ALSA: timer: Limit max amount of slave instances
[linux-2.6-block.git] / Documentation / filesystems / f2fs.txt
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1================================================================================
2WHAT IS Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS)?
3================================================================================
4
5NAND flash memory-based storage devices, such as SSD, eMMC, and SD cards, have
6been equipped on a variety systems ranging from mobile to server systems. Since
7they are known to have different characteristics from the conventional rotating
8disks, a file system, an upper layer to the storage device, should adapt to the
9changes from the sketch in the design level.
10
11F2FS is a file system exploiting NAND flash memory-based storage devices, which
12is based on Log-structured File System (LFS). The design has been focused on
13addressing the fundamental issues in LFS, which are snowball effect of wandering
14tree and high cleaning overhead.
15
16Since a NAND flash memory-based storage device shows different characteristic
17according to its internal geometry or flash memory management scheme, namely FTL,
18F2FS and its tools support various parameters not only for configuring on-disk
19layout, but also for selecting allocation and cleaning algorithms.
20
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21The following git tree provides the file system formatting tool (mkfs.f2fs),
22a consistency checking tool (fsck.f2fs), and a debugging tool (dump.f2fs).
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23>> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jaegeuk/f2fs-tools.git
24
25For reporting bugs and sending patches, please use the following mailing list:
26>> linux-f2fs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
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27
28================================================================================
29BACKGROUND AND DESIGN ISSUES
30================================================================================
31
32Log-structured File System (LFS)
33--------------------------------
34"A log-structured file system writes all modifications to disk sequentially in
35a log-like structure, thereby speeding up both file writing and crash recovery.
36The log is the only structure on disk; it contains indexing information so that
37files can be read back from the log efficiently. In order to maintain large free
38areas on disk for fast writing, we divide the log into segments and use a
39segment cleaner to compress the live information from heavily fragmented
40segments." from Rosenblum, M. and Ousterhout, J. K., 1992, "The design and
41implementation of a log-structured file system", ACM Trans. Computer Systems
4210, 1, 26–52.
43
44Wandering Tree Problem
45----------------------
46In LFS, when a file data is updated and written to the end of log, its direct
47pointer block is updated due to the changed location. Then the indirect pointer
48block is also updated due to the direct pointer block update. In this manner,
49the upper index structures such as inode, inode map, and checkpoint block are
50also updated recursively. This problem is called as wandering tree problem [1],
51and in order to enhance the performance, it should eliminate or relax the update
52propagation as much as possible.
53
54[1] Bityutskiy, A. 2005. JFFS3 design issues. http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/
55
56Cleaning Overhead
57-----------------
58Since LFS is based on out-of-place writes, it produces so many obsolete blocks
59scattered across the whole storage. In order to serve new empty log space, it
60needs to reclaim these obsolete blocks seamlessly to users. This job is called
61as a cleaning process.
62
63The process consists of three operations as follows.
641. A victim segment is selected through referencing segment usage table.
652. It loads parent index structures of all the data in the victim identified by
66 segment summary blocks.
673. It checks the cross-reference between the data and its parent index structure.
684. It moves valid data selectively.
69
70This cleaning job may cause unexpected long delays, so the most important goal
71is to hide the latencies to users. And also definitely, it should reduce the
72amount of valid data to be moved, and move them quickly as well.
73
74================================================================================
75KEY FEATURES
76================================================================================
77
78Flash Awareness
79---------------
80- Enlarge the random write area for better performance, but provide the high
81 spatial locality
82- Align FS data structures to the operational units in FTL as best efforts
83
84Wandering Tree Problem
85----------------------
86- Use a term, “node”, that represents inodes as well as various pointer blocks
87- Introduce Node Address Table (NAT) containing the locations of all the “node”
88 blocks; this will cut off the update propagation.
89
90Cleaning Overhead
91-----------------
92- Support a background cleaning process
93- Support greedy and cost-benefit algorithms for victim selection policies
94- Support multi-head logs for static/dynamic hot and cold data separation
95- Introduce adaptive logging for efficient block allocation
96
97================================================================================
98MOUNT OPTIONS
99================================================================================
100
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101background_gc=%s Turn on/off cleaning operations, namely garbage
102 collection, triggered in background when I/O subsystem is
103 idle. If background_gc=on, it will turn on the garbage
104 collection and if background_gc=off, garbage collection
4bb9998d 105 will be turned off. If background_gc=sync, it will turn
6aefd93b 106 on synchronous garbage collection running in background.
