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+
+The LogFS Flash Filesystem
+==========================
+
+Specification
+=============
+
+Superblocks
+-----------
+
+Two superblocks exist at the beginning and end of the filesystem.
+Each superblock is 256 Bytes large, with another 3840 Bytes reserved
+for future purposes, making a total of 4096 Bytes.
+
+Superblock locations may differ for MTD and block devices.  On MTD the
+first non-bad block contains a superblock in the first 4096 Bytes and
+the last non-bad block contains a superblock in the last 4096 Bytes.
+On block devices, the first 4096 Bytes of the device contain the first
+superblock and the last aligned 4096 Byte-block contains the second
+superblock.
+
+For the most part, the superblocks can be considered read-only.  They
+are written only to correct errors detected within the superblocks,
+move the journal and change the filesystem parameters through tunefs.
+As a result, the superblock does not contain any fields that require
+constant updates, like the amount of free space, etc.
+
+Segments
+--------
+
+The space in the device is split up into equal-sized segments.
+Segments are the primary write unit of LogFS.  Within each segments,
+writes happen from front (low addresses) to back (high addresses.  If
+only a partial segment has been written, the segment number, the
+current position within and optionally a write buffer are stored in
+the journal.
+
+Segments are erased as a whole.  Therefore Garbage Collection may be
+required to completely free a segment before doing so.
+
+Journal
+--------
+
+The journal contains all global information about the filesystem that
+is subject to frequent change.  At mount time, it has to be scanned
+for the most recent commit entry, which contains a list of pointers to
+all currently valid entries.
+
+Object Store
+------------
+
+All space except for the superblocks and journal is part of the object
+store.  Each segment contains a segment header and a number of
+objects, each consisting of the object header and the payload.
+Objects are either inodes, directory entries (dentries), file data
+blocks or indirect blocks.
+
+Levels
+------
+
+Garbage collection (GC) may fail if all data is written
+indiscriminately.  One requirement of GC is that data is separated
+roughly according to the distance between the tree root and the data.
+Effectively that means all file data is on level 0, indirect blocks
+are on levels 1, 2, 3 4 or 5 for 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x or 5x indirect blocks,
+respectively.  Inode file data is on level 6 for the inodes and 7-11
+for indirect blocks.
+
+Each segment contains objects of a single level only.  As a result,
+each level requires its own separate segment to be open for writing.
+
+Inode File
+----------
+
+All inodes are stored in a special file, the inode file.  Single
+exception is the inode file's inode (master inode) which for obvious
+reasons is stored in the journal instead.  Instead of data blocks, the
+leaf nodes of the inode files are inodes.
+
+Aliases
+-------
+
+Writes in LogFS are done by means of a wandering tree.  A naïve
+implementation would require that for each write or a block, all
+parent blocks are written as well, since the block pointers have
+changed.  Such an implementation would not be very efficient.
+
+In LogFS, the block pointer changes are cached in the journal by means
+of alias entries.  Each alias consists of its logical address - inode
+number, block index, level and child number (index into block) - and
+the changed data.  Any 8-byte word can be changes in this manner.
+
+Currently aliases are used for block pointers, file size, file used
+bytes and the height of an inodes indirect tree.
+
+Segment Aliases
+---------------
+
+Related to regular aliases, these are used to handle bad blocks.
+Initially, bad blocks are handled by moving the affected segment
+content to a spare segment and noting this move in the journal with a
+segment alias, a simple (to, from) tupel.  GC will later empty this
+segment and the alias can be removed again.  This is used on MTD only.
+
+Vim
+---
+
+By cleverly predicting the life time of data, it is possible to
+separate long-living data from short-living data and thereby reduce
+the GC overhead later.  Each type of distinc life expectency (vim) can
+have a separate segment open for writing.  Each (level, vim) tupel can
+be open just once.  If an open segment with unknown vim is encountered
+at mount time, it is closed and ignored henceforth.
+
+Indirect Tree
+-------------
+
+Inodes in LogFS are similar to FFS-style filesystems with direct and
+indirect block pointers.  One difference is that LogFS uses a single
+indirect pointer that can be either a 1x, 2x, etc. indirect pointer.
+A height field in the inode defines the height of the indirect tree
+and thereby the indirection of the pointer.
+
+Another difference is the addressing of indirect blocks.  In LogFS,
+the first 16 pointers in the first indirect block are left empty,
+corresponding to the 16 direct pointers in the inode.  In ext2 (maybe
+others as well) the first pointer in the first indirect block
+corresponds to logical block 12, skipping the 12 direct pointers.
