Documentation/filesystems/ubifs.txt - maze/linux - Git at Google

 Introduction
 =============

 UBIFS file-system stands for UBI File System. UBI stands for "Unsorted
 Block Images". UBIFS is a flash file system, which means it is designed
 to work with flash devices. It is important to understand, that UBIFS
 is completely different to any traditional file-system in Linux, like
 Ext2, XFS, JFS, etc. UBIFS represents a separate class of file-systems
 which work with MTD devices, not block devices. The other Linux
 file-system of this class is JFFS2.

 To make it more clear, here is a small comparison of MTD devices and
 block devices.

 1 MTD devices represent flash devices and they consist of eraseblocks of
   rather large size, typically about 128KiB. Block devices consist of
   small blocks, typically 512 bytes.
 2 MTD devices support 3 main operations - read from some offset within an
   eraseblock, write to some offset within an eraseblock, and erase a whole
   eraseblock. Block  devices support 2 main operations - read a whole
   block and write a whole block.
 3 The whole eraseblock has to be erased before it becomes possible to
   re-write its contents. Blocks may be just re-written.
 4 Eraseblocks become worn out after some number of erase cycles -
   typically 100K-1G for SLC NAND and NOR flashes, and 1K-10K for MLC
   NAND flashes. Blocks do not have the wear-out property.
 5 Eraseblocks may become bad (only on NAND flashes) and software should
   deal with this. Blocks on hard drives typically do not become bad,
   because hardware has mechanisms to substitute bad blocks, at least in
   modern LBA disks.

 It should be quite obvious why UBIFS is very different to traditional
 file-systems.

 UBIFS works on top of UBI. UBI is a separate software layer which may be
 found in drivers/mtd/ubi. UBI is basically a volume management and
 wear-leveling layer. It provides so called UBI volumes which is a higher
 level abstraction than a MTD device. The programming model of UBI devices
 is very similar to MTD devices - they still consist of large eraseblocks,
 they have read/write/erase operations, but UBI devices are devoid of
 limitations like wear and bad blocks (items 4 and 5 in the above list).

 In a sense, UBIFS is a next generation of JFFS2 file-system, but it is
 very different and incompatible to JFFS2. The following are the main
 differences.

 * JFFS2 works on top of MTD devices, UBIFS depends on UBI and works on
   top of UBI volumes.
 * JFFS2 does not have on-media index and has to build it while mounting,
   which requires full media scan. UBIFS maintains the FS indexing
   information on the flash media and does not require full media scan,
   so it mounts many times faster than JFFS2.
 * JFFS2 is a write-through file-system, while UBIFS supports write-back,
   which makes UBIFS much faster on writes.

 Similarly to JFFS2, UBIFS supports on-the-flight compression which makes
 it possible to fit quite a lot of data to the flash.

 Similarly to JFFS2, UBIFS is tolerant of unclean reboots and power-cuts.
 It does not need stuff like fsck.ext2. UBIFS automatically replays its
 journal and recovers from crashes, ensuring that the on-flash data
 structures are consistent.

 UBIFS scales logarithmically (most of the data structures it uses are
 trees), so the mount time and memory consumption do not linearly depend
 on the flash size, like in case of JFFS2. This is because UBIFS
 maintains the FS index on the flash media. However, UBIFS depends on
 UBI, which scales linearly. So overall UBI/UBIFS stack scales linearly.
 Nevertheless, UBI/UBIFS scales considerably better than JFFS2.

 The authors of UBIFS believe, that it is possible to develop UBI2 which
 would scale logarithmically as well. UBI2 would support the same API as UBI,
 but it would be binary incompatible to UBI. So UBIFS would not need to be
 changed to use UBI2


 Mount options
 =============

 (*) == default.

 bulk_read		read more in one go to take advantage of flash
 			media that read faster sequentially
 no_bulk_read (*)	do not bulk-read
 no_chk_data_crc		skip checking of CRCs on data nodes in order to
 			improve read performance. Use this option only
 			if the flash media is highly reliable. The effect
 			of this option is that corruption of the contents
 			of a file can go unnoticed.
 chk_data_crc (*)	do not skip checking CRCs on data nodes
 compr=none              override default compressor and set it to "none"
 compr=lzo               override default compressor and set it to "lzo"
 compr=zlib              override default compressor and set it to "zlib"


 Quick usage instructions
 ========================

 The UBI volume to mount is specified using "ubiX_Y" or "ubiX:NAME" syntax,
 where "X" is UBI device number, "Y" is UBI volume number, and "NAME" is
 UBI volume name.

 Mount volume 0 on UBI device 0 to /mnt/ubifs:
 $ mount -t ubifs ubi0_0 /mnt/ubifs

 Mount "rootfs" volume of UBI device 0 to /mnt/ubifs ("rootfs" is volume
 name):
 $ mount -t ubifs ubi0:rootfs /mnt/ubifs

 The following is an example of the kernel boot arguments to attach mtd0
 to UBI and mount volume "rootfs":
 ubi.mtd=0 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs


 Module Parameters for Debugging
 ===============================

 When UBIFS has been compiled with debugging enabled, there are 3 module
 parameters that are available to control aspects of testing and debugging.
 The parameters are unsigned integers where each bit controls an option.
 The parameters are:

 debug_msgs	Selects which debug messages to display, as follows:

 		Message Type				Flag value

 		General messages			1
 		Journal messages			2
 		Mount messages				4
 		Commit messages				8
 		LEB search messages			16
 		Budgeting messages			32
 		Garbage collection messages		64
 		Tree Node Cache (TNC) messages		128
 		LEB properties (lprops) messages	256
 		Input/output messages			512
 		Log messages				1024
 		Scan messages				2048
 		Recovery messages			4096

 debug_chks	Selects extra checks that UBIFS can do while running:

 		Check					Flag value

 		General checks				1
 		Check Tree Node Cache (TNC)		2
 		Check indexing tree size		4
 		Check orphan area			8
 		Check old indexing tree			16
 		Check LEB properties (lprops)		32
 		Check leaf nodes and inodes		64

 debug_tsts	Selects a mode of testing, as follows:

 		Test mode				Flag value

 		Force in-the-gaps method		2
 		Failure mode for recovery testing	4

 For example, set debug_msgs to 5 to display General messages and Mount
 messages.


 References
 ==========

 UBIFS documentation and FAQ/HOWTO at the MTD web site:
 http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubifs.html
 http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/faq/ubifs.html
	Introduction
	=============

	UBIFS file-system stands for UBI File System. UBI stands for "Unsorted
	Block Images". UBIFS is a flash file system, which means it is designed
	to work with flash devices. It is important to understand, that UBIFS
	is completely different to any traditional file-system in Linux, like
	Ext2, XFS, JFS, etc. UBIFS represents a separate class of file-systems
	which work with MTD devices, not block devices. The other Linux
	file-system of this class is JFFS2.

	To make it more clear, here is a small comparison of MTD devices and
	block devices.

	1 MTD devices represent flash devices and they consist of eraseblocks of
	rather large size, typically about 128KiB. Block devices consist of
	small blocks, typically 512 bytes.
	2 MTD devices support 3 main operations - read from some offset within an
	eraseblock, write to some offset within an eraseblock, and erase a whole
	eraseblock. Block devices support 2 main operations - read a whole
	block and write a whole block.
	3 The whole eraseblock has to be erased before it becomes possible to
	re-write its contents. Blocks may be just re-written.
	4 Eraseblocks become worn out after some number of erase cycles -
	typically 100K-1G for SLC NAND and NOR flashes, and 1K-10K for MLC
	NAND flashes. Blocks do not have the wear-out property.
	5 Eraseblocks may become bad (only on NAND flashes) and software should
	deal with this. Blocks on hard drives typically do not become bad,
	because hardware has mechanisms to substitute bad blocks, at least in
	modern LBA disks.

	It should be quite obvious why UBIFS is very different to traditional
	file-systems.

	UBIFS works on top of UBI. UBI is a separate software layer which may be
	found in drivers/mtd/ubi. UBI is basically a volume management and
	wear-leveling layer. It provides so called UBI volumes which is a higher
	level abstraction than a MTD device. The programming model of UBI devices
	is very similar to MTD devices - they still consist of large eraseblocks,
	they have read/write/erase operations, but UBI devices are devoid of
	limitations like wear and bad blocks (items 4 and 5 in the above list).

	In a sense, UBIFS is a next generation of JFFS2 file-system, but it is
	very different and incompatible to JFFS2. The following are the main
	differences.

	* JFFS2 works on top of MTD devices, UBIFS depends on UBI and works on
	top of UBI volumes.
	* JFFS2 does not have on-media index and has to build it while mounting,
	which requires full media scan. UBIFS maintains the FS indexing
	information on the flash media and does not require full media scan,
	so it mounts many times faster than JFFS2.
	* JFFS2 is a write-through file-system, while UBIFS supports write-back,
	which makes UBIFS much faster on writes.

	Similarly to JFFS2, UBIFS supports on-the-flight compression which makes
	it possible to fit quite a lot of data to the flash.

	Similarly to JFFS2, UBIFS is tolerant of unclean reboots and power-cuts.
	It does not need stuff like fsck.ext2. UBIFS automatically replays its
	journal and recovers from crashes, ensuring that the on-flash data
	structures are consistent.

	UBIFS scales logarithmically (most of the data structures it uses are
	trees), so the mount time and memory consumption do not linearly depend
	on the flash size, like in case of JFFS2. This is because UBIFS
	maintains the FS index on the flash media. However, UBIFS depends on
	UBI, which scales linearly. So overall UBI/UBIFS stack scales linearly.
	Nevertheless, UBI/UBIFS scales considerably better than JFFS2.

	The authors of UBIFS believe, that it is possible to develop UBI2 which
	would scale logarithmically as well. UBI2 would support the same API as UBI,
	but it would be binary incompatible to UBI. So UBIFS would not need to be
	changed to use UBI2


	Mount options
	=============

	(*) == default.

	bulk_read read more in one go to take advantage of flash
	media that read faster sequentially
	no_bulk_read (*) do not bulk-read
	no_chk_data_crc skip checking of CRCs on data nodes in order to
	improve read performance. Use this option only
	if the flash media is highly reliable. The effect
	of this option is that corruption of the contents
	of a file can go unnoticed.
	chk_data_crc (*) do not skip checking CRCs on data nodes
	compr=none override default compressor and set it to "none"
	compr=lzo override default compressor and set it to "lzo"
	compr=zlib override default compressor and set it to "zlib"


	Quick usage instructions
	========================

	The UBI volume to mount is specified using "ubiX_Y" or "ubiX:NAME" syntax,
	where "X" is UBI device number, "Y" is UBI volume number, and "NAME" is
	UBI volume name.

	Mount volume 0 on UBI device 0 to /mnt/ubifs:
	$ mount -t ubifs ubi0_0 /mnt/ubifs

	Mount "rootfs" volume of UBI device 0 to /mnt/ubifs ("rootfs" is volume
	name):
	$ mount -t ubifs ubi0:rootfs /mnt/ubifs

	The following is an example of the kernel boot arguments to attach mtd0
	to UBI and mount volume "rootfs":
	ubi.mtd=0 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs


	Module Parameters for Debugging
	===============================

	When UBIFS has been compiled with debugging enabled, there are 3 module
	parameters that are available to control aspects of testing and debugging.
	The parameters are unsigned integers where each bit controls an option.
	The parameters are:

	debug_msgs Selects which debug messages to display, as follows:

	Message Type Flag value

	General messages 1
	Journal messages 2
	Mount messages 4
	Commit messages 8
	LEB search messages 16
	Budgeting messages 32
	Garbage collection messages 64
	Tree Node Cache (TNC) messages 128
	LEB properties (lprops) messages 256
	Input/output messages 512
	Log messages 1024
	Scan messages 2048
	Recovery messages 4096

	debug_chks Selects extra checks that UBIFS can do while running:

	Check Flag value

	General checks 1
	Check Tree Node Cache (TNC) 2
	Check indexing tree size 4
	Check orphan area 8
	Check old indexing tree 16
	Check LEB properties (lprops) 32
	Check leaf nodes and inodes 64

	debug_tsts Selects a mode of testing, as follows:

	Test mode Flag value

	Force in-the-gaps method 2
	Failure mode for recovery testing 4

	For example, set debug_msgs to 5 to display General messages and Mount
	messages.


	References
	==========

	UBIFS documentation and FAQ/HOWTO at the MTD web site:
	http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubifs.html
	http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/faq/ubifs.html