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| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/filesystems/f2fs.txt | 421 |
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diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/00-INDEX b/Documentation/filesystems/00-INDEX index 7b52ba7bf32..8042050eb26 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/00-INDEX +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/00-INDEX @@ -50,6 +50,8 @@ ext4.txt - info, mount options and specifications for the Ext4 filesystem. files.txt - info on file management in the Linux kernel. +f2fs.txt + - info and mount options for the F2FS filesystem. fuse.txt - info on the Filesystem in User SpacE including mount options. gfs2.txt diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/f2fs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/f2fs.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..8fbd8b46ee3 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/f2fs.txt @@ -0,0 +1,421 @@ +================================================================================ +WHAT IS Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS)? +================================================================================ + +NAND flash memory-based storage devices, such as SSD, eMMC, and SD cards, have +been equipped on a variety systems ranging from mobile to server systems. Since +they are known to have different characteristics from the conventional rotating +disks, a file system, an upper layer to the storage device, should adapt to the +changes from the sketch in the design level. + +F2FS is a file system exploiting NAND flash memory-based storage devices, which +is based on Log-structured File System (LFS). The design has been focused on +addressing the fundamental issues in LFS, which are snowball effect of wandering +tree and high cleaning overhead. + +Since a NAND flash memory-based storage device shows different characteristic +according to its internal geometry or flash memory management scheme, namely FTL, +F2FS and its tools support various parameters not only for configuring on-disk +layout, but also for selecting allocation and cleaning algorithms. + +The file system formatting tool, "mkfs.f2fs", is available from the following +git tree: +>> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jaegeuk/f2fs-tools.git + +For reporting bugs and sending patches, please use the following mailing list: +>> linux-f2fs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net + +================================================================================ +BACKGROUND AND DESIGN ISSUES +================================================================================ + +Log-structured File System (LFS) +-------------------------------- +"A log-structured file system writes all modifications to disk sequentially in +a log-like structure, thereby speeding up both file writing and crash recovery. +The log is the only structure on disk; it contains indexing information so that +files can be read back from the log efficiently. In order to maintain large free +areas on disk for fast writing, we divide the log into segments and use a +segment cleaner to compress the live information from heavily fragmented +segments." from Rosenblum, M. and Ousterhout, J. K., 1992, "The design and +implementation of a log-structured file system", ACM Trans. Computer Systems +10, 1, 26–52. + +Wandering Tree Problem +---------------------- +In LFS, when a file data is updated and written to the end of log, its direct +pointer block is updated due to the changed location. Then the indirect pointer +block is also updated due to the direct pointer block update. In this manner, +the upper index structures such as inode, inode map, and checkpoint block are +also updated recursively. This problem is called as wandering tree problem [1], +and in order to enhance the performance, it should eliminate or relax the update +propagation as much as possible. + +[1] Bityutskiy, A. 2005. JFFS3 design issues. http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/ + +Cleaning Overhead +----------------- +Since LFS is based on out-of-place writes, it produces so many obsolete blocks +scattered across the whole storage. In order to serve new empty log space, it +needs to reclaim these obsolete blocks seamlessly to users. This job is called +as a cleaning process. + +The process consists of three operations as follows. +1. A victim segment is selected through referencing segment usage table. +2. It loads parent index structures of all the data in the victim identified by + segment summary blocks. +3. It checks the cross-reference between the data and its parent index structure. +4. It moves valid data selectively. + +This cleaning job may cause unexpected long delays, so the most important goal +is to hide the latencies to users. And also definitely, it should reduce the +amount of valid data to be moved, and move them quickly as well. + +================================================================================ +KEY FEATURES +================================================================================ + +Flash Awareness +--------------- +- Enlarge the random write area for better performance, but provide the high + spatial locality +- Align FS data structures to the operational units in FTL as best efforts + +Wandering Tree Problem +---------------------- +- Use a term, “node”, that represents inodes as well as various pointer blocks +- Introduce Node Address Table (NAT) containing the locations of all the “node” + blocks; this will cut off the update propagation. + +Cleaning Overhead +----------------- +- Support a background cleaning process +- Support greedy and cost-benefit algorithms for victim selection policies +- Support multi-head logs for static/dynamic hot and cold data separation +- Introduce adaptive logging for efficient block allocation + +================================================================================ +MOUNT OPTIONS +================================================================================ + +background_gc_off Turn off cleaning operations, namely garbage collection, + triggered in background when I/O subsystem is idle. +disable_roll_forward Disable the roll-forward recovery routine +discard Issue discard/TRIM commands when a segment is