f2fs: catch up to v4.14-rc1
[GitHub/exynos8895/android_kernel_samsung_universal8895.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
c1286ff4 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.
13f00235 128noinline_xattr Disable the inline xattrs feature.
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129inline_data Enable the inline data feature: New created small(<~3.4k)
130 files can be written into inode block.
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131inline_dentry Enable the inline dir feature: data in new created
132 directory entries can be written into inode block. The
133 space of inode block which is used to store inline
134 dentries is limited to ~3.4k.
c1286ff4 135noinline_dentry Diable the inline dentry feature.
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136flush_merge Merge concurrent cache_flush commands as much as possible
137 to eliminate redundant command issues. If the underlying
138 device handles the cache_flush command relatively slowly,
139 recommend to enable this option.
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140nobarrier This option can be used if underlying storage guarantees
141 its cached data should be written to the novolatile area.
142 If this option is set, no cache_flush commands are issued
143 but f2fs still guarantees the write ordering of all the
144 data writes.
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145fastboot This option is used when a system wants to reduce mount
146 time as much as possible, even though normal performance
147 can be sacrificed.
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148extent_cache Enable an extent cache based on rb-tree, it can cache
149 as many as extent which map between contiguous logical
150 address and physical address per inode, resulting in
7daaea25 151 increasing the cache hit ratio. Set by default.
c1286ff4 152noextent_cache Disable an extent cache based on rb-tree explicitly, see
7daaea25 153 the above extent_cache mount option.
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154noinline_data Disable the inline data feature, inline data feature is
155 enabled by default.
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156data_flush Enable data flushing before checkpoint in order to
157 persist data of regular and symlink.
158mode=%s Control block allocation mode which supports "adaptive"
159 and "lfs". In "lfs" mode, there should be no random
160 writes towards main area.
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161io_bits=%u Set the bit size of write IO requests. It should be set
162 with "mode=lfs".
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163usrquota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
164grpquota Enable plain group disk quota accounting.
165prjquota Enable plain project quota accounting.
166usrjquota=<file> Appoint specified file and type during mount, so that quota
167grpjquota=<file> information can be properly updated during recovery flow,
168prjjquota=<file> <quota file>: must be in root directory;
169jqfmt=<quota type> <quota type>: [vfsold,vfsv0,vfsv1].
170offusrjquota Turn off user journelled quota.
171offgrpjquota Turn off group journelled quota.
172offprjjquota Turn off project journelled quota.
173quota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
174noquota Disable all plain disk quota option.
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175
176================================================================================
177DEBUGFS ENTRIES
178================================================================================
179
180/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/ contains information about all the partitions mounted as
181f2fs. Each file shows the whole f2fs information.
182
183/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/status includes:
184 - major file system information managed by f2fs currently
185 - average SIT information about whole segments
186 - current memory footprint consumed by f2fs.
187
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188================================================================================
189SYSFS ENTRIES
190================================================================================
191
192Information about mounted f2f2 file systems can be found in
193/sys/fs/f2fs. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
194/sys/fs/f2fs based on its device name (i.e., /sys/fs/f2fs/sda).
195The files in each per-device directory are shown in table below.
196
197Files in /sys/fs/f2fs/<devname>
198(see also Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-fs-f2fs)
199..............................................................................
200 File Content
201
202 gc_max_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the maximum sleep
203 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
204 in milliseconds.
205
206 gc_min_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the minimum sleep
207 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
208 in milliseconds.
209
210 gc_no_gc_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the default sleep
211 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
212 in milliseconds.
213
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214 gc_idle This parameter controls the selection of victim
215 policy for garbage collection. Setting gc_idle = 0
216 (default) will disable this option. Setting
217 gc_idle = 1 will select the Cost Benefit approach
c1286ff4 218 & setting gc_idle = 2 will select the greedy approach.
d2dc095f 219
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220 gc_urgent This parameter controls triggering background GCs
221 urgently or not. Setting gc_urgent = 0 [default]
222 makes back to default behavior, while if it is set
223 to 1, background thread starts to do GC by given
224 gc_urgent_sleep_time interval.
225
226 gc_urgent_sleep_time This parameter controls sleep time for gc_urgent.
227 500 ms is set by default. See above gc_urgent.
228
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229 reclaim_segments This parameter controls the number of prefree
230 segments to be reclaimed. If the number of prefree
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231 segments is larger than the number of segments
232 in the proportion to the percentage over total
233 volume size, f2fs tries to conduct checkpoint to
234 reclaim the prefree segments to free segments.
235 By default, 5% over total # of segments.
ea91e9b0 236
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237 max_small_discards This parameter controls the number of discard
238 commands that consist small blocks less than 2MB.
