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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==========================================
+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 following git tree provides the file system formatting tool (mkfs.f2fs),
+a consistency checking tool (fsck.f2fs), and a debugging tool (dump.f2fs).
+
+- git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jaegeuk/f2fs-tools.git
+
+For sending patches, please use the following mailing list:
+
+- linux-f2fs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
+
+For reporting bugs, please use the following f2fs bug tracker link:
+
+- https://bugzilla.kernel.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=File%20System&component=f2fs
+
+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=%s Turn on/off cleaning operations, namely garbage
+ collection, triggered in background when I/O subsystem is
+ idle. If background_gc=on, it will turn on the garbage
+ collection and if background_gc=off, garbage collection
+ will be turned off. If background_gc=sync, it will turn
+ on synchronous garbage collection running in background.
+ Default value for this option is on. So garbage
+ collection is on by default.
+gc_merge When background_gc is on, this option can be enabled to
+ let background GC thread to handle foreground GC requests,
+ it can eliminate the sluggish issue caused by slow foreground
+ GC operation when GC is triggered from a process with limited
+ I/O and CPU resources.
+nogc_merge Disable GC merge feature.
+disable_roll_forward Disable the roll-forward recovery routine
+norecovery Disable the roll-forward recovery routine, mounted read-
+ only (i.e., -o ro,disable_roll_forward)
+discard/nodiscard Enable/disable real-time discard in f2fs, if discard is
+ enabled, f2fs will 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
+ is not aware of cold files such as media files.
+inline_xattr Enable the inline xattrs feature.
+noinline_xattr Disable the inline xattrs feature.
+inline_xattr_size=%u Support configuring inline xattr size, it depends on
+ flexible inline xattr feature.
+inline_data Enable the inline data feature: Newly created small (<~3.4k)
+ files can be written into inode block.
+inline_dentry Enable the inline dir feature: data in newly created
+ directory entries can be written into inode block. The
+ space of inode block which is used to store inline
+ dentries is limited to ~3.4k.
+noinline_dentry Disable the inline dentry feature.
+flush_merge Merge concurrent cache_flush commands as much as possible
+ to eliminate redundant command issues. If the underlying
+ device handles the cache_flush command relatively slowly,
+ recommend to enable this option.
+nobarrier This option can be used if underlying storage guarantees
+ its cached data should be written to the novolatile area.
+ If this option is set, no cache_flush commands are issued
+ but f2fs still guarantees the write ordering of all the
+ data writes.
+barrier If this option is set, cache_flush commands are allowed to be
+ issued.
+fastboot This option is used when a system wants to reduce mount
+ time as much as possible, even though normal performance
+ can be sacrificed.
+extent_cache Enable an extent cache based on rb-tree, it can cache
+ as many as extent which map between contiguous logical
+ address and physical address per inode, resulting in
+ increasing the cache hit ratio. Set by default.
+noextent_cache Disable an extent cache based on rb-tree explicitly, see
+ the above extent_cache mount option.
+noinline_data Disable the inline data feature, inline data feature is
+ enabled by default.
+data_flush Enable data flushing before checkpoint in order to
+ persist data of regular and symlink.
+reserve_root=%d Support configuring reserved space which is used for
+ allocation from a privileged user with specified uid or
+ gid, unit: 4KB, the default limit is 0.2% of user blocks.
+resuid=%d The user ID which may use the reserved blocks.
+resgid=%d The group ID which may use the reserved blocks.
+fault_injection=%d Enable fault injection in all supported types with
+ specified injection rate.
+fault_type=%d Support configuring fault injection type, should be
+ enabled with fault_injection option, fault type value
+ is shown below, it supports single or combined type.
+
+ =================== ===========
+ Type_Name Type_Value
+ =================== ===========
+ FAULT_KMALLOC 0x000000001
+ FAULT_KVMALLOC 0x000000002
+ FAULT_PAGE_ALLOC 0x000000004
+ FAULT_PAGE_GET 0x000000008
+ FAULT_ALLOC_BIO 0x000000010 (obsolete)
+ FAULT_ALLOC_NID 0x000000020
+ FAULT_ORPHAN 0x000000040
+ FAULT_BLOCK 0x000000080
+ FAULT_DIR_DEPTH 0x000000100
+ FAULT_EVICT_INODE 0x000000200
+ FAULT_TRUNCATE 0x000000400
+ FAULT_READ_IO 0x000000800
+ FAULT_CHECKPOINT 0x000001000
+ FAULT_DISCARD 0x000002000
+ FAULT_WRITE_IO 0x000004000
+ FAULT_SLAB_ALLOC 0x000008000
+ FAULT_DQUOT_INIT 0x000010000
+ FAULT_LOCK_OP 0x000020000
+ FAULT_BLKADDR 0x000040000
+ =================== ===========
+mode=%s Control block allocation mode which supports "adaptive"
+ and "lfs". In "lfs" mode, there should be no random
+ writes towards main area.
+ "fragment:segment" and "fragment:block" are newly added here.
+ These are developer options for experiments to simulate filesystem
+ fragmentation/after-GC situation itself. The developers use these
+ modes to understand filesystem fragmentation/after-GC condition well,
+ and eventually get some insights to handle them better.
+ In "fragment:segment", f2fs allocates a new segment in ramdom
+ position. With this, we can simulate the after-GC condition.
+ In "fragment:block", we can scatter block allocation with
+ "max_fragment_chunk" and "max_fragment_hole" sysfs nodes.
+ We added some randomness to both chunk and hole size to make
+ it close to realistic IO pattern. So, in this mode, f2fs will allocate
+ 1..<max_fragment_chunk> blocks in a chunk and make a hole in the
+ length of 1..<max_fragment_hole> by turns. With this, the newly
+ allocated blocks will be scattered throughout the whole partition.
+ Note that "fragment:block" implicitly enables "fragment:segment"
+ option for more randomness.
+ Please, use these options for your experiments and we strongly
+ recommend to re-format the filesystem after using these options.
+io_bits=%u Set the bit size of write IO requests. It should be set
+ with "mode=lfs".
+usrquota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
+grpquota Enable plain group disk quota accounting.
+prjquota Enable plain project quota accounting.
+usrjquota=<file> Appoint specified file and type during mount, so that quota
+grpjquota=<file> information can be properly updated during recovery flow,
+prjjquota=<file> <quota file>: must be in root directory;
+jqfmt=<quota type> <quota type>: [vfsold,vfsv0,vfsv1].
+offusrjquota Turn off user journalled quota.
+offgrpjquota Turn off group journalled quota.
+offprjjquota Turn off project journalled quota.
+quota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
+noquota Disable all plain disk quota option.
+alloc_mode=%s Adjust block allocation policy, which supports "reuse"
+ and "default".
+fsync_mode=%s Control the policy of fsync. Currently supports "posix",
+ "strict", and "nobarrier". In "posix" mode, which is
+ default, fsync will follow POSIX semantics and does a
+ light operation to improve the filesystem performance.
+ In "strict" mode, fsync will be heavy and behaves in line
+ with xfs, ext4 and btrfs, where xfstest generic/342 will
+ pass, but the performance will regress. "nobarrier" is
+ based on "posix", but doesn't issue flush command for
+ non-atomic files likewise "nobarrier" mount option.
+test_dummy_encryption
+test_dummy_encryption=%s
+ Enable dummy encryption, which provides a fake fscrypt
+ context. The fake fscrypt context is used by xfstests.
+ The argument may be either "v1" or "v2", in order to
+ select the corresponding fscrypt policy version.
+checkpoint=%s[:%u[%]] Set to "disable" to turn off checkpointing. Set to "enable"
+ to reenable checkpointing. Is enabled by default. While
+ disabled, any unmounting or unexpected shutdowns will cause
+ the filesystem contents to appear as they did when the
+ filesystem was mounted with that option.
