3.2. AG Free Space Management

The XFS filesystem tracks free space in an allocation group using two B+trees. One B+tree tracks space by block number, the second by the size of the free space block. This scheme allows XFS to quickly find free space near a given block or of a given size.

All block numbers, indexes and counts are AG relative.

3.2.1. AG Free Space Block

The second sector in an AG contains the information about the two free space B+trees and associated free space information for the AG. The "AG Free Space Block", also knows as the AGF, uses the following structure:

typedef struct xfs_agf {
     __be32              agf_magicnum;
     __be32              agf_versionnum;
     __be32              agf_seqno;
     __be32              agf_length;
     __be32              agf_roots[XFS_BTNUM_AGF];
     __be32              agf_spare0;
     __be32              agf_levels[XFS_BTNUM_AGF];
     __be32              agf_spare1;
     __be32              agf_flfirst;
     __be32              agf_fllast;
     __be32              agf_flcount;
     __be32              agf_freeblks;
     __be32              agf_longest;
     __be32              agf_btreeblks;
} xfs_agf_t;

The rest of the bytes in the sector are zeroed. XFS_BTNUM_AGF is set to 2, index 0 for the count B+tree and index 1 for the size B+tree.

agf_magicnum: Specifies the magic number for the AGF sector: "XAGF" (0x58414746).
agf_versionnum: Set to XFS_AGF_VERSION which is currently 1.
agf_seqno: Specifies the AG number for the sector.
agf_length: Specifies the size of the AG in filesystem blocks. For all AGs except the last, this must be equal to the superblock's sb_agblocks value. For the last AG, this could be less than the sb_agblocks value. It is this value that should be used to determine the size of the AG.
agf_roots: Specifies the block number for the root of the two free space B+trees.
agf_levels: Specifies the level or depth of the two free space B+trees. For a fresh AG, this will be one, and the "roots" will point to a single leaf of level 0.
agf_flfirst: Specifies the index of the first "free list" block. Free lists are covered in more detail later on.
agf_fllast: Specifies the index of the last "free list" block.
agf_flcount: Specifies the number of blocks in the "free list".
agf_freeblks: Specifies the current number of free blocks in the AG.
agf_longest: Specifies the number of blocks of longest contiguous free space in the AG.
agf_btreeblks: Specifies the number of blocks used for the free space B+trees. This is only used if the XFS_SB_VERSION2_LAZYSBCOUNTBIT bit is set in sb_features2.