239 The candidates to be discarded are cached until
240 checkpoint is triggered, and issued during the
241 checkpoint. By default, it is disabled with 0.
242
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243 trim_sections This parameter controls the number of sections
244 to be trimmed out in batch mode when FITRIM
245 conducts. 32 sections is set by default.
246
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247 ipu_policy This parameter controls the policy of in-place
248 updates in f2fs. There are five policies:
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249 0x01: F2FS_IPU_FORCE, 0x02: F2FS_IPU_SSR,
250 0x04: F2FS_IPU_UTIL, 0x08: F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL,
251 0x10: F2FS_IPU_FSYNC.
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252
253 min_ipu_util This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
254 in-place-updates. The number indicates percentage
255 of the filesystem utilization, and used by
256 F2FS_IPU_UTIL and F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL policies.
257
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258 min_fsync_blocks This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
259 in-place-updates when F2FS_IPU_FSYNC mode is set.
260 The number indicates the number of dirty pages
261 when fsync needs to flush on its call path. If
262 the number is less than this value, it triggers
263 in-place-updates.
264
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265 max_victim_search This parameter controls the number of trials to
266 find a victim segment when conducting SSR and
267 cleaning operations. The default value is 4096
268 which covers 8GB block address range.
269
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270 dir_level This parameter controls the directory level to
271 support large directory. If a directory has a
272 number of files, it can reduce the file lookup
273 latency by increasing this dir_level value.
274 Otherwise, it needs to decrease this value to
275 reduce the space overhead. The default value is 0.
276
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277 ram_thresh This parameter controls the memory footprint used
278 by free nids and cached nat entries. By default,
279 10 is set, which indicates 10 MB / 1 GB RAM.
280
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281================================================================================
282USAGE
283================================================================================
284
2851. Download userland tools and compile them.
286
2872. Skip, if f2fs was compiled statically inside kernel.
288 Otherwise, insert the f2fs.ko module.
289 # insmod f2fs.ko
290
2913. Create a directory trying to mount
292 # mkdir /mnt/f2fs
293
2944. Format the block device, and then mount as f2fs
295 # mkfs.f2fs -l label /dev/block_device
296 # mount -t f2fs /dev/block_device /mnt/f2fs
297
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298mkfs.f2fs
299---------
300The mkfs.f2fs is for the use of formatting a partition as the f2fs filesystem,
301which builds a basic on-disk layout.
302
303The options consist of:
1571f84a 304-l [label] : Give a volume label, up to 512 unicode name.
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305-a [0 or 1] : Split start location of each area for heap-based allocation.
306 1 is set by default, which performs this.
307-o [int] : Set overprovision ratio in percent over volume size.
308 5 is set by default.
309-s [int] : Set the number of segments per section.
310 1 is set by default.
311-z [int] : Set the number of sections per zone.
312 1 is set by default.
313-e [str] : Set basic extension list. e.g. "mp3,gif,mov"
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314-t [0 or 1] : Disable discard command or not.
315 1 is set by default, which conducts discard.
98e4da8c 316
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317fsck.f2fs
318---------
319The fsck.f2fs is a tool to check the consistency of an f2fs-formatted
320partition, which examines whether the filesystem metadata and user-made data
321are cross-referenced correctly or not.
322Note that, initial version of the tool does not fix any inconsistency.
323
324The options consist of:
325 -d debug level [default:0]
326
327dump.f2fs
328---------
329The dump.f2fs shows the information of specific inode and dumps SSA and SIT to
330file. Each file is dump_ssa and dump_sit.
331
332The dump.f2fs is used to debug on-disk data structures of the f2fs filesystem.
c1286ff4 333It shows on-disk inode information recognized by a given inode number, and is
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334able to dump all the SSA and SIT entries into predefined files, ./dump_ssa and
335./dump_sit respectively.
336
337The options consist of:
338 -d debug level [default:0]
339 -i inode no (hex)
340 -s [SIT dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
341 -a [SSA dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
342
343Examples:
344# dump.f2fs -i [ino] /dev/sdx
345# dump.f2fs -s 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SIT dump)
346# dump.f2fs -a 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SSA dump)
347
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348================================================================================
349DESIGN
350================================================================================
351
352On-disk Layout
353--------------
354
355F2FS divides the whole volume into a number of segments, each of which is fixed
356to 2MB in size. A section is composed of consecutive segments, and a zone
357consists of a set of sections. By default, section and zone sizes are set to one
358segment size identically, but users can easily modify the sizes by mkfs.