+ While mounting with checkpoint=disable, the filesystem must
+ run garbage collection to ensure that all available space can
+ be used. If this takes too much time, the mount may return
+ EAGAIN. You may optionally add a value to indicate how much
+ of the disk you would be willing to temporarily give up to
+ avoid additional garbage collection. This can be given as a
+ number of blocks, or as a percent. For instance, mounting
+ with checkpoint=disable:100% would always succeed, but it may
+ hide up to all remaining free space. The actual space that
+ would be unusable can be viewed at /sys/fs/f2fs/<disk>/unusable
+ This space is reclaimed once checkpoint=enable.
+checkpoint_merge When checkpoint is enabled, this can be used to create a kernel
+ daemon and make it to merge concurrent checkpoint requests as
+ much as possible to eliminate redundant checkpoint issues. Plus,
+ we can eliminate the sluggish issue caused by slow checkpoint
+ operation when the checkpoint is done in a process context in
+ a cgroup having low i/o budget and cpu shares. To make this
+ do better, we set the default i/o priority of the kernel daemon
+ to "3", to give one higher priority than other kernel threads.
+ This is the same way to give a I/O priority to the jbd2
+ journaling thread of ext4 filesystem.
+nocheckpoint_merge Disable checkpoint merge feature.
+compress_algorithm=%s Control compress algorithm, currently f2fs supports "lzo",
+ "lz4", "zstd" and "lzo-rle" algorithm.
+compress_algorithm=%s:%d Control compress algorithm and its compress level, now, only
+ "lz4" and "zstd" support compress level config.
+ algorithm level range
+ lz4 3 - 16
+ zstd 1 - 22
+compress_log_size=%u Support configuring compress cluster size. The size will
+ be 4KB * (1 << %u). The default and minimum sizes are 16KB.
+compress_extension=%s Support adding specified extension, so that f2fs can enable
+ compression on those corresponding files, e.g. if all files
+ with '.ext' has high compression rate, we can set the '.ext'
+ on compression extension list and enable compression on
+ these file by default rather than to enable it via ioctl.
+ For other files, we can still enable compression via ioctl.
+ Note that, there is one reserved special extension '*', it
+ can be set to enable compression for all files.
+nocompress_extension=%s Support adding specified extension, so that f2fs can disable
+ compression on those corresponding files, just contrary to compression extension.
+ If you know exactly which files cannot be compressed, you can use this.
+ The same extension name can't appear in both compress and nocompress
+ extension at the same time.
+ If the compress extension specifies all files, the types specified by the
+ nocompress extension will be treated as special cases and will not be compressed.
+ Don't allow use '*' to specifie all file in nocompress extension.
+ After add nocompress_extension, the priority should be:
+ dir_flag < comp_extention,nocompress_extension < comp_file_flag,no_comp_file_flag.
+ See more in compression sections.
+
+compress_chksum Support verifying chksum of raw data in compressed cluster.
+compress_mode=%s Control file compression mode. This supports "fs" and "user"
+ modes. In "fs" mode (default), f2fs does automatic compression
+ on the compression enabled files. In "user" mode, f2fs disables
+ the automaic compression and gives the user discretion of
+ choosing the target file and the timing. The user can do manual
+ compression/decompression on the compression enabled files using
+ ioctls.
+compress_cache Support to use address space of a filesystem managed inode to
+ cache compressed block, in order to improve cache hit ratio of
+ random read.
+inlinecrypt When possible, encrypt/decrypt the contents of encrypted
+ files using the blk-crypto framework rather than
+ filesystem-layer encryption. This allows the use of
+ inline encryption hardware. The on-disk format is
+ unaffected. For more details, see
+ Documentation/block/inline-encryption.rst.
+atgc Enable age-threshold garbage collection, it provides high
+ effectiveness and efficiency on background GC.
+discard_unit=%s Control discard unit, the argument can be "block", "segment"
+ and "section", issued discard command's offset/size will be
+ aligned to the unit, by default, "discard_unit=block" is set,
+ so that small discard functionality is enabled.
+ For blkzoned device, "discard_unit=section" will be set by
+ default, it is helpful for large sized SMR or ZNS devices to
+ reduce memory cost by getting rid of fs metadata supports small
+ discard.
+memory=%s Control memory mode. This supports "normal" and "low" modes.
+ "low" mode is introduced to support low memory devices.
+ Because of the nature of low memory devices, in this mode, f2fs
+ will try to save memory sometimes by sacrificing performance.
+ "normal" mode is the default mode and same as before.
+age_extent_cache Enable an age extent cache based on rb-tree. It records
+ data block update frequency of the extent per inode, in
+ order to provide better temperature hints for data block
+ allocation.
+errors=%s Specify f2fs behavior on critical errors. This supports modes:
+ "panic", "continue" and "remount-ro", respectively, trigger
+ panic immediately, continue without doing anything, and remount
+ the partition in read-only mode. By default it uses "continue"
+ mode.
+ ====================== =============== =============== ========
+ mode continue remount-ro panic
+ ====================== =============== =============== ========
+ access ops normal normal N/A
+ syscall errors -EIO -EROFS N/A
+ mount option rw ro N/A
+ pending dir write keep keep N/A
+ pending non-dir write drop keep N/A
+ pending node write drop keep N/A
+ pending meta write keep keep N/A
+ ====================== =============== =============== ========
+======================== ============================================================
+
+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.
+
+Sysfs Entries
+=============
+
+Information about mounted f2fs file systems can be found in
+/sys/fs/f2fs. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
+/sys/fs/f2fs based on its device name (i.e., /sys/fs/f2fs/sda).
+The files in each per-device directory are shown in table below.
+
+Files in /sys/fs/f2fs/<devname>
+(see also Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-fs-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 to use when mounting::
+
+ # 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
+
+mkfs.f2fs
+---------
+The mkfs.f2fs is for the use of formatting a partition as the f2fs filesystem,
+which builds a basic on-disk layout.
+
+The quick options consist of:
+
+=============== ===========================================================
+``-l [label]`` Give a volume label, up to 512 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"
+``-t [0 or 1]`` Disable discard command or not.
+
+ 1 is set by default, which conducts discard.
+=============== ===========================================================
+
+Note: please refer to the manpage of mkfs.f2fs(8) to get full option list.
+
+fsck.f2fs
+---------
+The fsck.f2fs is a tool to check the consistency of an f2fs-formatted
+partition, which examines whether the filesystem metadata and user-made data
+are cross-referenced correctly or not.
+Note that, initial version of the tool does not fix any inconsistency.
+
+The quick options consist of::
+
+ -d debug level [default:0]
+
+Note: please refer to the manpage of fsck.f2fs(8) to get full option list.
+
+dump.f2fs
+---------
+The dump.f2fs shows the information of specific inode and dumps SSA and SIT to
+file. Each file is dump_ssa and dump_sit.
+
+The dump.f2fs is used to debug on-disk data structures of the f2fs filesystem.
+It shows on-disk inode information recognized by a given inode number, and is
+able to dump all the SSA and SIT entries into predefined files, ./dump_ssa and
+./dump_sit respectively.
+
+The options consist of::
+
+ -d debug level [default:0]
+ -i inode no (hex)
+ -s [SIT dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
+ -a [SSA dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
+
+Examples::
+
+ # dump.f2fs -i [ino] /dev/sdx
+ # dump.f2fs -s 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SIT dump)
+ # dump.f2fs -a 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SSA dump)
+
+Note: please refer to the manpage of dump.f2fs(8) to get full option list.
+
+sload.f2fs
+----------
+The sload.f2fs gives a way to insert files and directories in the existing disk
+image. This tool is useful when building f2fs images given compiled files.
+
+Note: please refer to the manpage of sload.f2fs(8) to get full option list.