+So where ext2 is using arithmetic to better utilize space, LogFS keeps
+arithmetic simple and uses compression to save space.
+
+Compression
+-----------
+
+Both file data and metadata can be compressed.  Compression for file
+data can be enabled with chattr +c and disabled with chattr -c.  Doing
+so has no effect on existing data, but new data will be stored
+accordingly.  New inodes will inherit the compression flag of the
+parent directory.
+
+Metadata is always compressed.  However, the space accounting ignores
+this and charges for the uncompressed size.  Failing to do so could
+result in GC failures when, after moving some data, indirect blocks
+compress worse than previously.  Even on a 100% full medium, GC may
+not consume any extra space, so the compression gains are lost space
+to the user.
+
+However, they are not lost space to the filesystem internals.  By
+cheating the user for those bytes, the filesystem gained some slack
+space and GC will run less often and faster.
+
+Garbage Collection and Wear Leveling
+------------------------------------
+
+Garbage collection is invoked whenever the number of free segments
+falls below a threshold.  The best (known) candidate is picked based
+on the least amount of valid data contained in the segment.  All
+remaining valid data is copied elsewhere, thereby invalidating it.
+
+The GC code also checks for aliases and writes then back if their
+number gets too large.
+
+Wear leveling is done by occasionally picking a suboptimal segment for
+garbage collection.  If a stale segments erase count is significantly
+lower than the active segments' erase counts, it will be picked.  Wear
+leveling is rate limited, so it will never monopolize the device for
+more than one segment worth at a time.
+
+Values for "occasionally", "significantly lower" are compile time
+constants.
+
+Hashed directories
+------------------
+
+To satisfy efficient lookup(), directory entries are hashed and
+located based on the hash.  In order to both support large directories
+and not be overly inefficient for small directories, several hash
+tables of increasing size are used.  For each table, the hash value
+modulo the table size gives the table index.
+
+Tables sizes are chosen to limit the number of indirect blocks with a
+fully populated table to 0, 1, 2 or 3 respectively.  So the first
+table contains 16 entries, the second 512-16, etc.
+
+The last table is special in several ways.  First its size depends on
+the effective 32bit limit on telldir/seekdir cookies.  Since logfs
+uses the upper half of the address space for indirect blocks, the size
+is limited to 2^31.  Secondly the table contains hash buckets with 16
+entries each.
+
+Using single-entry buckets would result in birthday "attacks".  At
+just 2^16 used entries, hash collisions would be likely (P >= 0.5).
+My math skills are insufficient to do the combinatorics for the 17x
+collisions necessary to overflow a bucket, but testing showed that in
+10,000 runs the lowest directory fill before a bucket overflow was
+188,057,130 entries with an average of 315,149,915 entries.  So for
+directory sizes of up to a million, bucket overflows should be
+virtually impossible under normal circumstances.
+
+With carefully chosen filenames, it is obviously possible to cause an
+overflow with just 21 entries (4 higher tables + 16 entries + 1).  So
+there may be a security concern if a malicious user has write access
+to a directory.
+
+Open For Discussion
+===================
+
+Device Address Space
+--------------------
+
+A device address space is used for caching.  Both block devices and
+MTD provide functions to either read a single page or write a segment.
+Partial segments may be written for data integrity, but where possible
+complete segments are written for performance on simple block device
+flash media.
+
+Meta Inodes
+-----------
+
+Inodes are stored in the inode file, which is just a regular file for
+most purposes.  At umount time, however, the inode file needs to
+remain open until all dirty inodes are written.  So
+generic_shutdown_super() may not close this inode, but shouldn't
+complain about remaining inodes due to the inode file either.  Same
+goes for mapping inode of the device address space.
+
+Currently logfs uses a hack that essentially copies part of fs/inode.c
+code over.  A general solution would be preferred.
+
+Indirect block mapping
+----------------------
+
+With compression, the block device (or mapping inode) cannot be used
+to cache indirect blocks.  Some other place is required.  Currently
+logfs uses the top half of each inode's address space.  The low 8TB
+(on 32bit) are filled with file data, the high 8TB are used for
+indirect blocks.
+
+One problem is that 16TB files created on 64bit systems actually have
+data in the top 8TB.  But files >16TB would cause problems anyway, so
+only the limit has changed.