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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
4bb9998d 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.
23cf7212 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.
04b9a5f0 135noinline_dentry Disable 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.
4bb9998d 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.
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158fault_injection=%d Enable fault injection in all supported types with
159 specified injection rate.
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160mode=%s Control block allocation mode which supports "adaptive"
161 and "lfs". In "lfs" mode, there should be no random
162 writes towards main area.
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163io_bits=%u Set the bit size of write IO requests. It should be set
164 with "mode=lfs".
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165usrquota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
166grpquota Enable plain group disk quota accounting.
5c57132e 167prjquota Enable plain project quota accounting.
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168usrjquota=<file> Appoint specified file and type during mount, so that quota
169grpjquota=<file> information can be properly updated during recovery flow,
170prjjquota=<file> <quota file>: must be in root directory;
171jqfmt=<quota type> <quota type>: [vfsold,vfsv0,vfsv1].
172offusrjquota Turn off user journelled quota.
173offgrpjquota Turn off group journelled quota.
174offprjjquota Turn off project journelled quota.
175quota Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
176noquota Disable all plain disk quota option.
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177
178================================================================================
179DEBUGFS ENTRIES
180================================================================================
181
182/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/ contains information about all the partitions mounted as
183f2fs. Each file shows the whole f2fs information.
184
185/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/status includes:
186 - major file system information managed by f2fs currently
187 - average SIT information about whole segments
188 - current memory footprint consumed by f2fs.
189
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190================================================================================
191SYSFS ENTRIES
192================================================================================
193
6de3f12e 194Information about mounted f2fs file systems can be found in
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195/sys/fs/f2fs. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
196/sys/fs/f2fs based on its device name (i.e., /sys/fs/f2fs/sda).
197The files in each per-device directory are shown in table below.
198
199Files in /sys/fs/f2fs/<devname>
200(see also Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-fs-f2fs)
201..............................................................................
202 File Content
203
204 gc_max_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the maximum sleep
205 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
206 in milliseconds.
207
208 gc_min_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the minimum sleep
209 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
210 in milliseconds.
211
212 gc_no_gc_sleep_time This tuning parameter controls the default sleep
213 time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
214 in milliseconds.
215
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216 gc_idle This parameter controls the selection of victim
217 policy for garbage collection. Setting gc_idle = 0
218 (default) will disable this option. Setting
219 gc_idle = 1 will select the Cost Benefit approach
4bb9998d 220 & setting gc_idle = 2 will select the greedy approach.
d2dc095f 221
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222 gc_urgent This parameter controls triggering background GCs
223 urgently or not. Setting gc_urgent = 0 [default]
224 makes back to default behavior, while if it is set
225 to 1, background thread starts to do GC by given
226 gc_urgent_sleep_time interval.
227
228 gc_urgent_sleep_time This parameter controls sleep time for gc_urgent.
229 500 ms is set by default. See above gc_urgent.
230
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231 reclaim_segments This parameter controls the number of prefree
232 segments to be reclaimed. If the number of prefree
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233 segments is larger than the number of segments
234 in the proportion to the percentage over total
235 volume size, f2fs tries to conduct checkpoint to
236 reclaim the prefree segments to free segments.
237 By default, 5% over total # of segments.
ea91e9b0 238
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239 max_small_discards This parameter controls the number of discard
240 commands that consist small blocks less than 2MB.
241 The candidates to be discarded are cached until
242 checkpoint is triggered, and issued during the
243 checkpoint. By default, it is disabled with 0.
244
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245 trim_sections This parameter controls the number of sections
246 to be trimmed out in batch mode when FITRIM
247 conducts. 32 sections is set by default.
248
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249 ipu_policy This parameter controls the policy of in-place
250 updates in f2fs. There are five policies:
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251 0x01: F2FS_IPU_FORCE, 0x02: F2FS_IPU_SSR,
252 0x04: F2FS_IPU_UTIL, 0x08: F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL,
253 0x10: F2FS_IPU_FSYNC.
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254
255 min_ipu_util This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
256 in-place-updates. The number indicates percentage
257 of the filesystem utilization, and used by
258 F2FS_IPU_UTIL and F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL policies.
259
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260 min_fsync_blocks This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
261 in-place-updates when F2FS_IPU_FSYNC mode is set.
262 The number indicates the number of dirty pages
263 when fsync needs to flush on its call path. If
264 the number is less than this value, it triggers
265 in-place-updates.
266
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267 max_victim_search This parameter controls the number of trials to
268 find a victim segment when conducting SSR and
269 cleaning operations. The default value is 4096
270 which covers 8GB block address range.
271
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272 dir_level This parameter controls the directory level to
273 support large directory. If a directory has a
274 number of files, it can reduce the file lookup
275 latency by increasing this dir_level value.
276 Otherwise, it needs to decrease this value to
277 reduce the space overhead. The default value is 0.
278
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279 ram_thresh This parameter controls the memory footprint used
280 by free nids and cached nat entries. By default,
281 10 is set, which indicates 10 MB / 1 GB RAM.
282
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283================================================================================
284USAGE
285================================================================================
286
2871. Download userland tools and compile them.
288
2892. Skip, if f2fs was compiled statically inside kernel.
290 Otherwise, insert the f2fs.ko module.
291 # insmod f2fs.ko
292
2933. Create a directory trying to mount
294 # mkdir /mnt/f2fs
295
2964. Format the block device, and then mount as f2fs
297 # mkfs.f2fs -l label /dev/block_device
298 # mount -t f2fs /dev/block_device /mnt/f2fs
299
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300mkfs.f2fs
301---------
302The mkfs.f2fs is for the use of formatting a partition as the f2fs filesystem,
303which builds a basic on-disk layout.
304
305The options consist of:
1571f84a 306-l [label] : Give a volume label, up to 512 unicode name.
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307-a [0 or 1] : Split start location of each area for heap-based allocation.
308 1 is set by default, which performs this.
309-o [int] : Set overprovision ratio in percent over volume size.
310 5 is set by default.
311-s [int] : Set the number of segments per section.
312 1 is set by default.
313-z [int] : Set the number of sections per zone.
314 1 is set by default.
315-e [str] : Set basic extension list. e.g. "mp3,gif,mov"
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316-t [0 or 1] : Disable discard command or not.
317 1 is set by default, which conducts discard.
98e4da8c 318
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319fsck.f2fs
320---------
321The fsck.f2fs is a tool to check the consistency of an f2fs-formatted
322partition, which examines whether the filesystem metadata and user-made data
323are cross-referenced correctly or not.
324Note that, initial version of the tool does not fix any inconsistency.
325
326The options consist of:
327 -d debug level [default:0]
328
329dump.f2fs
330---------
331The dump.f2fs shows the information of specific inode and dumps SSA and SIT to
332file. Each file is dump_ssa and dump_sit.
333
334The dump.f2fs is used to debug on-disk data structures of the f2fs filesystem.
4bb9998d 335It shows on-disk inode information recognized by a given inode number, and is
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336able to dump all the SSA and SIT entries into predefined files, ./dump_ssa and
337./dump_sit respectively.
338
339The options consist of:
340 -d debug level [default:0]
341 -i inode no (hex)
342 -s [SIT dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
343 -a [SSA dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
344
345Examples:
346# dump.f2fs -i [ino] /dev/sdx
347# dump.f2fs -s 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SIT dump)
348# dump.f2fs -a 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SSA dump)
349
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350================================================================================
351DESIGN
352================================================================================
353
354On-disk Layout
355--------------
356
357F2FS divides the whole volume into a number of segments, each of which is fixed
358to 2MB in size. A section is composed of consecutive segments, and a zone
359consists of a set of sections. By default, section and zone sizes are set to one
360segment size identically, but users can easily modify the sizes by mkfs.
361
362F2FS splits the entire volume into six areas, and all the areas except superblock
363consists of multiple segments as described below.
364
365 align with the zone size <-|
366 |-> align with the segment size
367 _________________________________________________________________________
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368 | | | Segment | Node | Segment | |
369 | Superblock | Checkpoint | Info. | Address | Summary | Main |
370 | (SB) | (CP) | Table (SIT) | Table (NAT) | Area (SSA) | |
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371 |____________|_____2______|______N______|______N______|______N_____|__N___|
372 . .
373 . .
374 . .
375 ._________________________________________.
376 |_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|
377 . .
378 ._________._________
379 |_section_|__...__|_
380 . .
381 .________.
