Re-sparse a file-backed IO device + zfs

[Shawn Webb]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 05:20:21PM -0800, javocado wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm setting up a bhyve wherein:
> 
> host #  truncate -s 1T vol.file
> host #  du -ah vol.file
> 200K    vol.file
> 
> host #  /usr/sbin/bhyve ... -s 4,ahci-hd,vol.file ...
> 
> Then inside the bhyve I create a zpool (ada0 = vol.file):
> 
> bhyve #  zpool create -O devices=off -O atime=off -O compression=on -m
> /mnt/data1 data1 ada0
> 
> And I put a bunch of stuff in the zpool ... and the vol.file grows in size:
> 
> host #  du -ah vol.file
> 100G    vol.file
> 
> Then I remove the files from the zpool and the zpool usage returns to 0 but
> of course the vol.file size does not shrink, the data is still there (but
> not referenced?)
> 
> Normally I'd just write zeros to a file inside the zpool until the pool
> fills up, then maybe cp --sparse vol.file for good measure, but with
> compression on in the zpool the zeroing doesn't really fill up space or
> seem to overwrite anything. In my testing the zero file grew larger than
> 100G with no change to vol.file  I did not let it run forever, however.
> 
> Any other ideas how to scrub off or clear out deleted data from a zpool
> and/or this kind of file-backed device?

Instead of dd'ing /dev/zero, try /dev/random. All zeros compress
extremely well, [pseudo-]random data does (or, ideally, should) not.

-- 
Shawn Webb
Cofounder and Security Engineer
HardenedBSD

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