+
+resize.f2fs
+-----------
+The resize.f2fs lets a user resize the f2fs-formatted disk image, while preserving
+all the files and directories stored in the image.
+
+Note: please refer to the manpage of resize.f2fs(8) to get full option list.
+
+defrag.f2fs
+-----------
+The defrag.f2fs can be used to defragment scattered written data as well as
+filesystem metadata across the disk. This can improve the write speed by giving
+more free consecutive space.
+
+Note: please refer to the manpage of defrag.f2fs(8) to get full option list.
+
+f2fs_io
+-------
+The f2fs_io is a simple tool to issue various filesystem APIs as well as
+f2fs-specific ones, which is very useful for QA tests.
+
+Note: please refer to the manpage of f2fs_io(8) to get full option list.
+
+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
+consist of multiple segments as described below::
+
+ align with the zone size <-|
+ |-> align with the segment size
+ _________________________________________________________________________
+ | | | Segment | Node | Segment | |
+ | Superblock | Checkpoint | Info. | Address | Summary | Main |
+ | (SB) | (CP) | Table (SIT) | Table (NAT) | 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.
+
+- Segment Information Table (SIT)
+ It contains segment information such as valid block count and bitmap for the
+ validity of all the blocks.
+
+- Node Address Table (NAT)
+ It is composed of a block address table for all the node blocks stored in
+ Main area.
+
+- 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 | SIT | NAT |
+ +--------+----------+---------+
+ . . . .
+ . . . .
+ . . . .
+ +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
+ | CP #0 | CP #1 | SIT #0 | SIT #1 | NAT #0 | NAT #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 + dir_level),
+ | if n + dir_level < 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 level 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.
+
+Fallocate(2) Policy
+-------------------
+
+The default policy follows the below POSIX rule.
+
+Allocating disk space
+ The default operation (i.e., mode is zero) of fallocate() allocates
+ the disk space within the range specified by offset and len. The
+ file size (as reported by stat(2)) will be changed if offset+len is
+ greater than the file size. Any subregion within the range specified
+ by offset and len that did not contain data before the call will be
+ initialized to zero. This default behavior closely resembles the
+ behavior of the posix_fallocate(3) library function, and is intended
+ as a method of optimally implementing that function.
+
+However, once F2FS receives ioctl(fd, F2FS_IOC_SET_PIN_FILE) in prior to
+fallocate(fd, DEFAULT_MODE), it allocates on-disk block addresses having
+zero or random data, which is useful to the below scenario where:
+
+ 1. create(fd)
+ 2. ioctl(fd, F2FS_IOC_SET_PIN_FILE)
+ 3. fallocate(fd, 0, 0, size)
+ 4. address = fibmap(fd, offset)
+ 5. open(blkdev)
+ 6. write(blkdev, address)
+
+Compression implementation
+--------------------------
+
+- New term named cluster is defined as basic unit of compression, file can
+ be divided into multiple clusters logically. One cluster includes 4 << n
+ (n >= 0) logical pages, compression size is also cluster size, each of
+ cluster can be compressed or not.
+
+- In cluster metadata layout, one special block address is used to indicate
+ a cluster is a compressed one or normal one; for compressed cluster, following
+ metadata maps cluster to [1, 4 << n - 1] physical blocks, in where f2fs
+ stores data including compress header and compressed data.
+
+- In order to eliminate write amplification during overwrite, F2FS only
+ support compression on write-once file, data can be compressed only when
+ all logical blocks in cluster contain valid data and compress ratio of
+ cluster data is lower than specified threshold.
+
+- To enable compression on regular inode, there are four ways:
+
+ * chattr +c file
+ * chattr +c dir; touch dir/file
+ * mount w/ -o compress_extension=ext; touch file.ext
+ * mount w/ -o compress_extension=*; touch any_file
+
+- To disable compression on regular inode, there are two ways:
+
+ * chattr -c file
+ * mount w/ -o nocompress_extension=ext; touch file.ext
+
+- Priority in between FS_COMPR_FL, FS_NOCOMP_FS, extensions:
+
+ * compress_extension=so; nocompress_extension=zip; chattr +c dir; touch
+ dir/foo.so; touch dir/bar.zip; touch dir/baz.txt; then foo.so and baz.txt
+ should be compresse, bar.zip should be non-compressed. chattr +c dir/bar.zip
+ can enable compress on bar.zip.
