[pacman-dev] Diskspace checking thought- free space cushion

[Allan McRae]

On 15/12/10 10:01, Dan McGee wrote:
> Code in question is diskspace.c, line ~300:
>
>    for(i = mount_points; i; i = alpm_list_next(i)) {
>      alpm_mountpoint_t *data = i->data;
>      if(data->used == 1) {
>        _alpm_log(PM_LOG_DEBUG, "partition %s, needed %ld, free %ld\n",
>            data->mount_dir, data->max_blocks_needed,
>            (unsigned long)data->fsp.f_bfree);
>        if(data->max_blocks_needed>  data->fsp.f_bfree) {
>          abort = 1;
>        }
>      }
>    }
>
> This does a strict check of max_blocks_needed>  fsp.f_bfree. do we
> want to cushion this somehow, as having 1 block free could still spell
> disaster given logging, post-install scripts, etc.? And if so, how
> much? I don't want to make this something that has loads and loads of
> configuration- we hardcode max delta ratio at 0.7, for instance. Is 5%
> of total blocks, capped at something like 10 MB (in 4K blocks that
> would be 2560 blocks) enough?
>

I thought about that, especially given there is some handwaving about 
blocks taken for directories, database entries etc.  I did not using a 
percentage or a fixed size, but the combination might be good. 
max(5%,10M) sounds fine although maybe a bit more than 10MB would be good.

Another possibility I thought of was using f_bavail instead of f_bfree. 
  That is the space available to unprivlidged users which is generally 
buffered.   I think I like that idea the least though...

Allan