Thanks for continuing to dig into this. Comparing your nova-compute logs and the strace unlink details, the timestamps do seem to point to unlink causing the delay. Pasting the strace unlink output below inline with the nova-compute logs in order of occurrence:
nova-compute log: 2018-04-25 14:48:04.587 54255 INFO nova.virt.libvirt.driver [req-85551d96-713d-499d-b7ff-9f911fb0842d bc0ab055427645aca4ed09266e85b1db 1cb457a8302543fea067e5f14b5241e7 - - -] [instance: bd17aeef-240b-489c-8bb6-b37167155174] Deleting instance files /srv/nova/instances/bd17aeef-240b-489c-8bb6-b37167155174_del strace unlink: 54255 14:48:04.593792 unlink("/srv/nova/instances/bd17aeef-240b-489c-8bb6-b37167155174_del/disk" <unfinished ...> strace unlink: 54255 14:52:06.349167 <... unlink resumed> ) = 0 54255 14:52:06.349430 unlink("/srv/nova/instances/bd17aeef-240b-489c-8bb6-b37167155174_del/disk.info") = 0 nova-compute log: 2018-04-25 14:52:06.350 54255 INFO nova.virt.libvirt.driver [req-85551d96-713d-499d-b7ff-9f911fb0842d bc0ab055427645aca4ed09266e85b1db 1cb457a8302543fea067e5f14b5241e7 - - -] [instance: bd17aeef-240b-489c-8bb6-b37167155174] Deletion of /srv/nova/instances/bd17aeef-240b-489c-8bb6-b37167155174_del complete This might be worth passing by kernel folks to get their opinion. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1766543 Title: instance deletion takes a while and blocks nova-compute To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nova/+bug/1766543/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs