This time to account for the new LFS_o_UNCRYST and LFS_o_UNGRAFT flags.
This required moving the T flags out of the way, which of course
conflicted with TSTATE, so that had to move...
One thing that helped was shoving LFS_O_DESYNC up with the internal
state flags. It's definitely more a state flag than the other public
flags, it just also happens to be user toggleable.
Here's the new jenga:
8 8 8 8
.----++----++----++----.
.-..----..-..-..-------.
o_flags: |t|| f ||o||t|| o |
|-||-.--':-:|-|'--.-.--'
|-||-|.----.|-'--------.
t_flags: |t||f||tstt|| t |
'-''-''----'|----.-----'
.----..-.:-:|----|:-:.-.
m_flags: | m ||c||o|| t ||o||m|
|----||-|'-'|-.--''-''-'
|----||-|---|-|.-------.
f_flags: | m ||c| |t|| f |
'----''-'---'-''-------'
This adds a bit of code, but that's not the end of the world:
code stack ctx
before: 37172 2288 636
after: 37200 (+0.1%) 2288 (+0.0%) 636 (+0.0%)
- LFS_CKPARITY -> LFS_CKMETAPARITY
- LFS_CKDATACKSUMS -> LFS_CKDATACKSUMREADS
The goal here is to provide hints for 1. what is being checked (META,
DATA, etc), and 2. on what operation (FETCHES, PROGS, READS, etc).
Note that LFS_CKDATACKSUMREADS is intended to eventually be a part of a
set of flags that can pull off closed fully-checked reads:
- LFS_CKMETAREDUNDREADS - Check data checksums on reads
- LFS_CKDATACKSUMREADS - Check metadata redund blocks on reads
- LFS_CKREADS - LFS_CKMETAREDUNDREADS + LFS_CKDATACKSUMREADS
Also it's probably not a bad idea for LFS_CKMETAPARITY to be harder to
use. It's really not worth enabling unless you understand its
limitations (<1 bit of error detection, yay).
No code changes.
See the relevant commit for why. These just added surprisingly little
performance benefit for the code/stack cost.
Maybe in a future performance-preferring littlefs driver.
The idea here, is we give each lfsr_btree_t an optional leaf rbyd, in
addition to the root rbyd. This leaf rbyd acts as a cache for the most
recent leaf, allowing nearby btree lookups to skip the full btree walk.
Unfortunately, this failed on pretty much every measurable metric...
---
The motivation for this is that we often do a bunch of nearby btree
lookups:
- Btree iteration via lfsr_btree_lookupnext is a bit naive, walking from
the root every step.
- Our crystallization algorithm requires a bunch of nearby lookups to
figure out our crystallization heuristic. Currently at most 4, when
you need to lookup both crystal neighbors and then _also_ both
fragment neighbors for coalescing.
- Checksum collision resolution for dids and (FUTURE) ddkeys can require
an unbounded number of sequential lookups.
Though to be fair, this is an exceptional case if our checksum is any
good.
- Bids with multiple rattrs require nearby lookups to resolve.
Though currently this can be explicitly avoided via
lfsr_btree_lookupleaf + lfsr_rbyd_lookup.
The theory was that cases like these could explicitly keep track of the
leaf rbyd to avoid full btree walks, but in practice this never really
worked out. Tracking if we're still in the relevant leaf rbyd just adds
too much logic/code cost.
But if this leaf tracking logic was implemented once in the btree
layer...
The other theoretical benefit was being able to move more rbyds off the
stack. Sure our btrees take up more RAM, but if that results in stack
savings, that may be a win.
Oh, and this would let our btree API and rbyd API converge without
performance concerns. Internal users could in theory call
lfsr_btree_lookupnext + lfsr_btree_lookup with the same performance as
explicitly tracking the rbyd.
---
But this was a complete failure!
First the good news: There was a modest speedup of around ~2x to linear
reads.
And that's the good news.
Now the bad news:
1. There was no noticeable performance gain in any other benchmarks.
To be fair, we're at the early stages of benchmarking, so the
benchmarks may not be the most thorough, but thinking about it, there
are some explanations:
- In any benchmark that writes, fetch + erase + prog dominates. Being
able to skip fetches during lookups makes our btree lookups
surprisingly cheap!
- Any random read heavy benchmark is likely thrashing this cache,
which is to be expected.
- For small 1-block btrees, the leaf cache is useless because the
entire btree is cache in the root rbyd.
And keep in mind, our blocks are BIG. "Small" here could be on
the order of ~128KiB-1MiB for NAND flash.
- For the mtree, fetched mdirs actually already act as a sort of leaf
cache.
The extra btree leaf cache isn't doing _nothing_, but each layer of
the mtree has diminishing returns due to btree's ridiculous
branching factor.
- For file btrees, we're explicitly caching the leaf fragments/
blocks, so the extra btree leaf cache has diminishing returns for
the same reason.
2. Code cost was bad, stack cost was worse:
code stack ctx
before: 37172 2288 636
after: 38068 (+2.4%) 2416 (+5.6%) 664 (+4.4%)
Tracking the leaf required more code, that's expected. And, to be
fair, the current code has had a lot more time to congeal.
What wasn't expected was the stack cost.
Unfortunately these caches didn't really take any rbyds off the stack
hot-path:
- We _can_ get rid of the rbyd in lfsr_btree_lookup/namelookup, but
we were already hacking our way around the critical one in
lfsr_mtree_lookup/namelookup by reusing the mdir's rbyd!
- We can't even abuse the leaf rbyd in the commit logic, since the
target btree can end up iterated/traversed by lfs_alloc.
That was a fun bug.
And the addition of a second rbyd to lfsr_btree_t increases both ctx
and stack anywhere btrees are allocated.
Maybe this will make more sense when we add the auxiliary btrees, or
after more benchmarking, but for now the theoretical performance
improvements just aren't worth it.
Will probably revert this, but I wanted to commit it in case the idea is
worth resurrecting in the future, if in the future nearby btree lookups
are a bigger penalty than they are now.
Still on the fence about this, but in hindsight the code/stack
difference is not _that_ much:
code stack ctx
before: 36460 2280 636
after: 37092 (+1.7%) 2304 (+1.1%) 636 (+0.0%)
Especially with the potential to significantly speed up linear file
writes/rewrites, which are usually the most common file operation. You
ever just, you know, write a whole file at once?
Note we can still add the previous behavior as an opt-in write strategy
to save code/stack when preferred over linear write/rewrite speed.
This is actually the main reason I think we should prefer
lazy-crystallization by default. Of the theoretical/future write
strategies, lazy-crystallization was the only one trading performance
for code/stack and not vice versa (global-alignment, linear-only,
fully-fragmented, etc).
If we default to a small, but less performant filesystem, it risks users
thinking littlefs is slow when they just haven't turned on the right
flags.
That being said there's a balance here. Users will probably judge
littlefs based on its default code size for the same reason.
---
Note this includes the generalized lfsr_file_crystallize_ API, which
adds a bit of code:
code stack ctx
before gen-cryst: 37084 2304 636
after gen-cryst: 37092 (+0.0%) 2304 (+0.0%) 636 (+0.0%)
This reverts most of the lazy-grafting/crystallization logic, but keeps
the general crystallization algorithm rewrite and file->leaf for caching
read operations and erased-state.
Unfortunately lazy-grafting/crystallization is both a code and stack
heavy feature for a relatively specific write pattern. It doesn't even
help if we're forced to write fragments due to prog alignment.
Dropping lazy-grafting/crystallization trades off linear write/rewrite
performance for code and stack savings:
code stack ctx
before: 37084 2304 636
after: 36428 (-1.8%) 2248 (-2.4%) 636 (+0.0%)
But with file->leaf we still keep the improvements to linear read
performance!
Compared to pre-file->leaf:
code stack ctx
before file->leaf: 36016 2296 636
after lazy file->leaf: 37084 (+3.0%) 2304 (+0.3%) 636 (+0.0%)
after eager file->leaf: 36428 (+1.1%) 2248 (-2.1%) 636 (+0.0%)
I'm still on the fence about this, but lazy-grafting/crystallization is
just a lot of code... And the first 6 letters of littlefs don't spell
"speedy" last time I checked...
At the very least we can always add lazy-grafting/crystallization as an
opt-in write strategy later.
This adopts lazy crystallization in _addition_ to lazy grafting, managed
by separate LFS_o_UNCRYST and LFS_o_UNGRAFT flags:
LFS_o_UNCRYST 0x00400000 File's leaf not fully crystallized
LFS_o_UNGRAFT 0x00800000 File's leaf does not match bshrub/btree
This lets us graft not-fully-crystallized blocks into the tree without
needing to fully crystallize, avoiding repeated recrystallizations when
linearly rewriting a file.
Long story short, this gives file rewrites roughly the same performance
as linear file writes.
---
In theory you could also have fully crystallized but ungrafted blocks
(UNGRAFT + ~UNCRYST), but this doesn't happen with the current logic.
lfsr_file_crystallize eagerly grafts blocks once they're crystallized.
Internally, lfsr_file_crystallize replaces lfsr_file_graft for the
"don't care, gimme file->leaf" operation. This is analogous to
lfsr_file_flush for file->cache.
Note we do _not_ use LFS_o_UNCRYST to track erased-state! If we did,
erased-state wouldn't survive lfsr_file_flush!
---
Of course, this adds even more code. Fortunately not _that_ much
considering how many lines of code changed:
code stack ctx
before: 37012 2304 636
after 37084 (+0.2%) 2304 (+0.0%) 636 (+0.0%)
There is another downside however, and that's that our benchmarked disk
usage is slightly worse during random writes.
I haven't fully investigated this, but I think it's due to more
temporary fragments/blocks in the B-tree before flushing. This can cause
B-tree inner nodes to split earlier than when eagerly recrystallizing.
This also leads to higher disk usage pre-flush since we keep both the
old and new blocks around while uncrystallized, but since most rewrites
are probably going to be CoW on top of committed files, I don't think
this will be a big deal.
Note the disk usage ends up the same after lfsr_file_flush.
TLDR: Added file->leaf, which can track file fragments (read only) and
blocks independently from file->b.shrub. This speeds up linear
read/write performance at a heavy code/stack cost.
The jury is still out on if this ends up reverted.
---
This is another change motivated by benchmarking, specifically the
significant regression in linear reads.
The problem is that CTZ skip-lists are actually _really_ good at
appending blocks! (but only appending blocks) The entire state of the
file is contained in the last block, so file writes can resume without
any reads. With B-trees, we need at least 1 B-tree lookup to resume
appending, and this really adds up when writing extremely blocks.
To try to mitigate this, I added file->leaf, a single in-RAM bptr for
tracking the most recent leaf we've operated on. This avoids B-tree
lookups during linear reads, and allowing the leaf to fall out-of-sync
with the B-tree avoids both B-tree lookups and commits during writes.
Unfortunately this isn't a complete win for writes. If we write
fragments, i.e. cache_size < prog_size, we still need to incrementally
commit to the B-tree. Fragments are a bit annoying for caching as any
B-tree commit can discard the block they reside on.
For reading, however, this brings read performance back to roughly the
same as CTZ skip-lists.
---
This also turned into more-or-less a full rewrite of the lfsr_file_flush
-> lfsr_file_crystallize code path, which is probably a good thing. This
code needed some TLC.
file->leaf also replaces the previous eblock/eoff mechanism for
erased-state tracking via the new LFSR_BPTR_ISERASED flag. This should
be useful when exploring more erased-state tracking mechanisms (ddtree).
Unfortunately, all of this additional in-RAM state is very costly. I
think there's some cleanup that can be done (the current impl is a bit
of a mess/proof-of-concept), but this does add a significant chunk of
both code and stack:
code stack ctx
before: 36016 2296 636
after: 37228 (+3.4%) 2328 (+1.4%) 636 (+0.0%)
file->leaf also increases the size of lfsr_file_t, but this doesn't show
up in ctx because struct lfs_info dominates:
lfsr_file_t before: 116
lfsr_file_t after: 136 (+17.2%)
Hm... Maybe ctx measurements should use a lower LFS_NAME_MAX?
This adds mattr_estimate, which is basically the same as rattr_estimate,
but assumes weight <= 1:
rattr tag:
.---+---+---+- -+- -+- -+- -+---+- -+- -+- -. worst case: <=11 bytes
| tag | weight | size | rattr est: <=3t + 4
'---+---+---+- -+- -+- -+- -+---+- -+- -+- -' <=37 bytes
mattr tag:
.---+---+---+---+- -+- -+- -. worst case: <=7 bytes
| tag | w | size | mattr est: <=3t + 4
'---+---+---+---+- -+- -+- -' <=25 bytes
This may seem like only a minor improvement, but with 3 tags for every
attr, this really adds up. And with our compaction estimate overheads we
need every byte of shaving we can get.
---
This ended up necessary to get littlefs running with 512 byte blocks
again. Now that our compaction overheads are so high, littlefs is having
a hard time fitting even just the filesystem config in a single block:
mroot estimate 512B before: 246/256
mroot estimate 512B after: 162/256 (-34.1%)
Whether or not it makes sense to run littlefs with 512 byte blocks is
still an open question, even after this tweak.
Note that even if 512 byte blocks ends up intractable, this doesn't mean
littlefs won't be able to run on SD/eMMC! The configured block_size can
always be a multiple, >=, of the physical block_size, and choosing a
larger block_size completely side-steps this problem.
The new design of littlefs is primarily focused on devices with very
large block sizes, so you may want to use larger block sizes on SD/eMMC
for performance reasons anyways.
---
Code changes were pretty minimal. This does add an additional field to
lfs_t, but it's just a byte and fits into padding with the other small
precomputed constants:
code stack ctx
before: 35824 2368 636
after: 35836 (+0.0%) 2368 (+0.0%) 636 (+0.0%)
This better matches how other filesystems refer to the number of in-use
blocks.
Which makes sense when you consider that "size" could also refer to the
configured block_count. The term "usage" avoids this ambiguity.
Mainly the grm and ptail subsystems. This matches the internal mtree
API.