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107 Default value for this option is on. So garbage
108 collection is on by default.
98e4da8c 109disable_roll_forward Disable the roll-forward recovery routine
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110norecovery Disable the roll-forward recovery routine, mounted read-
111 only (i.e., -o ro,disable_roll_forward)
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112discard/nodiscard Enable/disable real-time discard in f2fs, if discard is
113 enabled, f2fs will issue discard/TRIM commands when a
114 segment is cleaned.
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115no_heap Disable heap-style segment allocation which finds free
116 segments for data from the beginning of main area, while
117 for node from the end of main area.
118nouser_xattr Disable Extended User Attributes. Note: xattr is enabled
119 by default if CONFIG_F2FS_FS_XATTR is selected.
120noacl Disable POSIX Access Control List. Note: acl is enabled
121 by default if CONFIG_F2FS_FS_POSIX_ACL is selected.
122active_logs=%u Support configuring the number of active logs. In the
123 current design, f2fs supports only 2, 4, and 6 logs.
124 Default number is 6.
125disable_ext_identify Disable the extension list configured by mkfs, so f2fs
126 does not aware of cold files such as media files.
66e960c6 127inline_xattr Enable the inline xattrs feature.
23cf7212 128noinline_xattr Disable the inline xattrs feature.
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129inline_xattr_size=%u Support configuring inline xattr size, it depends on
130 flexible inline xattr feature.
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131inline_data Enable the inline data feature: New created small(<~3.4k)
132 files can be written into inode block.
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133inline_dentry Enable the inline dir feature: data in new created
134 directory entries can be written into inode block. The
135 space of inode block which is used to store inline
136 dentries is limited to ~3.4k.
04b9a5f0 137noinline_dentry Disable the inline dentry feature.
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138flush_merge Merge concurrent cache_flush commands as much as possible
139 to eliminate redundant command issues. If the underlying
140 device handles the cache_flush command relatively slowly,
141 recommend to enable this option.
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142nobarrier This option can be used if underlying storage guarantees
143 its cached data should be written to the novolatile area.
144 If this option is set, no cache_flush commands are issued
145 but f2fs still guarantees the write ordering of all the
146 data writes.
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147fastboot This option is used when a system wants to reduce mount
148 time as much as possible, even though normal performance
149 can be sacrificed.
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150extent_cache Enable an extent cache based on rb-tree, it can cache
151 as many as extent which map between contiguous logical
152 address and physical address per inode, resulting in
7daaea25 153 increasing the cache hit ratio. Set by default.
4bb9998d 154noextent_cache Disable an extent cache based on rb-tree explicitly, see
7daaea25 155 the above extent_cache mount option.
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156noinline_data Disable the inline data feature, inline data feature is
157 enabled by default.
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158data_flush Enable data flushing before checkpoint in order to
159 persist data of regular and symlink.
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160reserve_root=%d Support configuring reserved space which is used for
161 allocation from a privileged user with specified uid or
162 gid, unit: 4KB, the default limit is 0.2% of user blocks.
163resuid=%d The user ID which may use the reserved blocks.
164resgid=%d The group ID which may use the reserved blocks.
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165fault_injection=%d Enable fault injection in all supported types with
166 specified injection rate.
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167fault_type=%d Support configuring fault injection type, should be
168 enabled with fault_injection option, fault type value
169 is shown below, it supports single or combined type.
170 Type_Name Type_Value
171 FAULT_KMALLOC 0x000000001
172 FAULT_KVMALLOC 0x000000002
173 FAULT_PAGE_ALLOC 0x000000004
174 FAULT_PAGE_GET 0x000000008
175 FAULT_ALLOC_BIO 0x000000010
176 FAULT_ALLOC_NID 0x000000020
177 FAULT_ORPHAN 0x000000040
178 FAULT_BLOCK 0x000000080
179 FAULT_DIR_DEPTH 0x000000100
180 FAULT_EVICT_INODE 0x000000200
181 FAULT_TRUNCATE 0x000000400
6f5c2ed0 182 FAULT_READ_IO 0x000000800
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183 FAULT_CHECKPOINT 0x000001000
184 FAULT_DISCARD 0x000002000
6f5c2ed0 185 FAULT_WRITE_IO 0x000004000
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186mode=%s Control block allocation mode which supports "adaptive"
187 and "lfs". In "lfs" mode, there should be no random
188 writes towards main area.