359
360F2FS splits the entire volume into six areas, and all the areas except superblock
361consists of multiple segments as described below.
362
363 align with the zone size <-|
364 |-> align with the segment size
365 _________________________________________________________________________
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366 | | | Segment | Node | Segment | |
367 | Superblock | Checkpoint | Info. | Address | Summary | Main |
368 | (SB) | (CP) | Table (SIT) | Table (NAT) | Area (SSA) | |
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369 |____________|_____2______|______N______|______N______|______N_____|__N___|
370 . .
371 . .
372 . .
373 ._________________________________________.
374 |_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|
375 . .
376 ._________._________
377 |_section_|__...__|_
378 . .
379 .________.
380 |__zone__|
381
382- Superblock (SB)
383 : It is located at the beginning of the partition, and there exist two copies
384 to avoid file system crash. It contains basic partition information and some
385 default parameters of f2fs.
386
387- Checkpoint (CP)
388 : It contains file system information, bitmaps for valid NAT/SIT sets, orphan
389 inode lists, and summary entries of current active segments.
390
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391- Segment Information Table (SIT)
392 : It contains segment information such as valid block count and bitmap for the
393 validity of all the blocks.
394
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395- Node Address Table (NAT)
396 : It is composed of a block address table for all the node blocks stored in
397 Main area.
398
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399- Segment Summary Area (SSA)
400 : It contains summary entries which contains the owner information of all the
401 data and node blocks stored in Main area.
402
403- Main Area
404 : It contains file and directory data including their indices.
405
406In order to avoid misalignment between file system and flash-based storage, F2FS
407aligns the start block address of CP with the segment size. Also, it aligns the
408start block address of Main area with the zone size by reserving some segments
409in SSA area.
410
411Reference the following survey for additional technical details.
412https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey
413
414File System Metadata Structure
415------------------------------
416
417F2FS adopts the checkpointing scheme to maintain file system consistency. At
418mount time, F2FS first tries to find the last valid checkpoint data by scanning
419CP area. In order to reduce the scanning time, F2FS uses only two copies of CP.
420One of them always indicates the last valid data, which is called as shadow copy
421mechanism. In addition to CP, NAT and SIT also adopt the shadow copy mechanism.
422
423For file system consistency, each CP points to which NAT and SIT copies are
424valid, as shown as below.
425
426 +--------+----------+---------+
9268cc35 427 | CP | SIT | NAT |
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428 +--------+----------+---------+
429 . . . .
430 . . . .
431 . . . .
432 +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
9268cc35 433 | CP #0 | CP #1 | SIT #0 | SIT #1 | NAT #0 | NAT #1 |
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434 +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
435 | ^ ^
436 | | |
437 `----------------------------------------'
438
439Index Structure
440---------------
441
442The key data structure to manage the data locations is a "node". Similar to
443traditional file structures, F2FS has three types of node: inode, direct node,
d08ab08d 444indirect node. F2FS assigns 4KB to an inode block which contains 923 data block
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445indices, two direct node pointers, two indirect node pointers, and one double
446indirect node pointer as described below. One direct node block contains 1018
447data blocks, and one indirect node block contains also 1018 node blocks. Thus,
448one inode block (i.e., a file) covers:
449
450 4KB * (923 + 2 * 1018 + 2 * 1018 * 1018 + 1018 * 1018 * 1018) := 3.94TB.
451
452 Inode block (4KB)
453 |- data (923)
454 |- direct node (2)
455 | `- data (1018)
456 |- indirect node (2)
457 | `- direct node (1018)
458 | `- data (1018)
459 `- double indirect node (1)
460 `- indirect node (1018)
461 `- direct node (1018)
462 `- data (1018)
463
464Note that, all the node blocks are mapped by NAT which means the location of
465each node is translated by the NAT table. In the consideration of the wandering
466tree problem, F2FS is able to cut off the propagation of node updates caused by
467leaf data writes.
468
469Directory Structure
470-------------------
471
472A directory entry occupies 11 bytes, which consists of the following attributes.
473
474- hash hash value of the file name
475- ino inode number
476- len the length of file name
477- type file type such as directory, symlink, etc
478
479A dentry block consists of 214 dentry slots and file names. Therein a bitmap is
480used to represent whether each dentry is valid or not. A dentry block occupies
4814KB with the following composition.
482
483 Dentry Block(4 K) = bitmap (27 bytes) + reserved (3 bytes) +
484 dentries(11 * 214 bytes) + file name (8 * 214 bytes)
485
486 [Bucket]
487 +--------------------------------+
488 |dentry block 1 | dentry block 2 |
489 +--------------------------------+
490 . .
491 . .
