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![Artem Bityutskiy](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
UBIFS has many built-in self-check functions which can be enabled using the debug_chks module parameter or the corresponding sysfs file (/sys/module/ubifs/parameters/debug_chks). However, this is not flexible enough because it is not per-filesystem. This patch moves this to debugfs interfaces. We already have debugfs support, so this patch just adds more debugfs files. While looking at debugfs support I've noticed that it is racy WRT file-system unmount, and added a TODO entry for that. This problem has been there for long time and it is quite standard debugfs PITA. The plan is to fix this later. This patch is simple, but it is large because it changes many places where we check if a particular type of checks is enabled or disabled. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
119 lines
5.1 KiB
Text
119 lines
5.1 KiB
Text
Introduction
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=============
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UBIFS file-system stands for UBI File System. UBI stands for "Unsorted
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Block Images". UBIFS is a flash file system, which means it is designed
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to work with flash devices. It is important to understand, that UBIFS
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is completely different to any traditional file-system in Linux, like
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Ext2, XFS, JFS, etc. UBIFS represents a separate class of file-systems
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which work with MTD devices, not block devices. The other Linux
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file-system of this class is JFFS2.
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To make it more clear, here is a small comparison of MTD devices and
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block devices.
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1 MTD devices represent flash devices and they consist of eraseblocks of
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rather large size, typically about 128KiB. Block devices consist of
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small blocks, typically 512 bytes.
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2 MTD devices support 3 main operations - read from some offset within an
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eraseblock, write to some offset within an eraseblock, and erase a whole
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eraseblock. Block devices support 2 main operations - read a whole
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block and write a whole block.
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3 The whole eraseblock has to be erased before it becomes possible to
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re-write its contents. Blocks may be just re-written.
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4 Eraseblocks become worn out after some number of erase cycles -
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typically 100K-1G for SLC NAND and NOR flashes, and 1K-10K for MLC
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NAND flashes. Blocks do not have the wear-out property.
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5 Eraseblocks may become bad (only on NAND flashes) and software should
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deal with this. Blocks on hard drives typically do not become bad,
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because hardware has mechanisms to substitute bad blocks, at least in
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modern LBA disks.
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It should be quite obvious why UBIFS is very different to traditional
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file-systems.
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UBIFS works on top of UBI. UBI is a separate software layer which may be
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found in drivers/mtd/ubi. UBI is basically a volume management and
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wear-leveling layer. It provides so called UBI volumes which is a higher
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level abstraction than a MTD device. The programming model of UBI devices
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is very similar to MTD devices - they still consist of large eraseblocks,
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they have read/write/erase operations, but UBI devices are devoid of
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limitations like wear and bad blocks (items 4 and 5 in the above list).
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In a sense, UBIFS is a next generation of JFFS2 file-system, but it is
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very different and incompatible to JFFS2. The following are the main
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differences.
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* JFFS2 works on top of MTD devices, UBIFS depends on UBI and works on
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top of UBI volumes.
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* JFFS2 does not have on-media index and has to build it while mounting,
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which requires full media scan. UBIFS maintains the FS indexing
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information on the flash media and does not require full media scan,
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so it mounts many times faster than JFFS2.
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* JFFS2 is a write-through file-system, while UBIFS supports write-back,
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which makes UBIFS much faster on writes.
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Similarly to JFFS2, UBIFS supports on-the-flight compression which makes
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it possible to fit quite a lot of data to the flash.
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Similarly to JFFS2, UBIFS is tolerant of unclean reboots and power-cuts.
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It does not need stuff like fsck.ext2. UBIFS automatically replays its
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journal and recovers from crashes, ensuring that the on-flash data
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structures are consistent.
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UBIFS scales logarithmically (most of the data structures it uses are
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trees), so the mount time and memory consumption do not linearly depend
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on the flash size, like in case of JFFS2. This is because UBIFS
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maintains the FS index on the flash media. However, UBIFS depends on
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UBI, which scales linearly. So overall UBI/UBIFS stack scales linearly.
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Nevertheless, UBI/UBIFS scales considerably better than JFFS2.
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The authors of UBIFS believe, that it is possible to develop UBI2 which
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would scale logarithmically as well. UBI2 would support the same API as UBI,
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but it would be binary incompatible to UBI. So UBIFS would not need to be
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changed to use UBI2
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Mount options
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=============
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(*) == default.
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bulk_read read more in one go to take advantage of flash
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media that read faster sequentially
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no_bulk_read (*) do not bulk-read
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no_chk_data_crc (*) skip checking of CRCs on data nodes in order to
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improve read performance. Use this option only
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if the flash media is highly reliable. The effect
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of this option is that corruption of the contents
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of a file can go unnoticed.
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chk_data_crc do not skip checking CRCs on data nodes
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compr=none override default compressor and set it to "none"
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compr=lzo override default compressor and set it to "lzo"
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compr=zlib override default compressor and set it to "zlib"
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Quick usage instructions
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========================
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The UBI volume to mount is specified using "ubiX_Y" or "ubiX:NAME" syntax,
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where "X" is UBI device number, "Y" is UBI volume number, and "NAME" is
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UBI volume name.
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Mount volume 0 on UBI device 0 to /mnt/ubifs:
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$ mount -t ubifs ubi0_0 /mnt/ubifs
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Mount "rootfs" volume of UBI device 0 to /mnt/ubifs ("rootfs" is volume
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name):
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$ mount -t ubifs ubi0:rootfs /mnt/ubifs
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The following is an example of the kernel boot arguments to attach mtd0
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to UBI and mount volume "rootfs":
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ubi.mtd=0 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs
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References
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==========
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UBIFS documentation and FAQ/HOWTO at the MTD web site:
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http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubifs.html
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http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/faq/ubifs.html
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