recovery_fs_files

The recovery_fs_files process or daemon creates and services the “/recover/files” filesystem.  This filesystem provides the file-level view of a virtual machine’s filesystem. This filesystem is only exported via CIFS and allows file-level recovery of VMs files.

All filesystem operations that are performed in “/recover/files” are handled by recovery_fs_files. recovery_fs_files reads all of its data from “/recover/images” file system. The “/recover/images” file system is based on the “/storage” file system, that is imported by the vmPRO appliance via NFS or CIFS as mentioned under recovery_fs discussion earlier. This import is set up through the vmPRO GUI’s Recovery Wizard.

The “/recover/files” filesystem displays a “.volume” directory for each disk image in “/recover/images”. So, for example a disk image called xxx.vmdk in “/recover/images” will result in a corresponding xxx.volume directory in the “/recover/files” area.

Whenever a “.volume” file is opened, the file-level view of the volume is mounted, and the partitions and files will appear as directories under the .volume directory. Once this mount is completed, all of the files on the volume can be listed and read. The “/recover/files” is a read-only file system, and therefore files cannot be written or modified in that area. The mount process is automatic, and is initiated whenever a “.volume” directory is opened. The file-level view is automatically un-mounted after several minutes of inactivity.

The recovery_fs_files daemon also recognizes SmartMotion “.json” files, which represent soft-links to “–flat.vmdk” (disk image) files, as they are added to the “/recover/images” area by the recovery_fs daemon. The recovery_fs_files daemon follows the soft-links, and automatically presents the files as part of the directory where the SmartMotion “.json” resides.

Here is a screen shot of /recover/files from a CIFS export on a Windows host:

Process Communication Flow

Troubleshooting

The recovery_fs_files daemon writes log entries to “/var/log/recovery_fs_files”. The global appliance registry setting of appliance.debug.level to a small positive integer will enable debug for this process, as well as others.

What's Next?

 import_fs >