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189io_bits=%u Set the bit size of write IO requests. It should be set
190 with "mode=lfs".
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191usrquota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
192grpquota Enable plain group disk quota accounting.
5c57132e 193prjquota Enable plain project quota accounting.
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194usrjquota=<file> Appoint specified file and type during mount, so that quota
195grpjquota=<file> information can be properly updated during recovery flow,
196prjjquota=<file> <quota file>: must be in root directory;
197jqfmt=<quota type> <quota type>: [vfsold,vfsv0,vfsv1].
198offusrjquota Turn off user journelled quota.
199offgrpjquota Turn off group journelled quota.
200offprjjquota Turn off project journelled quota.
201quota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
202noquota Disable all plain disk quota option.
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203whint_mode=%s Control which write hints are passed down to block
204 layer. This supports "off", "user-based", and
205 "fs-based". In "off" mode (default), f2fs does not pass
206 down hints. In "user-based" mode, f2fs tries to pass
207 down hints given by users. And in "fs-based" mode, f2fs
208 passes down hints with its policy.
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209alloc_mode=%s Adjust block allocation policy, which supports "reuse"
210 and "default".
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211fsync_mode=%s Control the policy of fsync. Currently supports "posix",
212 "strict", and "nobarrier". In "posix" mode, which is
213 default, fsync will follow POSIX semantics and does a
214 light operation to improve the filesystem performance.
215 In "strict" mode, fsync will be heavy and behaves in line
216 with xfs, ext4 and btrfs, where xfstest generic/342 will
217 pass, but the performance will regress. "nobarrier" is
218 based on "posix", but doesn't issue flush command for
219 non-atomic files likewise "nobarrier" mount option.
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220test_dummy_encryption Enable dummy encryption, which provides a fake fscrypt
221 context. The fake fscrypt context is used by xfstests.
4d3aed70 222checkpoint=%s[:%u[%]] Set to "disable" to turn off checkpointing. Set to "enable"
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223 to reenable checkpointing. Is enabled by default. While
224 disabled, any unmounting or unexpected shutdowns will cause
225 the filesystem contents to appear as they did when the
226 filesystem was mounted with that option.
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227 While mounting with checkpoint=disabled, the filesystem must
228 run garbage collection to ensure that all available space can
229 be used. If this takes too much time, the mount may return
230 EAGAIN. You may optionally add a value to indicate how much
231 of the disk you would be willing to temporarily give up to
232 avoid additional garbage collection. This can be given as a
233 number of blocks, or as a percent. For instance, mounting
234 with checkpoint=disable:100% would always succeed, but it may
235 hide up to all remaining free space. The actual space that
236 would be unusable can be viewed at /sys/fs/f2fs/<disk>/unusable
237 This space is reclaimed once checkpoint=enable.
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238
239================================================================================
240DEBUGFS ENTRIES
241================================================================================
242
243/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/ contains information about all the partitions mounted as
244f2fs. Each file shows the whole f2fs information.
245
246/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/status includes:
247 - major file system information managed by f2fs currently
248 - average SIT information about whole segments
249 - current memory footprint consumed by f2fs.
250
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251================================================================================
252SYSFS ENTRIES
253================================================================================
254
6de3f12e 255Information about mounted f2fs file systems can be found in
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256/sys/fs/f2fs. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
257/sys/fs/f2fs based on its device name (i.e., /sys/fs/f2fs/sda).
258The files in each per-device directory are shown in table below.
259
260Files in /sys/fs/f2fs/<devname>
261(see also Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-fs-f2fs)
262..............................................................................
263 File Content
264
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265 gc_urgent_sleep_time This parameter controls sleep time for gc_urgent.
266 500 ms is set by default. See above gc_urgent.
267
268 gc_min_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the minimum sleep
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269 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
270 in milliseconds.
