digint / digint/btrbk

Meaning and mitigation of: "WARNING: Failed to open x / y files"

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Dominant language
Perl
Stars
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Forks
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PR merge metrics
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Description

I saw the following output:

```
% mkdir /tmp/new-cache
% sudo btrbk --override 'cache_dir=/tmp/new-cache' extents /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/*
WARNING: Failed to open 805329 / 805335 files
WARNING: Failed to open 805325 / 805331 files
WARNING: Failed to open 807545 / 807551 files
WARNING: Failed to open 809582 / 809588 files
WARNING: Failed to open 809457 / 809463 files
WARNING: Failed to open 810760 / 810766 files
WARNING: Failed to open 2640077 / 2640085 files
WARNING: Failed to open 3300898 / 3300906 files
TOTAL EXCLUSIVE SUBVOL
333.72 GiB 332.47 GiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250206T1903
350.71 GiB 76.31 GiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250314T1600
277.82 GiB 271.52 MiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250422T1351
277.85 GiB 2.54 MiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250424T1045
277.85 GiB 3.39 MiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250424T1113
277.85 GiB 33.18 MiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250424T1833
277.85 GiB 2.89 MiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250425T1203
277.85 GiB 3.91 MiB /media/ssd/btrbk/home-var/home-var.20250425T1503

Union (8 subvolumes): 687.37 GiB

```

Questions:

- What circumstances would cause files to not be able to be opened by root? (`btrfs scrub` is clean)
- How would I fix things so that the warnings no longer appear?
- Could the UUID be listed against each warning? (eg to be able to delete the cache after fixing it)

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Search the codebase for the exact "WARNING: Failed to open" message, then reproduce the reported btrbk extents command with the cache override. Determine and document the causes, remediation, and whether the warning can include a UUID; done means the behavior and cleanup implications are clearly explained.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux, perl
Domain
documentation, operating-systems
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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