Its not that impossible to imagine that a device OR a btrfs image is been copied just by using the dd or the cp command. Which in case both the copies of the btrfs will have the same fsid. If on the system with automount enabled, the copied FS gets scanned.
We have a known bug in btrfs, that we let the device path be changed after the device has been mounted. So using this loop hole the new copied device would appears as if its mounted immediately after its been copied. For example: Initially.. /dev/mmcblk0p4 is mounted as / lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT mmcblk0 179:0 0 29.2G 0 disk |-mmcblk0p4 179:4 0 4G 0 part / |-mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 500M 0 part /boot |-mmcblk0p3 179:3 0 256M 0 part [SWAP] `-mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 256M 0 part /boot/efi btrfs fi show Label: none uuid: 07892354-ddaa-4443-90ea-f76a06accaba Total devices 1 FS bytes used 1.40GiB devid 1 size 4.00GiB used 3.00GiB path /dev/mmcblk0p4 Copy mmcblk0 to sda dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda And immediately after the copy completes the change in the device superblock is notified which the automount scans using btrfs device scan and the new device sda becomes the mounted root device. lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 1 14.9G 0 disk |-sda4 8:4 1 4G 0 part / |-sda2 8:2 1 500M 0 part |-sda3 8:3 1 256M 0 part `-sda1 8:1 1 256M 0 part mmcblk0 179:0 0 29.2G 0 disk |-mmcblk0p4 179:4 0 4G 0 part |-mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 500M 0 part /boot |-mmcblk0p3 179:3 0 256M 0 part [SWAP] `-mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 256M 0 part /boot/efi btrfs fi show / Label: none uuid: 07892354-ddaa-4443-90ea-f76a06accaba Total devices 1 FS bytes used 1.40GiB devid 1 size 4.00GiB used 3.00GiB path /dev/sda4 The bug is quite nasty that you can't either unmount /dev/sda4 or /dev/mmcblk0p4. And the problem does not get solved until you take sda out of the system on to another system to change its fsid using the 'btrfstune -u' command. Signed-off-by: Anand Jain <anand.j...@oracle.com> --- Hi, There was previous attempt to fix this bug ref: www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg37466.html which broke the Ubuntu subvol mount at boot. The reason for that is, Ubuntu changes the device path in the boot process, and the earlier fix checked for the device-path instead of block_device as in here and so we failed the subvol mount request and thus the bootup process. I have tested this with Oracle Linux with btrfs as boot device with a subvol to be mounted at boot. And also have verified with new test case btrfs/173. It will be good if someone run this through Ubuntu boot test case. fs/btrfs/volumes.c | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+) diff --git a/fs/btrfs/volumes.c b/fs/btrfs/volumes.c index f4405e430da6..62173a3abcc4 100644 --- a/fs/btrfs/volumes.c +++ b/fs/btrfs/volumes.c @@ -850,6 +850,29 @@ static noinline struct btrfs_device *device_list_add(const char *path, return ERR_PTR(-EEXIST); } + /* + * we are going to replace the device path, make sure its the + * same device if the device mounted + */ + if (device->bdev) { + struct block_device *path_bdev; + + path_bdev = lookup_bdev(path); + if (IS_ERR(path_bdev)) { + mutex_unlock(&fs_devices->device_list_mutex); + return ERR_CAST(path_bdev); + } + + if (device->bdev != path_bdev) { + bdput(path_bdev); + mutex_unlock(&fs_devices->device_list_mutex); + return ERR_PTR(-EEXIST); + } + bdput(path_bdev); + pr_info("BTRFS: device fsid:devid %pU:%llu old path:%s new path:%s\n", + disk_super->fsid, devid, rcu_str_deref(device->name), path); + } + name = rcu_string_strdup(path, GFP_NOFS); if (!name) { mutex_unlock(&fs_devices->device_list_mutex); -- 1.8.3.1