382 |__zone__|
383
384- Superblock (SB)
385 : It is located at the beginning of the partition, and there exist two copies
386 to avoid file system crash. It contains basic partition information and some
387 default parameters of f2fs.
388
389- Checkpoint (CP)
390 : It contains file system information, bitmaps for valid NAT/SIT sets, orphan
391 inode lists, and summary entries of current active segments.
392
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393- Segment Information Table (SIT)
394 : It contains segment information such as valid block count and bitmap for the
395 validity of all the blocks.
396
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397- Node Address Table (NAT)
398 : It is composed of a block address table for all the node blocks stored in
399 Main area.
400
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401- Segment Summary Area (SSA)
402 : It contains summary entries which contains the owner information of all the
403 data and node blocks stored in Main area.
404
405- Main Area
406 : It contains file and directory data including their indices.
407
408In order to avoid misalignment between file system and flash-based storage, F2FS
409aligns the start block address of CP with the segment size. Also, it aligns the
410start block address of Main area with the zone size by reserving some segments
411in SSA area.
412
413Reference the following survey for additional technical details.
414https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey
415
416File System Metadata Structure
417------------------------------
418
419F2FS adopts the checkpointing scheme to maintain file system consistency. At
420mount time, F2FS first tries to find the last valid checkpoint data by scanning
421CP area. In order to reduce the scanning time, F2FS uses only two copies of CP.
422One of them always indicates the last valid data, which is called as shadow copy
423mechanism. In addition to CP, NAT and SIT also adopt the shadow copy mechanism.
424
425For file system consistency, each CP points to which NAT and SIT copies are
426valid, as shown as below.
427
428 +--------+----------+---------+
9268cc35 429 | CP | SIT | NAT |
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430 +--------+----------+---------+
431 . . . .
432 . . . .
433 . . . .
434 +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
9268cc35 435 | CP #0 | CP #1 | SIT #0 | SIT #1 | NAT #0 | NAT #1 |
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436 +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
437 | ^ ^
438 | | |
439 `----------------------------------------'
440
441Index Structure
442---------------
443
444The key data structure to manage the data locations is a "node". Similar to
445traditional file structures, F2FS has three types of node: inode, direct node,
d08ab08d 446indirect node. F2FS assigns 4KB to an inode block which contains 923 data block
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447indices, two direct node pointers, two indirect node pointers, and one double
448indirect node pointer as described below. One direct node block contains 1018
449data blocks, and one indirect node block contains also 1018 node blocks. Thus,
450one inode block (i.e., a file) covers:
451
452 4KB * (923 + 2 * 1018 + 2 * 1018 * 1018 + 1018 * 1018 * 1018) := 3.94TB.
453
454 Inode block (4KB)
455 |- data (923)
456 |- direct node (2)
457 | `- data (1018)
458 |- indirect node (2)
459 | `- direct node (1018)
460 | `- data (1018)
461 `- double indirect node (1)
462 `- indirect node (1018)
463 `- direct node (1018)
464 `- data (1018)
465
466Note that, all the node blocks are mapped by NAT which means the location of
467each node is translated by the NAT table. In the consideration of the wandering
468tree problem, F2FS is able to cut off the propagation of node updates caused by
469leaf data writes.
470
471Directory Structure
472-------------------
473
474A directory entry occupies 11 bytes, which consists of the following attributes.
475
476- hash hash value of the file name
477- ino inode number
478- len the length of file name
479- type file type such as directory, symlink, etc
480
481A dentry block consists of 214 dentry slots and file names. Therein a bitmap is
482used to represent whether each dentry is valid or not. A dentry block occupies
4834KB with the following composition.
484
485 Dentry Block(4 K) = bitmap (27 bytes) + reserved (3 bytes) +
486 dentries(11 * 214 bytes) + file name (8 * 214 bytes)
487
488 [Bucket]
489 +--------------------------------+
490 |dentry block 1 | dentry block 2 |
491 +--------------------------------+
492 . .
493 . .
494 . [Dentry Block Structure: 4KB] .
495 +--------+----------+----------+------------+
496 | bitmap | reserved | dentries | file names |
497 +--------+----------+----------+------------+
498 [Dentry Block: 4KB] . .
499 . .
500 . .