Unfortunately this _did_ add a little bit of code, I guess due to the
larger struct offsets. But since this simplifies the internal API I'm
going to chalk it up to compiler noise:
code stack ctx
before: 35768 2368 636
after: 35792 (+0.1%) 2368 (+0.0%) 636 (+0.0%)
This drops the leading count/mode byte, and instead uses mid=0 to
terminate grms. This shaves off 1 bytes from grmdeltas.
Previously, we needed the count/mode byte for a couple reasons:
- We needed to know the number of grm entries somehow, and there wasn't
always an obvious sentinel value. mid=-1, for example, is
unrepresentable with our unsigned leb128 encoding.
But now that development has settled, we can use mid=0.0 to figure out
the end-of-queue. mid=0.0 should always map to the root bookmark,
which doesn't make sense to delete, so it makes for a reasonable null
terminator here.
- It provided a route for future grm extensions, which could use the >2
count/mode encodings.
But I think we can use additional grm tag encodings for this.
There's only one gdelta tag so far, but the current plan for future
gdelta tags is to carve out the bottom 2 bits for redund like we do
with the struct tags:
LFSR_TAG_GDELTA 0x01tt v--- ---1 -ttt ttrr
LFSR_TAG_GRMDELTA 0x0100 v--- ---1 ---- ----
LFSR_TAG_GBMAPDELTA 0x0104 v--- ---1 ---- -1rr
LFSR_TAG_GDDTREEDELTA 0x0108 v--- ---1 ---- 1-rr
LFSR_TAG_GPTREEDELTA 0x010c v--- ---1 ---- 11rr
...
Decoding is a bit more complicated for gstate, since we will need to
xor those bits if mutable, but this avoids needing a full byte just
for redund in every auxiliary tree.
Long story short, we can leverage the lower 2 bits of the grm tag for
future extensions using the same mechanism.
This may seem like a lot of effort for only a handful of bytes, but keep
in mind each gdelta lives in more-or-less every mdir in the filesystem.
Also saves a bit of code/ctx:
code stack ctx
before: 35772 2368 640
after: 35768 (-0.0%) 2368 (+0.0%) 636 (-0.6%)
This adds LFSR_TAG_ORPHAN, which simplifies quite a bit of the internal
stickynote handling.
Now that we don't have to worry about conflicts with future unknown
types, we can add whatever types we want internally. One useful one
is LFSR_TAG_ORPHAN, which lets us determine stickynote's orphan status
early (in lfsr_mdir_lookupnext and lfsr_mdir_namelookup):
- non-orphan stickynotes -> LFSR_TAG_STICKYNOTE
- orphan stickynotes -> LFSR_TAG_ORPHAN
This simplifies all the places where we need to check if a stickynote
really exists, which is most of the high-level functions.
One downside is that this makes stickynote _manipulation_ a bit more
delicate. lfsr_mdir_lookup(LFSR_TAG_ORPHAN) no longer works as expected,
for example.
Fortunately we can sidestep this issue by dropping down to
lfsr_rbyd_lookup when we need to interact with stickynotes directly,
skipping the is-orphan checks.
---
Saves a nice bit of code:
code stack ctx
before: 35984 2440 640
after: 35832 (-0.4%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
It got a little muddy since this now include the unknown-type changes,
but here's the code diff from before we exposed LFSR_TYPE_STICKYNOTE to
users:
code stack ctx
before: 35740 2440 640
after: 35832 (+0.3%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
This changes how we approach unknown file types.
Before:
> Unknown file types are allowed and may leak resources if modified,
> so attempted modification (rename/remove) will error with
> LFS_ERR_NOTSUP.
Now:
> Unknown file types are only allowed in RDONLY mode. This avoids the
> whole leaking resources headache.
Additionally, unknown types are now mapped to LFS_TYPE_UNKNOWN, instead
of just being forwarded to the user. This allows us to add internal
types/tags to the LFSR_TAG_NAME type space without worrying about
conflicts with future types:
- reg -> LFS_TYPE_REG
- dir -> LFS_TYPE_DIR
- stickynote -> LFS_TYPE_STICKYNOTE
- everything else -> LFS_TYPE_UNKNOWN
Thinking about potential future types, it seems most (symlinks,
compressed files, etc) can be better implemented via custom attributes.
Using custom attributes doesn't mean the filesystem _can't_ inject
special behavior, and custom attributes allow for perfect backwards
compatibility.
So with future types less likely, forwarding type info to users is less
important (and potentially error prone). Instead, allowing on-disk +
internal types to be represented densely is much more useful.
And it avoids setting an upper bound on future types prematurely.
