How to enable GlusterFS bitrot detection

Silent data corruption can reach a GlusterFS volume without an obvious disk error, leaving a file readable until an application depends on bad data. Enabling bitrot detection adds a checksum-backed integrity signal so corrupted objects can be flagged before operators treat the volume as clean.

Bitrot detection runs a bitd signer and a scrubber process for a volume, maintaining checksums and periodically verifying stored data against those signatures. Detected mismatches are marked as corrupted and reported in scrub status output, with details written to /var/log/glusterfs/bitd.log and /var/log/glusterfs/scrub.log.

Bitrot detection is enabled per volume and is disabled by default, which allows selective rollout across a cluster. Scrubbing consumes background CPU and I/O, so schedule the change for a low-traffic window on latency-sensitive storage. Detection identifies corruption but does not repair files automatically, so keep a recovery path ready for any object that appears in scrub reports.

Related: How to configure GlusterFS bitrot scrub settings
Related: How to disable GlusterFS bitrot detection

Steps to enable GlusterFS bitrot detection:

  1. List GlusterFS volumes to confirm the target volume name. 
    $ sudo gluster volume list
volume1

    Replace volume1 with the volume to protect.

  2. Confirm the volume is started before enabling bitrot. 
    $ sudo gluster volume info volume1
Volume Name: volume1
Type: Distribute
Status: Started
Number of Bricks: 1
Brick1: storage1:/bricks/volume1/brick
##### snipped #####
  3. Enable bitrot detection for the volume. 
    $ sudo gluster volume bitrot volume1 enable
volume bitrot: success bitrot enabled for volume volume1

    Scrubbing adds background I/O and CPU load; enable during a maintenance window for latency-sensitive workloads.

  4. Verify that features.bitrot is enabled for the volume. 
    $ sudo gluster volume get volume1 features.bitrot
Option                                   Value
------                                   -----
features.bitrot                          on
  5. Check the scrub status for the volume. 
    $ sudo gluster volume bitrot volume1 scrub status
Volume name : volume1

State of scrub: Active (Idle)
Scrub impact: lazy
Scrub frequency: biweekly
Bitrot error log location: /var/log/glusterfs/bitd.log
Scrubber error log location: /var/log/glusterfs/scrub.log

##### snipped #####

Error count: 0

    Scrub frequency and throttle depend on the GlusterFS release and cluster policy; tune defaults via the related scrub configuration page when needed.