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Linux disk fill

Linux disk fill fills up the available disk space at a given system path for a specific duration.

Linux disk fill

Use cases​

Linux disk fill:

  • Induces heavy disk usage scenario on the target Linux machines.
  • Simulates a lack of storage space for the underlying applications in the system.
  • Validates application failover and data resiliency in the scenario of low disk space.
note
  • This fault can be executed on Ubuntu 16 or higher, Debian 10 or higher, CentOS 7 or higher, RHEL 7 or higher, Fedora 30 or higher, and openSUSE LEAP 15.4 or higher.
  • The linux-chaos-infrastructure systemd service should be in an active state, and the infrastructure should be in CONNECTED state.

Fault permissions​

The fault uses the root Linux user and root user group.

Optional tunables​

Tunable Description Notes
fillPath System path to fill. Path to a valid directory.
fillStorage Amount of storage to be filled. Can be specified in bytes (b/B), kilobytes (k/K), megabytes (m/M), gigabytes (g/G), or percentage (%) of available storage. If no unit is provided, the value is assumed to be in bytes. Example values: 30m, 1G, 35%, etc. Default: 50%.
dataBlockSize Size of each data block used to fill up the disk. Can be specified in bytes (b/B), kilobytes (k/K), megabytes (m/M), or gigabytes (g/G). If no unit is provided, the value is assumed to be in bytes. Example values: 30m, 500k, 1G, etc. Default: 256 KB.
duration Duration through which chaos is injected into the target resource. Should be provided in [numeric-hours]h[numeric-minutes]m[numeric-seconds]s format. Default: 30s. Examples: 1m25s, 1h3m2s, 1h3s
rampTime Period to wait before and after injecting chaos. Should be provided in [numeric-hours]h[numeric-minutes]m[numeric-seconds]s format. Default: 0s. Examples: 1m25s, 1h3m2s, 1h3s

Fill path​

The fillPath input variable determines the system path to be filled up.

The following YAML snippet illustrates the use of this environment variable:

# specify the fill path
apiVersion: litmuchaos.io/v1alpha1
kind: LinuxFault
metadata:
  name: linux-disk-fill
  labels:
    name: disk-fill
spec:
  diskFillChaos/inputs:
    fillPath: "/"
    duration: 30s

Fill storage​

The fillStorage input variable determines the amount of storage space to be filled up at the fillPath path.

The following YAML snippet illustrates the use of this environment variable:

# specify the storage to be filled
apiVersion: litmuchaos.io/v1alpha1
kind: LinuxFault
metadata:
  name: linux-disk-fill
  labels:
    name: disk-fill
spec:
  diskFillChaos/inputs:
    fillPath: "/"
    fillStorage: 72%
    duration: 30s

Data block size​

The dataBlockSize input variable determines the size of a single block of data, that is used to fill up the disk. A larger block size results in quick completion of the disk fill operation and vice-versa.

The following YAML snippet illustrates the use of this environment variable:

# specify the data block size
apiVersion: litmuchaos.io/v1alpha1
kind: LinuxFault
metadata:
  name: linux-disk-fill
  labels:
    name: disk-fill
spec:
  diskFillChaos/inputs:
    fillPath: "/"
    fillStorage: 80%
    dataBlockSize: 400k
    duration: 30s