271
4d11d13e 272 gc_max_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the maximum sleep
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273 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
274 in milliseconds.
275
276 gc_no_gc_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the default sleep
277 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
278 in milliseconds.
279
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280 gc_idle This parameter controls the selection of victim
281 policy for garbage collection. Setting gc_idle = 0
282 (default) will disable this option. Setting
283 gc_idle = 1 will select the Cost Benefit approach
4bb9998d 284 & setting gc_idle = 2 will select the greedy approach.
d2dc095f 285
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286 gc_urgent This parameter controls triggering background GCs
287 urgently or not. Setting gc_urgent = 0 [default]
288 makes back to default behavior, while if it is set
289 to 1, background thread starts to do GC by given
290 gc_urgent_sleep_time interval.
291
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292 reclaim_segments This parameter controls the number of prefree
293 segments to be reclaimed. If the number of prefree
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294 segments is larger than the number of segments
295 in the proportion to the percentage over total
296 volume size, f2fs tries to conduct checkpoint to
297 reclaim the prefree segments to free segments.
298 By default, 5% over total # of segments.
ea91e9b0 299
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300 max_small_discards This parameter controls the number of discard
301 commands that consist small blocks less than 2MB.
302 The candidates to be discarded are cached until
303 checkpoint is triggered, and issued during the
304 checkpoint. By default, it is disabled with 0.
305
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306 discard_granularity This parameter controls the granularity of discard
307 command size. It will issue discard commands iif
308 the size is larger than given granularity. Its
309 unit size is 4KB, and 4 (=16KB) is set by default.
310 The maximum value is 128 (=512KB).
311
312 reserved_blocks This parameter indicates the number of blocks that
313 f2fs reserves internally for root.
314
315 batched_trim_sections This parameter controls the number of sections
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316 to be trimmed out in batch mode when FITRIM
317 conducts. 32 sections is set by default.
318
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319 ipu_policy This parameter controls the policy of in-place
320 updates in f2fs. There are five policies:
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321 0x01: F2FS_IPU_FORCE, 0x02: F2FS_IPU_SSR,
322 0x04: F2FS_IPU_UTIL, 0x08: F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL,
323 0x10: F2FS_IPU_FSYNC.
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324
325 min_ipu_util This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
326 in-place-updates. The number indicates percentage
327 of the filesystem utilization, and used by
328 F2FS_IPU_UTIL and F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL policies.
329
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330 min_fsync_blocks This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
331 in-place-updates when F2FS_IPU_FSYNC mode is set.
332 The number indicates the number of dirty pages
333 when fsync needs to flush on its call path. If
334 the number is less than this value, it triggers
335 in-place-updates.
336
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337 min_seq_blocks This parameter controls the threshold to serialize
338 write IOs issued by multiple threads in parallel.
339
340 min_hot_blocks This parameter controls the threshold to allocate
341 a hot data log for pending data blocks to write.
342
343 min_ssr_sections This parameter adds the threshold when deciding
344 SSR block allocation. If this is large, SSR mode
345 will be enabled early.
346
347 ram_thresh This parameter controls the memory footprint used
348 by free nids and cached nat entries. By default,
349 10 is set, which indicates 10 MB / 1 GB RAM.
350
351 ra_nid_pages When building free nids, F2FS reads NAT blocks
352 ahead for speed up. Default is 0.
353
354 dirty_nats_ratio Given dirty ratio of cached nat entries, F2FS
355 determines flushing them in background.
356
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357 max_victim_search This parameter controls the number of trials to
358 find a victim segment when conducting SSR and
359 cleaning operations. The default value is 4096
360 which covers 8GB block address range.
361
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362 migration_granularity For large-sized sections, F2FS can stop GC given
363 this granularity instead of reclaiming entire
364 section.
365
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366 dir_level This parameter controls the directory level to
367 support large directory. If a directory has a
368 number of files, it can reduce the file lookup
369 latency by increasing this dir_level value.
370 Otherwise, it needs to decrease this value to
371 reduce the space overhead. The default value is 0.
372
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373 cp_interval F2FS tries to do checkpoint periodically, 60 secs
374 by default.