---
This also includes a minor rcompat/wcompat rework. Since we're probably
going to end up with 32-bit rcompat flags anyways, might as well make
them more human-readable (nibble-aligned):
LFS_RCOMPAT_NONSTANDARD 0x00000001 Non-standard filesystem format
LFS_RCOMPAT_WRONLY 0x00000002 Reading is disallowed
LFS_RCOMPAT_BMOSS 0x00000010 Files may use inlined data
LFS_RCOMPAT_BSPROUT 0x00000020 Files may use block pointers
LFS_RCOMPAT_BSHRUB 0x00000040 Files may use inlined btrees
LFS_RCOMPAT_BTREE 0x00000080 Files may use btrees
LFS_RCOMPAT_MMOSS 0x00000100 May use an inlined mdir
LFS_RCOMPAT_MSPROUT 0x00000200 May use an mdir pointer
LFS_RCOMPAT_MSHRUB 0x00000400 May use an inlined mtree
LFS_RCOMPAT_MTREE 0x00000800 May use an mdir btree
LFS_RCOMPAT_GRM 0x00001000 Global-remove in use
LFS_WCOMPAT_NONSTANDARD 0x00000001 Non-standard filesystem format
LFS_WCOMPAT_RDONLY 0x00000002 Writing is disallowed
LFS_WCOMPAT_REG 0x00000010 Regular file types in use
LFS_WCOMPAT_DIR 0x00000020 Directory file types in use
LFS_WCOMPAT_STICKYNOTE 0x00000040 Stickynote file types in use
LFS_WCOMPAT_GCKSUM 0x00001000 Global-checksum in use
---
Code changes:
code stack ctx
before: 35928 2440 640
after: 35924 (-0.0%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
Now that LFS_TYPE_STICKYNOTE is a real type users can interact with, it
makes sense to group it with REG/DIR. This also has the side-effect of
making these contiguous.
---
LFSR_TAG_BOOKMARKs, however, are still hidden from the user. This
unfortunately means there will be a bit of a jump if we ever add
LFS_TYPE_SYMLINK in the future, but I'm starting to wonder if that's the
best way to approach symlinks in littlefs...
If instead LFS_TYPE_SYMLINKS were implied via custom attribute, you
could avoid the headache that comes with adding a new tag encoding, and
allow perfect compatibility with non-symlink drivers. Win win.
This seems like a better approach for _all_ of the theoretical future
types (compressed files, device files, etc), and avoids the risk of
oversaturating the type space.
---
This had a surprising impact on code for just a minor encoding tweak. I
guess the contiguousness pushed the compiler to use tables/ranges for
more things? Or maybe 3 vs 5 is just an easier constant to encode?
code stack ctx
before: 35952 2440 640
after: 35928 (-0.1%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
This adds the LFS_TYPE_STICKYNOTE type, allowing users to interact with
stickynotes as long as they aren't orphaned.
This hopefully solves the long-standing mess that was the LFS_O_EXCL
API.
---
As for what I mean by orphaned vs non-orphaned stickynotes:
Non-orphaned stickynotes represent files that have been "created" (via
LFS_O_CREAT), but not "committed" (via sync/close). You can still close
and convert the stickynote to a reg file, so these aren't orphans. These
are also called "uncreated" files in some parts of the codebase:
- open+O_CREAT -> non-orphaned stickynote (uncreated file)
Orphaned stickynotes are possible by either removing an open file, or
desyncing a file before sync/close. These are still invisible to the
user and will be eventually cleaned up after the last file handle is
closed:
- open+remove -> orphaned stickynote (zombied file)
- open+O_CREAT+desync+close -> orphaned stickynote (orphaned file)
Desynced files are a bit special. Even though they technically aren't
orphaned, they also behave like orphaned file handles:
- open+O_CREAT+close -> orphaned stickynote (desynced file)
The idea is this mimics the state of files post-close, and allows for
some tricks like using a desync file as a temporary file with no
observable effects on the filesystem.
---
The motivation for this comes from staring at the LFS_O_EXCL API for too
long and realizing the problem is that littlefs's API contradicts itself
when it comes to whether or not uncreated files exist.
This solution is to consistently treat uncreated files as though they
exist (the alternative would make LFS_O_EXCL pretty much useless), but I
really didn't want to do this as having what appears to be normal files
disappear after powerloss risks confusion.
The compromise here is to give these files a special type, repurposing
the internal LFS_TAG_STICKYNOTE, which hopefully hints to the user these
won't behave like normal files.
If the user is more interested in POSIX compatibility, they can always
map these to either LFS_TYPE_REG or LFS_ERR_NOENT, whichever they think
is the least confusing.
As a quirk of littlefs's API, stickynotes should never actually contain
any data, and will always have size 0.
However they can have custom attributes assigned now (which is I guess
ok? also TODO should probably test this).
---
The implementation right now is a bit naive, I mostly just wanted to get
the tests working again in this new model. It may be possible to claw
back some of this code cost:
code stack ctx
before: 35740 2440 640
after: 35952 (+0.6%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
littlefs is not a C++ project, and it's important to make sure users are
aware of that in case the header file ever breaks C++ (C++ is _not_
compatible with C99).
So dropping these guards.
C++ users should wrap the relevant includes with extern "C":
extern "C" {
#include "lfs.h"
}
This tweaks a number of extended revision count things:
- Added LFS_REVDBG, which adds debug info to revision counts.
This initializes the bottom 12 bits of every revision count with a
hint based on rbyd type, which may be useful when debugging:
- 68 69 21 v0 (hi!.) => mroot anchor
- 6d 72 7e v0 (mr~.) => mroot
- 6d 64 7e v0 (md~.) => mdir
- 62 74 7e v0 (bt~.) => file btree node
- 62 6d 7e v0 (bm~.) => mtree node
This may be overwritten by the recycle counter if it overlaps, worst
case the recycle counter takes up the entire revision count, but these
have been chosen to at least keep some info if partially overwritten.
To make this work required the LFS_i_INMTREE hack (yay global state),
but a hack for debug info isn't the end of the world.
Note we don't have control over data blocks, so there's always a
chance they end up containing what looks like one of the above
revision counts.
- Renamed LFS_NOISY -> LFS_REVNOISE
- LFS_REVDBG and LFS_REVNOISE are incompatible, so using both asserts.
This also frees up the theoretical 0x00000030 state for an additional
rev mode in the future.
- Adopted LFS_REVNOISE (and LFS_REVDBG) in btree nodes as well.
If you need rev noise, you probably want it in all rbyds/metadata
blocks, not just mdirs.
---
This had no effect on the default code size, but did affect
LFS_REVNOISE:
code stack ctx
before: 35688 2440 640
after: 35688 (+0.0%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
revnoise before: 35744 2440 640
revnoise after: 35880 (+0.4%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
default: 35688 2440 640
revdbg: 35912 (+0.6%) 2448 (+0.3%) 640 (+0.0%)
revnoise: 35880 (+0.5%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
- Trying to prefer crystal over compact verbiage to try to avoid
confusion with metadata/rbyd compaction
- crystal_thresh >= block_size implying a fully-fragmented file was a
mistake, it should be crystal_thresh > block_size.
crystal_thresh == block_size has the behavior of waiting until the
last moment to crystallize a block, but this still breaks the
fully-fragmented random-write guarantee.
This changed during development, so the comment was probably just
outdated.
So now crystal_thresh only controls when fragments are compacted into
blocks, while fragment_thresh controls when blocks are broken into
fragments. Setting fragment_thresh=-1 will follow crystal_thresh and
keeps the previous behavior.
These were already two separate pieces of logic, so it makes sense to
provide two separate knobs for tuning.
Setting fragment_thresh lower than crystal_thresh has some potential to
reduce hysteresis in cases where random writes push blocks close to
crystal_thresh. It will be interesting to explore this more when
benchmarking.
---
The additional config option adds a bit of code/ctx, but hopefully that
will go away in the future config rework:
code stack ctx
before: 35584 2480 636
after: 35600 (+0.0%) 2480 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.6%)
- mdir_bits -> mbits
- lfsr_mid_bid -> lfsr_mbid
- lfsr_mid_rid -> lfsr_mrid
These now match the naming in the dbg scripts.
I feel like this is more terse in a way that is also more readable, but
maybe that's just me.
And the related config options:
- cfg->file_buffer_size -> cfg->file_cache_size
- file->cfg->buffer_size -> file->cfg->cache_size
- file->cfg->buffer -> file->cfg->cache_buffer
The original motivation to rename this to file->buffer was to better
align with what other filesystems call this, but I think this is a case
where internal consistency is more important than external consistency.
file->cache better matches lfs->pcache and lfs->rcache, and makes it
easier to read code involving both file->cache and other user-provided
buffers.
Keeping the upstream name also helps with continuity.
This is the correct name for our rbyd attr type, even if it requires a
bit more typing.
lfsr_attr_t would be a better name, but that conflicts with our
user-facing attrs.
While I think shrub_size is probably the more correct name at a
technical level, inline_size is probably more what users expect and
doesn't require a deeper understanding of filesystem details.
The only risk is that users may think inline_size has no effect on large
files, when in fact it still controls how much of the btree root can be
inlined.
There's also the point that sticking with inline_size maintains
compatibility with both the upstream version and any future version that
has other file representations.
May revisit this, but renaming to lfs->cfg->inline_size for now.
Now that we no longer have bmoss files, inline_size and shrub_size are
effectively the same thing.
