summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation/filesystems/f2fs.rst
blob: d7b84695f56aea48915c0cb6335d1dceb48e690c (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
.. 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 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=%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.
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
			 ===================	  ===========
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.
whint_mode=%s		 Control which write hints are passed down to block
			 layer. This supports "off", "user-based", and
			 "fs-based".  In "off" mode (default), f2fs does not pass
			 down hints. In "user-based" mode, f2fs tries to pass
			 down hints given by users. And in "fs-based" mode, f2fs
			 passes down hints with its policy.
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=disabled, 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), 16KB is minimum size, also it's
			 default size.
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.
======================== ============================================================

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 exisiting 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.

Write-hint Policy
-----------------

1) whint_mode=off. F2FS only passes down WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET.

2) whint_mode=user-based. F2FS tries to pass down hints given by
users.

===================== ======================== ===================
User                  F2FS                     Block
===================== ======================== ===================
N/A                   META                     WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
N/A                   HOT_NODE                 "
N/A                   WARM_NODE                "
N/A                   COLD_NODE                "
ioctl(COLD)           COLD_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
extension list        "                        "

-- buffered io
WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME    COLD_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
WRITE_LIFE_SHORT      HOT_DATA                 WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET    WARM_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
WRITE_LIFE_NONE       "                        "
WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM     "                        "
WRITE_LIFE_LONG       "                        "

-- direct io
WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME    COLD_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
WRITE_LIFE_SHORT      HOT_DATA                 WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET    WARM_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
WRITE_LIFE_NONE       "                        WRITE_LIFE_NONE
WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM     "                        WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM
WRITE_LIFE_LONG       "                        WRITE_LIFE_LONG
===================== ======================== ===================

3) whint_mode=fs-based. F2FS passes down hints with its policy.

===================== ======================== ===================
User                  F2FS                     Block
===================== ======================== ===================
N/A                   META                     WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM;
N/A                   HOT_NODE                 WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
N/A                   WARM_NODE                "
N/A                   COLD_NODE                WRITE_LIFE_NONE
ioctl(COLD)           COLD_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
extension list        "                        "

-- buffered io
WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME    COLD_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
WRITE_LIFE_SHORT      HOT_DATA                 WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET    WARM_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_LONG
WRITE_LIFE_NONE       "                        "
WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM     "                        "
WRITE_LIFE_LONG       "                        "

-- direct io
WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME    COLD_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_EXTREME
WRITE_LIFE_SHORT      HOT_DATA                 WRITE_LIFE_SHORT
WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET    WARM_DATA                WRITE_LIFE_NOT_SET
WRITE_LIFE_NONE       "                        WRITE_LIFE_NONE
WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM     "                        WRITE_LIFE_MEDIUM
WRITE_LIFE_LONG       "                        WRITE_LIFE_LONG
===================== ======================== ===================

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 addressess 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 putting the
  immutable bit. Immutable bit, after release, it doesn't allow writing/mmaping
  on the file, until reserving compressed space via
  ioctl(F2FS_IOC_RESERVE_COMPRESS_BLOCKS) or truncating filesize 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.