375
376 idle_interval F2FS detects system is idle, if there's no F2FS
377 operations during given interval, 5 secs by
378 default.
379
380 discard_idle_interval F2FS detects the discard thread is idle, given
381 time interval. Default is 5 secs.
382
383 gc_idle_interval F2FS detects the GC thread is idle, given time
384 interval. Default is 5 secs.
385
386 umount_discard_timeout When unmounting the disk, F2FS waits for finishing
387 queued discard commands which can take huge time.
388 This gives time out for it, 5 secs by default.
389
390 iostat_enable This controls to enable/disable iostat in F2FS.
391
392 readdir_ra This enables/disabled readahead of inode blocks
393 in readdir, and default is enabled.
394
395 gc_pin_file_thresh This indicates how many GC can be failed for the
396 pinned file. If it exceeds this, F2FS doesn't
397 guarantee its pinning state. 2048 trials is set
398 by default.
399
400 extension_list This enables to change extension_list for hot/cold
401 files in runtime.
402
403 inject_rate This controls injection rate of arbitrary faults.
404
405 inject_type This controls injection type of arbitrary faults.
406
407 dirty_segments This shows # of dirty segments.
408
409 lifetime_write_kbytes This shows # of data written to the disk.
410
411 features This shows current features enabled on F2FS.
412
413 current_reserved_blocks This shows # of blocks currently reserved.
cdfc41c1 414
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415 unusable If checkpoint=disable, this shows the number of
416 blocks that are unusable.
417 If checkpoint=enable it shows the number of blocks
418 that would be unusable if checkpoint=disable were
419 to be set.
420
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421encoding This shows the encoding used for casefolding.
422 If casefolding is not enabled, returns (none)
423
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424================================================================================
425USAGE
426================================================================================
427
4281. Download userland tools and compile them.
429
4302. Skip, if f2fs was compiled statically inside kernel.
431 Otherwise, insert the f2fs.ko module.
432 # insmod f2fs.ko
433
4343. Create a directory trying to mount
435 # mkdir /mnt/f2fs
436
4374. Format the block device, and then mount as f2fs
438 # mkfs.f2fs -l label /dev/block_device
439 # mount -t f2fs /dev/block_device /mnt/f2fs
440
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441mkfs.f2fs
442---------
443The mkfs.f2fs is for the use of formatting a partition as the f2fs filesystem,
444which builds a basic on-disk layout.
445
446The options consist of:
1571f84a 447-l [label] : Give a volume label, up to 512 unicode name.
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448-a [0 or 1] : Split start location of each area for heap-based allocation.
449 1 is set by default, which performs this.
450-o [int] : Set overprovision ratio in percent over volume size.
451 5 is set by default.
452-s [int] : Set the number of segments per section.
453 1 is set by default.
454-z [int] : Set the number of sections per zone.
455 1 is set by default.
456-e [str] : Set basic extension list. e.g. "mp3,gif,mov"
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457-t [0 or 1] : Disable discard command or not.
458 1 is set by default, which conducts discard.
98e4da8c 459
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460fsck.f2fs
461---------
462The fsck.f2fs is a tool to check the consistency of an f2fs-formatted
463partition, which examines whether the filesystem metadata and user-made data
464are cross-referenced correctly or not.
465Note that, initial version of the tool does not fix any inconsistency.
466
467The options consist of:
468 -d debug level [default:0]
469
470dump.f2fs
471---------
472The dump.f2fs shows the information of specific inode and dumps SSA and SIT to
473file. Each file is dump_ssa and dump_sit.
474
475The dump.f2fs is used to debug on-disk data structures of the f2fs filesystem.
4bb9998d 476It shows on-disk inode information recognized by a given inode number, and is
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477able to dump all the SSA and SIT entries into predefined files, ./dump_ssa and
478./dump_sit respectively.
479
480The options consist of:
481 -d debug level [default:0]
482 -i inode no (hex)
483 -s [SIT dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
484 -a [SSA dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
485
486Examples:
487# dump.f2fs -i [ino] /dev/sdx
488# dump.f2fs -s 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SIT dump)
489# dump.f2fs -a 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SSA dump)
490
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491================================================================================
492DESIGN
493================================================================================
494
495On-disk Layout
496--------------
497
498F2FS divides the whole volume into a number of segments, each of which is fixed
499to 2MB in size. A section is composed of consecutive segments, and a zone
500consists of a set of sections. By default, section and zone sizes are set to one
501segment size identically, but users can easily modify the sizes by mkfs.
502
503F2FS splits the entire volume into six areas, and all the areas except superblock
504consists of multiple segments as described below.
505
506 align with the zone size <-|
507 |-> align with the segment size
508 _________________________________________________________________________
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509 | | | Segment | Node | Segment | |
510 | Superblock | Checkpoint | Info. | Address | Summary | Main |
511 | (SB) | (CP) | Table (SIT) | Table (NAT) | Area (SSA) | |
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512 |____________|_____2______|______N______|______N______|______N_____|__N___|
513 . .
514 . .
515 . .
516 ._________________________________________.
517 |_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|
518 . .
519 ._________._________
520 |_section_|__...__|_
521 . .
522 .________.
523 |__zone__|
524
525- Superblock (SB)
526 : It is located at the beginning of the partition, and there exist two copies
527 to avoid file system crash. It contains basic partition information and some
528 default parameters of f2fs.
529
530- Checkpoint (CP)
531 : It contains file system information, bitmaps for valid NAT/SIT sets, orphan
532 inode lists, and summary entries of current active segments.
533
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534- Segment Information Table (SIT)
535 : It contains segment information such as valid block count and bitmap for the
536 validity of all the blocks.
537
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538- Node Address Table (NAT)
539 : It is composed of a block address table for all the node blocks stored in
540 Main area.
541
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542- Segment Summary Area (SSA)
543 : It contains summary entries which contains the owner information of all the
544 data and node blocks stored in Main area.
545
546- Main Area
547 : It contains file and directory data including their indices.
548
549In order to avoid misalignment between file system and flash-based storage, F2FS
550aligns the start block address of CP with the segment size. Also, it aligns the
551start block address of Main area with the zone size by reserving some segments
552in SSA area.
553
554Reference the following survey for additional technical details.
555https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey
556
557File System Metadata Structure
558------------------------------
559
560F2FS adopts the checkpointing scheme to maintain file system consistency. At
561mount time, F2FS first tries to find the last valid checkpoint data by scanning
562CP area. In order to reduce the scanning time, F2FS uses only two copies of CP.
563One of them always indicates the last valid data, which is called as shadow copy
564mechanism. In addition to CP, NAT and SIT also adopt the shadow copy mechanism.
565
566For file system consistency, each CP points to which NAT and SIT copies are
567valid, as shown as below.
568
569 +--------+----------+---------+
9268cc35 570 | CP | SIT | NAT |
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571 +--------+----------+---------+
572 . . . .
573 . . . .
574 . . . .
575 +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
9268cc35 576 | CP #0 | CP #1 | SIT #0 | SIT #1 | NAT #0 | NAT #1 |
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577 +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
578 | ^ ^
579 | | |
580 `----------------------------------------'
581
582Index Structure
583---------------
584
585The key data structure to manage the data locations is a "node". Similar to
586traditional file structures, F2FS has three types of node: inode, direct node,
d08ab08d 587indirect node. F2FS assigns 4KB to an inode block which contains 923 data block
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588indices, two direct node pointers, two indirect node pointers, and one double
589indirect node pointer as described below. One direct node block contains 1018
590data blocks, and one indirect node block contains also 1018 node blocks. Thus,
591one inode block (i.e., a file) covers:
592
593 4KB * (923 + 2 * 1018 + 2 * 1018 * 1018 + 1018 * 1018 * 1018) := 3.94TB.
594
595 Inode block (4KB)
596 |- data (923)
597 |- direct node (2)
598 | `- data (1018)
599 |- indirect node (2)
600 | `- direct node (1018)
601 | `- data (1018)
602 `- double indirect node (1)
603 `- indirect node (1018)
604 `- direct node (1018)
605 `- data (1018)
606
607Note that, all the node blocks are mapped by NAT which means the location of
608each node is translated by the NAT table. In the consideration of the wandering
609tree problem, F2FS is able to cut off the propagation of node updates caused by
610leaf data writes.