We weren't using this, so no code change, but it does save a word of
ctx:
code stack ctx
before: 36280 2576 640
after: 36280 (+0.0%) 2576 (+0.0%) 636 (-0.6%)
This takes advantage of another bit in lfsr_data_t's size field to
differentiate between normal lfsr_data_ts, and lfsr_data_ts in a bptr:
in-RAM buffer: on-disk data: on-disk bptr:
.---+---+---+---. .. .---+---+---+---. .. .---+---+---+---.
|00| size | |10| size | |11| size |
+---+---+---+---+ .. +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| ptr -------. | block | | block |
+---+---+---+---+ | +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| (unused) | | | off | | off |
'---+---+---+---' | '---+---+---+---' .. +---+---+---+---+
.---+---+---+---. | | cksize |
| data |<' +---+---+---+---+
: : : | cksum |
'---+---+---+---'
Note this bit is unused even in a theoretical 16/14-bit littlefs mode.
This also leaves space for one more encoding (0b01), but I don't have
any good use for this yet. Previous ideas around an inlined
representation failed to improve anything.
This accomplishes a couple things:
1. We no longer need to return the tag in lfsr_file_lookupnext, since
these can only be blocks or fragments.
2. We no longer need to rely on cksize=0 to determine checksummed data
from non-checksummed data when running with LFS_CKDATACKSUMS.
This was supposed to be a relatively free optimization, but our
lfsr_data_fromslice implementation is being a bit... funky... It seems
we're right on the edge of some inline heuristic, where adding this flag
prevents lfsr_data_fromslice from being inlined, missing a number of
contextual optimizations and causing things to explode.
This can be worked around with __attribute__((always_inline)), but we
should probably revisit our data slicing macros to see if this can be
solved without a compiler specific hack. Relying on such a sensitive
function is not great:
code stack ctx
always_inline: 36320 2584 640
inline: 36424 (+0.3%) 2664 (+3.1%) 640 (+0.0%)
Weird inlining noise aside, this was an overall improvement. Not needing
to fetch tags in lfsr_file_lookupnext saves a bit of stack in our
hot-path, which is nice:
code stack ctx
default before: 36460 2608 640
default after: 36320 (-0.4%) 2584 (-0.9%) 640 (+0.0%)
Hmmm, though maybe not for ckdatacksums:
code stack ctx
ckdatacksums before: 37628 3048 640
ckdatacksums after: 38096 (+1.2%) 3072 (+0.8%) 640 (+0.0%)
This moves all of the shrub tracking logic from lfsr_obshrub_t into
lfsr_bshrub_t, completely drops the lfsr_obshrub_t type, and changes all
lfsr_bshrub_* functions to take lfsr_bshrub_t instead of the mdir+shrub
pair.
This makes the lfsr_bshrub_* functions <-> lfsr_bshrub_t relationship
more consistent with other APIs, such as lfsr_btree_t:
- lfsr_bshrub_lookupnext(lfs, &file->o.o.mdir, &file->o.bshrub, ...)
+ lfsr_bshrub_lookupnext(lfs, &file->b, ...)
I think the reason why this design wasn't obvious before is because, at
least conceptually, having the lfsr_mdir_t live inside the lfsr_bshrub_t
is a bit weird. It's only thanks to lfsr_file_t invasively using the
internal lfsr_mdir_t that we can avoid duplicate lfsr_mdir_t objects.
This also reorganizes the structs in lfs.h a bit, and renames the
related file.o -> file.b fields (much needed because lfs->gc.t.o.o.mdir.
rbyd.blocks was starting to get _real_ confusing).
---
Unfortunately, reducing the number of arguments to lfsr_bshrub_*
functions did not save nearly as much code as I thought it would. It
even ended up with a net _increase_ of code, apparently due to needing
to recalculate the bshrub->shrub offset more often:
code stack ctx
before: 36476 2608 640
after: 36484 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
Strange, but this rework is still worthwhile if only for the code
readability.
The lfsr_shrub_t/lfsr_btree_t union was _technically_ not undefined
behavior, because the relevant fields were all a part of the "common
initial sequence", but collapsing these to the same type certainly does
simplify things.
The only weirdness is that we now store shrub.estimate in shrub.eoff.
We could add a union here, but the extra noise is just not worth the
slighty better name. The shrub.estimate is a sort of "simulated
shrub.eoff" anyways.
---
This makes it so all of these types alias to the same core lfsr_rbyd_t
type, which I suppose actually reflects the on-disk format quite well:
lfsr_shrub_t => lfsr_rbyd_t
lfsr_bshrub_t
lfsr_btree_t
Code cost more-or-less unaffected:
code stack ctx
before: 36432 2608 640
after: 36436 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
D'oh, here I am trying to rely solely on our shrub.block == mdir.block
condition to tell bshrubs and btrees apart, when we already have
LFSR_RBYD_ISSHRUB as an explicit flag in the rbyd code!
Long story short, these are equivalent:
bshrub.trunk & LFSR_RBYD_ISSHRUB => bshrub is shrub
bshrub.block == mdir.block => bshrub is shrub
But in theory flag checks are cheaper and require less things being
in-sync (i.e. fewer things can go wrong).