cleaned. +no_heap Disable heap-style segment allocation which finds free + segments for data from the beginning of main area, while + for node from the end of main area. +nouser_xattr Disable Extended User Attributes. Note: xattr is enabled + by default if CONFIG_F2FS_FS_XATTR is selected. +noacl Disable POSIX Access Control List. Note: acl is enabled + by default if CONFIG_F2FS_FS_POSIX_ACL is selected. +active_logs=%u Support configuring the number of active logs. In the + current design, f2fs supports only 2, 4, and 6 logs. + Default number is 6. +disable_ext_identify Disable the extension list configured by mkfs, so f2fs + does not aware of cold files such as media files. + +================================================================================ +DEBUGFS ENTRIES +================================================================================ + +/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/ contains information about all the partitions mounted as +f2fs. Each file shows the whole f2fs information. + +/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/status includes: + - major file system information managed by f2fs currently + - average SIT information about whole segments + - current memory footprint consumed by f2fs. + +================================================================================ +USAGE +================================================================================ + +1. Download userland tools and compile them. + +2. Skip, if f2fs was compiled statically inside kernel. + Otherwise, insert the f2fs.ko module. + # insmod f2fs.ko + +3. Create a directory trying to mount + # mkdir /mnt/f2fs + +4. Format the block device, and then mount as f2fs + # mkfs.f2fs -l label /dev/block_device + # mount -t f2fs /dev/block_device /mnt/f2fs + +Format options +-------------- +-l [label] : Give a volume label, up to 256 unicode name. +-a [0 or 1] : Split start location of each area for heap-based allocation. + 1 is set by default, which performs this. +-o [int] : Set overprovision ratio in percent over volume size. + 5 is set by default. +-s [int] : Set the number of segments per section. + 1 is set by default. +-z [int] : Set the number of sections per zone. + 1 is set by default. +-e [str] : Set basic extension list. e.g. "mp3,gif,mov" + +================================================================================ +DESIGN +================================================================================ + +On-disk Layout +-------------- + +F2FS divides the whole volume into a number of segments, each of which is fixed +to 2MB in size. A section is composed of consecutive segments, and a zone +consists of a set of sections. By default, section and zone sizes are set to one +segment size identically, but users can easily modify the sizes by mkfs. + +F2FS splits the entire volume into six areas, and all the areas except superblock +consists of multiple segments as described below. + + align with the zone size <-| + |-> align with the segment size + _________________________________________________________________________ + | | | Node | Segment | Segment | | + | Superblock | Checkpoint | Address | Info. | Summary | Main | + | (SB) | (CP) | Table (NAT) | Table (SIT) | Area (SSA) | | + |____________|_____2______|______N______|______N______|______N_____|__N___| + . . + . . + . . + ._________________________________________. + |_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_| + . . + ._________._________ + |_section_|__...__|_ + . . + .________. + |__zone__| + +- Superblock (SB) + : It is located at the beginning of the partition, and there exist two copies + to avoid file system crash. It contains basic partition information and some + default parameters of f2fs. + +- Checkpoint (CP) + : It contains file system information, bitmaps for valid NAT/SIT sets, orphan + inode lists, and summary entries of current active segments. + +- Node Address Table (NAT) + : It is composed of a block address table for all the node blocks stored in + Main area. + +- Segment Information Table (SIT) + : It contains segment information such as valid block count and bitmap for the + validity of all the blocks. + +- Segment Summary Area (SSA) + : It contains summary entries which contains the owner information of all the + data and node blocks stored in Main area. + +- Main Area + : It contains file and directory data including their indices. + +In order to avoid misalignment between file system and flash-based storage, F2FS +aligns the start block address of CP with the segment size. Also, it aligns the +start block address of Main area with the zone size by reserving some segments +in SSA area. + +Reference the following survey for additional technical details. +https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey + +File System Metadata Structure +------------------------------ + +F2FS adopts the checkpointing scheme to maintain file system consistency. At +mount time, F2FS first tries to find the last valid checkpoint data by scanning +CP area. In order to reduce the scanning time, F2FS uses only two copies of CP. +One of them always indicates the last valid data, which is called as shadow copy +mechanism. In addition to CP, NAT and SIT also adopt the shadow copy mechanism. + +For file system consistency, each CP points to which NAT and SIT copies are +valid, as shown as below. + + +--------+----------+---------+ + | CP | NAT | SIT | + +--------+----------+---------+ + . . . . + . . . . + . . . . + +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ + | CP #0 | CP #1 | NAT #0 | NAT #1 | SIT #0 | SIT #1 | + +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+ + | ^ ^ + | | | + `----------------------------------------' + +Index Structure +--------------- + +The key data structure to manage the data locations is a "node". Similar to +traditional file structures, F2FS has three types of node: inode, direct node, +indirect node. F2FS assigns 4KB to an inode block which contains 923 data block +indices, two direct node pointers, two indirect node pointers, and one double +indirect node pointer as described below. One direct node block contains 1018 +data blocks, and one indirect node block contains also 1018 node blocks. Thus, +one inode block (i.e., a file) covers: + + 4KB * (923 + 2 * 1018 + 2 * 1018 * 1018 + 1018 * 1018 * 