492 . [Dentry Block Structure: 4KB] .
493 +--------+----------+----------+------------+
494 | bitmap | reserved | dentries | file names |
495 +--------+----------+----------+------------+
496 [Dentry Block: 4KB] . .
497 . .
498 . .
499 +------+------+-----+------+
500 | hash | ino | len | type |
501 +------+------+-----+------+
502 [Dentry Structure: 11 bytes]
503
504F2FS implements multi-level hash tables for directory structure. Each level has
505a hash table with dedicated number of hash buckets as shown below. Note that
506"A(2B)" means a bucket includes 2 data blocks.
507
508----------------------
509A : bucket
510B : block
511N : MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH
512----------------------
513
514level #0 | A(2B)
515 |
516level #1 | A(2B) - A(2B)
517 |
518level #2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B)
519 . | . . . .
520level #N/2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - ... - A(2B)
521 . | . . . .
522level #N | A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - ... - A(4B)
523
524The number of blocks and buckets are determined by,
525
526 ,- 2, if n < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
527 # of blocks in level #n = |
528 `- 4, Otherwise
529
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530 ,- 2^(n + dir_level),
531 | if n + dir_level < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
98e4da8c 532 # of buckets in level #n = |
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533 `- 2^((MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2) - 1),
534 Otherwise
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535
536When F2FS finds a file name in a directory, at first a hash value of the file
537name is calculated. Then, F2FS scans the hash table in level #0 to find the
538dentry consisting of the file name and its inode number. If not found, F2FS
539scans the next hash table in level #1. In this way, F2FS scans hash tables in
540each levels incrementally from 1 to N. In each levels F2FS needs to scan only
541one bucket determined by the following equation, which shows O(log(# of files))
542complexity.
543
544 bucket number to scan in level #n = (hash value) % (# of buckets in level #n)
545
546In the case of file creation, F2FS finds empty consecutive slots that cover the
547file name. F2FS searches the empty slots in the hash tables of whole levels from
5481 to N in the same way as the lookup operation.
549
550The following figure shows an example of two cases holding children.
551 --------------> Dir <--------------
552 | |
553 child child
554
555 child - child [hole] - child
556
557 child - child - child [hole] - [hole] - child
558
559 Case 1: Case 2:
560 Number of children = 6, Number of children = 3,
561 File size = 7 File size = 7
562
563Default Block Allocation
564------------------------
565
566At runtime, F2FS manages six active logs inside "Main" area: Hot/Warm/Cold node
567and Hot/Warm/Cold data.
568
569- Hot node contains direct node blocks of directories.
570- Warm node contains direct node blocks except hot node blocks.
571- Cold node contains indirect node blocks
572- Hot data contains dentry blocks
573- Warm data contains data blocks except hot and cold data blocks
574- Cold data contains multimedia data or migrated data blocks
575
576LFS has two schemes for free space management: threaded log and copy-and-compac-
577tion. The copy-and-compaction scheme which is known as cleaning, is well-suited
578for devices showing very good sequential write performance, since free segments
579are served all the time for writing new data. However, it suffers from cleaning
580overhead under high utilization. Contrarily, the threaded log scheme suffers
581from random writes, but no cleaning process is needed. F2FS adopts a hybrid
582scheme where the copy-and-compaction scheme is adopted by default, but the
583policy is dynamically changed to the threaded log scheme according to the file
584system status.
585
586In order to align F2FS with underlying flash-based storage, F2FS allocates a
587segment in a unit of section. F2FS expects that the section size would be the
588same as the unit size of garbage collection in FTL. Furthermore, with respect
589to the mapping granularity in FTL, F2FS allocates each section of the active
590logs from different zones as much as possible, since FTL can write the data in
591the active logs into one allocation unit according to its mapping granularity.
592
593Cleaning process
594----------------
595
596F2FS does cleaning both on demand and in the background. On-demand cleaning is
597triggered when there are not enough free segments to serve VFS calls. Background
598cleaner is operated by a kernel thread, and triggers the cleaning job when the
599system is idle.
600
601F2FS supports two victim selection policies: greedy and cost-benefit algorithms.
602In the greedy algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment having the smallest number
603of valid blocks. In the cost-benefit algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment
604according to the segment age and the number of valid blocks in order to address
605log block thrashing problem in the greedy algorithm. F2FS adopts the greedy
606algorithm for on-demand cleaner, while background cleaner adopts cost-benefit
607algorithm.
608
609In order to identify whether the data in the victim segment are valid or not,
610F2FS manages a bitmap. Each bit represents the validity of a block, and the
611bitmap is composed of a bit stream covering whole blocks in main area.