611
612Directory Structure
613-------------------
614
615A directory entry occupies 11 bytes, which consists of the following attributes.
616
617- hash hash value of the file name
618- ino inode number
619- len the length of file name
620- type file type such as directory, symlink, etc
621
622A dentry block consists of 214 dentry slots and file names. Therein a bitmap is
623used to represent whether each dentry is valid or not. A dentry block occupies
6244KB with the following composition.
625
626 Dentry Block(4 K) = bitmap (27 bytes) + reserved (3 bytes) +
627 dentries(11 * 214 bytes) + file name (8 * 214 bytes)
628
629 [Bucket]
630 +--------------------------------+
631 |dentry block 1 | dentry block 2 |
632 +--------------------------------+
633 . .
634 . .
635 . [Dentry Block Structure: 4KB] .
636 +--------+----------+----------+------------+
637 | bitmap | reserved | dentries | file names |
638 +--------+----------+----------+------------+
639 [Dentry Block: 4KB] . .
640 . .
641 . .
642 +------+------+-----+------+
643 | hash | ino | len | type |
644 +------+------+-----+------+
645 [Dentry Structure: 11 bytes]
646
647F2FS implements multi-level hash tables for directory structure. Each level has
648a hash table with dedicated number of hash buckets as shown below. Note that
649"A(2B)" means a bucket includes 2 data blocks.
650
651----------------------
652A : bucket
653B : block
654N : MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH
655----------------------
656
657level #0 | A(2B)
658 |
659level #1 | A(2B) - A(2B)
660 |
661level #2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B)
662 . | . . . .
663level #N/2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - ... - A(2B)
664 . | . . . .
665level #N | A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - ... - A(4B)
666
667The number of blocks and buckets are determined by,
668
669 ,- 2, if n < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
670 # of blocks in level #n = |
671 `- 4, Otherwise
672
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673 ,- 2^(n + dir_level),
674 | if n + dir_level < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
98e4da8c 675 # of buckets in level #n = |
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676 `- 2^((MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2) - 1),
677 Otherwise
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678
679When F2FS finds a file name in a directory, at first a hash value of the file
680name is calculated. Then, F2FS scans the hash table in level #0 to find the
681dentry consisting of the file name and its inode number. If not found, F2FS
682scans the next hash table in level #1. In this way, F2FS scans hash tables in
683each levels incrementally from 1 to N. In each levels F2FS needs to scan only
684one bucket determined by the following equation, which shows O(log(# of files))
685complexity.
686
687 bucket number to scan in level #n = (hash value) % (# of buckets in level #n)
688
689In the case of file creation, F2FS finds empty consecutive slots that cover the
690file name. F2FS searches the empty slots in the hash tables of whole levels from
6911 to N in the same way as the lookup operation.
692
693The following figure shows an example of two cases holding children.
694 --------------> Dir <--------------
695 | |
696 child child
697
698 child - child [hole] - child
699
700 child - child - child [hole] - [hole] - child
701
702 Case 1: Case 2:
703 Number of children = 6, Number of children = 3,
704 File size = 7 File size = 7
705
706Default Block Allocation
707------------------------
708
709At runtime, F2FS manages six active logs inside "Main" area: Hot/Warm/Cold node
710and Hot/Warm/Cold data.
711
712- Hot node contains direct node blocks of directories.
713- Warm node contains direct node blocks except hot node blocks.
714- Cold node contains indirect node blocks
715- Hot data contains dentry blocks
716- Warm data contains data blocks except hot and cold data blocks
717- Cold data contains multimedia data or migrated data blocks
718
719LFS has two schemes for free space management: threaded log and copy-and-compac-
720tion. The copy-and-compaction scheme which is known as cleaning, is well-suited
721for devices showing very good sequential write performance, since free segments
722are served all the time for writing new data. However, it suffers from cleaning
723overhead under high utilization. Contrarily, the threaded log scheme suffers
724from random writes, but no cleaning process is needed. F2FS adopts a hybrid
725scheme where the copy-and-compaction scheme is adopted by default, but the
726policy is dynamically changed to the threaded log scheme according to the file
727system status.