+ * compress_extension=so; nocompress_extension=zip; chattr -c dir; touch
+ dir/foo.so; touch dir/bar.zip; touch dir/baz.txt; then foo.so should be
+ compresse, bar.zip and baz.txt should be non-compressed.
+ chattr+c dir/bar.zip; chattr+c dir/baz.txt; can enable compress on bar.zip
+ and baz.txt.
+
+- At this point, compression feature doesn't expose compressed space to user
+ directly in order to guarantee potential data updates later to the space.
+ Instead, the main goal is to reduce data writes to flash disk as much as
+ possible, resulting in extending disk life time as well as relaxing IO
+ congestion. Alternatively, we've added ioctl(F2FS_IOC_RELEASE_COMPRESS_BLOCKS)
+ interface to reclaim compressed space and show it to user after setting a
+ special flag to the inode. Once the compressed space is released, the flag
+ will block writing data to the file until either the compressed space is
+ reserved via ioctl(F2FS_IOC_RESERVE_COMPRESS_BLOCKS) or the file size is
+ truncated to zero.
+
+Compress metadata layout::
+
+ [Dnode Structure]
+ +-----------------------------------------------+
+ | cluster 1 | cluster 2 | ......... | cluster N |
+ +-----------------------------------------------+
+ . . . .
+ . . . .
+ . Compressed Cluster . . Normal Cluster .
+ +----------+---------+---------+---------+ +---------+---------+---------+---------+
+ |compr flag| block 1 | block 2 | block 3 | | block 1 | block 2 | block 3 | block 4 |
+ +----------+---------+---------+---------+ +---------+---------+---------+---------+
+ . .
+ . .
+ . .
+ +-------------+-------------+----------+----------------------------+
+ | data length | data chksum | reserved | compressed data |
+ +-------------+-------------+----------+----------------------------+
+
+Compression mode
+--------------------------
+
+f2fs supports "fs" and "user" compression modes with "compression_mode" mount option.
+With this option, f2fs provides a choice to select the way how to compress the
+compression enabled files (refer to "Compression implementation" section for how to
+enable compression on a regular inode).
+
+1) compress_mode=fs
+This is the default option. f2fs does automatic compression in the writeback of the
+compression enabled files.
+
+2) compress_mode=user
+This disables the automatic compression and gives the user discretion of choosing the
+target file and the timing. The user can do manual compression/decompression on the
+compression enabled files using F2FS_IOC_DECOMPRESS_FILE and F2FS_IOC_COMPRESS_FILE
+ioctls like the below.
+
+To decompress a file,
+
+fd = open(filename, O_WRONLY, 0);
+ret = ioctl(fd, F2FS_IOC_DECOMPRESS_FILE);
+
+To compress a file,
+
+fd = open(filename, O_WRONLY, 0);
+ret = ioctl(fd, F2FS_IOC_COMPRESS_FILE);
+
+NVMe Zoned Namespace devices
+----------------------------
+
+- ZNS defines a per-zone capacity which can be equal or less than the
+ zone-size. Zone-capacity is the number of usable blocks in the zone.
+ F2FS checks if zone-capacity is less than zone-size, if it is, then any
+ segment which starts after the zone-capacity is marked as not-free in
+ the free segment bitmap at initial mount time. These segments are marked
+ as permanently used so they are not allocated for writes and
+ consequently are not needed to be garbage collected. In case the
+ zone-capacity is not aligned to default segment size(2MB), then a segment
+ can start before the zone-capacity and span across zone-capacity boundary.
+ Such spanning segments are also considered as usable segments. All blocks
+ past the zone-capacity are considered unusable in these segments.