bug#10561: stat unclear about size on disk and type of blocks discussed

[Pádraig Brady]

On 01/20/2012 07:16 AM, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
> Today I tried figuring out how much disk space a small file took. I used 
> stat, but that turned out surprisingly difficult:

First of all, `du` is probably a better tool to this use case. Anyway...

>> # LANG=C stat htpasswd.setup
>>   File: `htpasswd.setup'
>>   Size: 54              Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
>> Device: 805h/2053d      Inode: 5268976     Links: 1
>> Access: (0640/-rw-r-----)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (   33/www-data)
>> Access: 2012-01-19 15:00:58.000000000 -0500
>> Modify: 2012-01-19 15:00:54.000000000 -0500
>> Change: 2012-01-19 15:00:54.000000000 -0500
>>  Birth: -
>> address@hidden:/etc/phpmyadmin#
> 
> The "real" size is clear, but at first I thought that didn't say the size on 
> disk.
> 
> There are 3 interesting format sequences:
> 
>> %b
>>  Number of blocks allocated (see %B)
>> %B
>>  The size in bytes of each block reported by %b
> 
>> %o
>>  I/O block size
> 
> In the default format, %b is shown as "Blocks" and %o is shown as "IO Block".
> On my system, there are 2 kinds of blocks, those on the HDD, 512 bytes each, 
> and those of the filesystem, 4096 each. The manual's descriptions do not make 
> it clear which kind of block is referred to. After verification, %b refers to 
> HDD blocks.

Well %B may not always refer to "HDD blocks".
Just interpret it as described.
I.E. an abstract multiplier for %b.

To be concrete about block sizes, there are generally 3 to consider:

1. physical     defined by the hardware device
2. logical      the smallest addressable unit used for the device
3. file system  ditto for the file system

Traditionally one had a physical block size of 512,
but a larger logical size of say 4096, with the size
determining the usual I/O ops vs fragmentation trade-off.

One can query 1. and 2. like:

# strace -e ioctl blockdev --getpbsz /dev/sda
ioctl(3, BLKPBSZGET, 512)               = 0
512
# strace -e ioctl blockdev --getbsz /dev/sda
ioctl(3, BLKBSZGET, 4096)               = 0
4096

`stat` works at the file and file system level,
so 3. can be queried like:

$ stat -f -c "%S" .
4096

> As for %o, if you'd ask me what "I/O block size" means without any context, 
> I'm far from being sure I would answer it means size on disk. I suggest to 
> call this Size on disk, or Size used on the filesystem.

I/O implies transfer.
So it corresponds to an "optimal transfer size hint"
This value can be different at each layer, for example:

$ stat -c "%o" .                # file level
$ stat -f -c "%s" .             # file system level
# blockdev --getioopt /dev/sda  # device level

> I'm not sure what language should be used instead. Perhaps instead of blocks 
> the manual should talk about "data storage device blocks".

I suppose we could clarify "I/O block size" a bit.
How about s|I/O block size|optimal I/O block transfer size|

cheers,
Padraig.