728
729In order to align F2FS with underlying flash-based storage, F2FS allocates a
730segment in a unit of section. F2FS expects that the section size would be the
731same as the unit size of garbage collection in FTL. Furthermore, with respect
732to the mapping granularity in FTL, F2FS allocates each section of the active
733logs from different zones as much as possible, since FTL can write the data in
734the active logs into one allocation unit according to its mapping granularity.
735
736Cleaning process
737----------------
738
739F2FS does cleaning both on demand and in the background. On-demand cleaning is
740triggered when there are not enough free segments to serve VFS calls. Background
741cleaner is operated by a kernel thread, and triggers the cleaning job when the
742system is idle.
743
744F2FS supports two victim selection policies: greedy and cost-benefit algorithms.
745In the greedy algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment having the smallest number
746of valid blocks. In the cost-benefit algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment
747according to the segment age and the number of valid blocks in order to address
748log block thrashing problem in the greedy algorithm. F2FS adopts the greedy
749algorithm for on-demand cleaner, while background cleaner adopts cost-benefit
750algorithm.
751
752In order to identify whether the data in the victim segment are valid or not,
753F2FS manages a bitmap. Each bit represents the validity of a block, and the
754bitmap is composed of a bit stream covering whole blocks in main area.
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755
756Write-hint Policy
757-----------------
758
7591) whint_mode=off. F2FS only passes down WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET.
760
7612) whint_mode=user-based. F2FS tries to pass down hints given by
762users.
763
764User F2FS Block
765---- ---- -----
766 META WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
767 HOT_NODE "
768 WARM_NODE "
769 COLD_NODE "
770*ioctl(COLD) COLD_DATA WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
771*extension list " "
772
773-- buffered io
774WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME COLD_DATA WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
775WRITE_LIFE_SHORT HOT_DATA WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
776WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET WARM_DATA WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
777WRITE_LIFE_NONE " "
778WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM " "
779WRITE_LIFE_LONG " "
780
781-- direct io
782WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME COLD_DATA WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
783WRITE_LIFE_SHORT HOT_DATA WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
784WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET WARM_DATA WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
785WRITE_LIFE_NONE " WRITE_LIFE_NONE
786WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM " WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM
787WRITE_LIFE_LONG " WRITE_LIFE_LONG
788
7893) whint_mode=fs-based. F2FS passes down hints with its policy.
790
791User F2FS Block
792---- ---- -----
793 META WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM;
794 HOT_NODE WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
795 WARM_NODE "
796 COLD_NODE WRITE_LIFE_NONE
797ioctl(COLD) COLD_DATA WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
798extension list " "
799
800-- buffered io
801WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME COLD_DATA WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
802WRITE_LIFE_SHORT HOT_DATA WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
803WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET WARM_DATA WRITE_LIFE_LONG
804WRITE_LIFE_NONE " "
805WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM " "
806WRITE_LIFE_LONG " "
807
808-- direct io
809WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME COLD_DATA WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
810WRITE_LIFE_SHORT HOT_DATA WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
811WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET WARM_DATA WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
812WRITE_LIFE_NONE " WRITE_LIFE_NONE
813WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM " WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM
814WRITE_LIFE_LONG " WRITE_LIFE_LONG
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815
816Fallocate(2) Policy
817-------------------
818
819The default policy follows the below posix rule.
820
821Allocating disk space
822 The default operation (i.e., mode is zero) of fallocate() allocates
823 the disk space within the range specified by offset and len. The
824 file size (as reported by stat(2)) will be changed if offset+len is
825 greater than the file size. Any subregion within the range specified
826 by offset and len that did not contain data before the call will be
827 initialized to zero. This default behavior closely resembles the
828 behavior of the posix_fallocate(3) library function, and is intended
829 as a method of optimally implementing that function.
830
831However, once F2FS receives ioctl(fd, F2FS_IOC_SET_PIN_FILE) in prior to
832fallocate(fd, DEFAULT_MODE), it allocates on-disk blocks addressess having
833zero or random data, which is useful to the below scenario where:
834 1. create(fd)
835 2. ioctl(fd, F2FS_IOC_SET_PIN_FILE)
836 3. fallocate(fd, 0, 0, size)
837 4. address = fibmap(fd, offset)
838 5. open(blkdev)
839 6. write(blkdev, address)