1018) := 3.94TB. + + Inode block (4KB) + |- data (923) + |- direct node (2) + | `- data (1018) + |- indirect node (2) + | `- direct node (1018) + | `- data (1018) + `- double indirect node (1) + `- indirect node (1018) + `- direct node (1018) + `- data (1018) + +Note that, all the node blocks are mapped by NAT which means the location of +each node is translated by the NAT table. In the consideration of the wandering +tree problem, F2FS is able to cut off the propagation of node updates caused by +leaf data writes. + +Directory Structure +------------------- + +A directory entry occupies 11 bytes, which consists of the following attributes. + +- hash hash value of the file name +- ino inode number +- len the length of file name +- type file type such as directory, symlink, etc + +A dentry block consists of 214 dentry slots and file names. Therein a bitmap is +used to represent whether each dentry is valid or not. A dentry block occupies +4KB with the following composition. + + Dentry Block(4 K) = bitmap (27 bytes) + reserved (3 bytes) + + dentries(11 * 214 bytes) + file name (8 * 214 bytes) + + [Bucket] + +--------------------------------+ + |dentry block 1 | dentry block 2 | + +--------------------------------+ + . . + . . + . [Dentry Block Structure: 4KB] . + +--------+----------+----------+------------+ + | bitmap | reserved | dentries | file names | + +--------+----------+----------+------------+ + [Dentry Block: 4KB] . . + . . + . . + +------+------+-----+------+ + | hash | ino | len | type | + +------+------+-----+------+ + [Dentry Structure: 11 bytes] + +F2FS implements multi-level hash tables for directory structure. Each level has +a hash table with dedicated number of hash buckets as shown below. Note that +"A(2B)" means a bucket includes 2 data blocks. + +---------------------- +A : bucket +B : block +N : MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH +---------------------- + +level #0 | A(2B) + | +level #1 | A(2B) - A(2B) + | +level #2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) + . | . . . . +level #N/2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - ... - A(2B) + . | . . . . +level #N | A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - ... - A(4B) + +The number of blocks and buckets are determined by, + + ,- 2, if n < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2, + # of blocks in level #n = | + `- 4, Otherwise + + ,- 2^n, if n < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2, + # of buckets in level #n = | + `- 2^((MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2) - 1), Otherwise + +When F2FS finds a file name in a directory, at first a hash value of the file +name is calculated. Then, F2FS scans the hash table in level #0 to find the +dentry consisting of the file name and its inode number. If not found, F2FS +scans the next hash table in level #1. In this way, F2FS scans hash tables in +each levels incrementally from 1 to N. In each levels F2FS needs to scan only +one bucket determined by the following equation, which shows O(log(# of files)) +complexity. + + bucket number to scan in level #n = (hash value) % (# of buckets in level #n) + +In the case of file creation, F2FS finds empty consecutive slots that cover the +file name. F2FS searches the empty slots in the hash tables of whole levels from +1 to N in the same way as the lookup operation. + +The following figure shows an example of two cases holding children. + --------------> Dir <-------------- + | | + child child + + child - child [hole] - child + + child - child - child [hole] - [hole] - child + + Case 1: Case 2: + Number of children = 6, Number of children = 3, + File size = 7 File size = 7 + +Default Block Allocation +------------------------ + +At runtime, F2FS manages six active logs inside "Main" area: Hot/Warm/Cold node +and Hot/Warm/Cold data. + +- Hot node contains direct node blocks of directories. +- Warm node contains direct node blocks except hot node blocks. +- Cold node contains indirect node blocks +- Hot data contains dentry blocks +- Warm data contains data blocks except hot and cold data blocks +- Cold data contains multimedia data or migrated data blocks + +LFS has two schemes for free space management: threaded log and copy-and-compac- +tion. The copy-and-compaction scheme which is known as cleaning, is well-suited +for devices showing very good sequential write performance, since free segments +are served all the time for writing new data. However, it suffers from cleaning +overhead under high utilization. Contrarily, the threaded log scheme suffers +from random writes, but no cleaning process is needed. F2FS adopts a hybrid +scheme where the copy-and-compaction scheme is adopted by default, but the +policy is dynamically changed to the threaded log scheme according to the file +system status. + +In order to align F2FS with underlying flash-based storage, F2FS allocates a +segment in a unit of section. F2FS expects that the section size would be the +same as the unit size of garbage collection in FTL. Furthermore, with respect +to the mapping granularity in FTL, F2FS allocates each section of the active +logs from different zones as much as possible, since FTL can write the data in +the active logs into one allocation unit according to its mapping granularity. + +Cleaning process +---------------- + +F2FS does cleaning both on demand and in the background. On-demand cleaning is +triggered when there are not enough free segments to serve VFS calls. Background +cleaner is operated by a kernel thread, and triggers the cleaning job when the +system is idle. + +F2FS supports two victim selection policies: greedy and cost-benefit algorithms. +In the greedy algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment having the smallest number +of valid blocks. In the cost-benefit algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment +according to the segment age and the number of valid blocks in order to address +log block thrashing problem in the greedy algorithm. F2FS adopts the greedy +algorithm for on-demand cleaner, while background cleaner adopts cost-benefit +algorithm. + +In order to identify whether the data in the victim segment are valid or not, +F2FS manages a bitmap. Each bit represents the validity of a block, and the +bitmap is composed of a bit stream covering whole blocks in main area. |