501 +------+------+-----+------+
502 | hash | ino | len | type |
503 +------+------+-----+------+
504 [Dentry Structure: 11 bytes]
505
506F2FS implements multi-level hash tables for directory structure. Each level has
507a hash table with dedicated number of hash buckets as shown below. Note that
508"A(2B)" means a bucket includes 2 data blocks.
509
510----------------------
511A : bucket
512B : block
513N : MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH
514----------------------
515
516level #0 | A(2B)
517 |
518level #1 | A(2B) - A(2B)
519 |
520level #2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B)
521 . | . . . .
522level #N/2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - ... - A(2B)
523 . | . . . .
524level #N | A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - ... - A(4B)
525
526The number of blocks and buckets are determined by,
527
528 ,- 2, if n < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
529 # of blocks in level #n = |
530 `- 4, Otherwise
531
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532 ,- 2^(n + dir_level),
533 | if n + dir_level < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
98e4da8c 534 # of buckets in level #n = |
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535 `- 2^((MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2) - 1),
536 Otherwise
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537
538When F2FS finds a file name in a directory, at first a hash value of the file
539name is calculated. Then, F2FS scans the hash table in level #0 to find the
540dentry consisting of the file name and its inode number. If not found, F2FS
541scans the next hash table in level #1. In this way, F2FS scans hash tables in
542each levels incrementally from 1 to N. In each levels F2FS needs to scan only
543one bucket determined by the following equation, which shows O(log(# of files))
544complexity.
545
546 bucket number to scan in level #n = (hash value) % (# of buckets in level #n)
547
548In the case of file creation, F2FS finds empty consecutive slots that cover the
549file name. F2FS searches the empty slots in the hash tables of whole levels from
5501 to N in the same way as the lookup operation.
551
552The following figure shows an example of two cases holding children.
553 --------------> Dir <--------------
554 | |
555 child child
556
557 child - child [hole] - child
558
559 child - child - child [hole] - [hole] - child
560
561 Case 1: Case 2:
562 Number of children = 6, Number of children = 3,
563 File size = 7 File size = 7
564
565Default Block Allocation
566------------------------
567
568At runtime, F2FS manages six active logs inside "Main" area: Hot/Warm/Cold node
569and Hot/Warm/Cold data.
570
571- Hot node contains direct node blocks of directories.
572- Warm node contains direct node blocks except hot node blocks.
573- Cold node contains indirect node blocks
574- Hot data contains dentry blocks
575- Warm data contains data blocks except hot and cold data blocks
576- Cold data contains multimedia data or migrated data blocks
577
578LFS has two schemes for free space management: threaded log and copy-and-compac-
579tion. The copy-and-compaction scheme which is known as cleaning, is well-suited
580for devices showing very good sequential write performance, since free segments
581are served all the time for writing new data. However, it suffers from cleaning
582overhead under high utilization. Contrarily, the threaded log scheme suffers
583from random writes, but no cleaning process is needed. F2FS adopts a hybrid
584scheme where the copy-and-compaction scheme is adopted by default, but the
585policy is dynamically changed to the threaded log scheme according to the file
586system status.
587
588In order to align F2FS with underlying flash-based storage, F2FS allocates a
589segment in a unit of section. F2FS expects that the section size would be the
590same as the unit size of garbage collection in FTL. Furthermore, with respect
591to the mapping granularity in FTL, F2FS allocates each section of the active
592logs from different zones as much as possible, since FTL can write the data in
593the active logs into one allocation unit according to its mapping granularity.
594
595Cleaning process
596----------------
597
598F2FS does cleaning both on demand and in the background. On-demand cleaning is
599triggered when there are not enough free segments to serve VFS calls. Background
600cleaner is operated by a kernel thread, and triggers the cleaning job when the
601system is idle.
602
603F2FS supports two victim selection policies: greedy and cost-benefit algorithms.
604In the greedy algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment having the smallest number
605of valid blocks. In the cost-benefit algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment
606according to the segment age and the number of valid blocks in order to address
607log block thrashing problem in the greedy algorithm. F2FS adopts the greedy
608algorithm for on-demand cleaner, while background cleaner adopts cost-benefit
609algorithm.
610
611In order to identify whether the data in the victim segment are valid or not,
612F2FS manages a bitmap. Each bit represents the validity of a block, and the
613bitmap is composed of a bit stream covering whole blocks in main area.