) ] + +The order of records is not guaranteed, and new records might be added +in the future. Therefore, applications must not rely on the order and +must be prepared to skip over unknown records. Please refer to +``samples/fanotify/fs-monitor.c`` for an example parser. + +Generic error record +-------------------- + +The generic error record provides enough information for a file system +agnostic tool to learn about a problem in the file system, without +providing any additional details about the problem. This record is +identified by ``struct fanotify_event_info_header.info_type`` being set +to FAN_EVENT_INFO_TYPE_ERROR. + + :: + + struct fanotify_event_info_error { + struct fanotify_event_info_header hdr; + __s32 error; + __u32 error_count; + }; + +The `error` field identifies the type of error using errno values. +`error_count` tracks the number of errors that occurred and were +suppressed to preserve the original error information, since the last +notification. + +FID record +---------- + +The FID record can be used to uniquely identify the inode that triggered +the error through the combination of fsid and file handle. A file system +specific application can use that information to attempt a recovery +procedure. Errors that are not related to an inode are reported with an +empty file handle of type FILEID_INVALID. |