This also means we only need to look at bshrub.trunk to determine if
it's a bshrub, btree, or neither (trunk=0):
bnull: bshrub: btree:
.---+---+---+---. .. .---+---+---+---. .. .---+---+---+---.
| weight=0 | | weight>0 | | weight>0 |
+---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| block=mdir | | block=mdir | | block!=mdir |
+---+---+---+---+ .. +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| (unused) | | (unused) | | (unused) |
+---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
|0| trunk=0 | |1| trunk | |0| trunk |
+---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+ .. +---+---+---+---+
| (unused) | | estimate | |p| eoff |
+ + +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| | | (unused) | | cksum |
'---+---+---+---' '---+---+---+---' '---+---+---+---'
As a side-effect, lfsr_file_truncate/fruncate are back to dropping
zero-weight btrees even if they have erased-state (now handled in
lfsr_file_carve). On reflection this is the simpler approach, consistent
with LFS_O_TRUNC, uses fewer blocks, and if keeping erased-state turns
out to be more valuable we can always change this in the future.
Though we should at least add a test that we can read existing
zero-weight btrees and bshrubs...
---
This ended up highlighting that we were leaving dangling bshrub
references in lfsr_mtree_traverse_!
You may think these dangling references would've been fine with the
previous logic, but they could've created problems when the block
allocator makes a full circle. Not great!
Fortunately, relying on LFSR_RBYD_ISSHRUB is a lot safer, and lets us
catch issues like this with asserts in lfsr_mdir_commit.
---
Code savings were a bit disappointing, but any change that reduces
assumptions in the code is a good change:
code stack ctx
before: 36460 2608 640
after: 36424 (-0.1%) 2608 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
Now that we don't use bmoss or bsprouts anymore, we can drop the
LFSR_BSHRUB_ISNULLORBMOSSORBPTR flag and simplify our lfsr_bshrub_t
struct quite a bit.
However, we do still need a bnull representation, which is surprisingly
tricky... And annoying...
Current solution: Bnulls are bshrubs with weight=0. This works, but
unfortunately does mean we need to update bnull blocks on mdir
relocation/compaction, and risks bnull blocks falling out-of-sync, which
is a really weird thing to worry about:
bnull: bshrub: btree:
.---+---+---+---. .. .---+---+---+---. .. .---+---+---+---.
| weight=0 | | weight>0 | | weight |
+---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| block=mdir | | block=mdir | | block!=mdir |
+---+---+---+---+ .. +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| (unused) | | (unused) | | (unused) |
+ + +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| | | trunk | | trunk |
+ + +---+---+---+---+ .. +---+---+---+---+
| | | estimate | | eoff |
+ + +---+---+---+---+ +---+---+---+---+
| | | (unused) | | cksum |
'---+---+---+---' '---+---+---+---' '---+---+---+---'
Note we can't just assume all weight=0 files are bnulls, or else we
won't use erased-state in empty btree roots. This risks thrashing in
files oscillating around weight=0.
Technically, weight=0 bshrubs _are_ slightly different than bnulls (
bshrubs point to a null tag, while bnulls simply have no tree), but
unlike btrees, there's no reason to keep weight=0 bshrubs around. Any
bshrub erased-state can still be used by the mdir.
This change also makes LFS_O_TRUNC and lfsr_file_truncate/fruncate
behave slightly differently, with LFS_O_TRUNC unconditionally reverting
to a bnull, while lfsr_file_truncate/fruncate tries to keep the btree
root around. This may be worth revisiting...
---
Despite the awkward encoding, this simplification still ends up saving a
nice bit of code and stack:
code stack ctx
before: 36668 2616 640
after: 36460 (-0.6%) 2608 (-0.3%) 640 (+0.0%)
We had to be a bit clever with our lfsr_mtree_t representation to
support msprouts. Now that we don't support msprouts, we can simplify
this and drop the lfsr_mtree_t type completely! which is nice for both
code cost and readability.
Saves a bit more code:
code stack ctx
before: 38344 2624 640
after: 38284 (-0.2%) 2624 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
Which increases the total savings of dropping msprouts:
code stack ctx
yes msprouts: 38508 2624 640
no msprouts: 38284 (-0.6%) 2624 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
littlefs is intentionally designed to not rely on noise, even with cksum
collisions (hello, perturb bit!). So it makes sense for this to be an
optional feature, even if it's a small one.
Disabling revision count noise by default also helps with testing. The
whole point of revision count noise is to make cksum collisions less
likely, which is a bit counterproductive when that's something we want
to test!
This doesn't really change the revision count encoding:
vvvvrrrr rrrrrrnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn
'-.''----.----''---------.--------'
'------|---------------|---------- 4-bit relocation revision
'---------------|---------- recycle-bits recycle counter
'---------- pseudorandom noise (optional)
I considered moving the recycle-bits down when we're not adding noise,
but the extra logic just isn't worth making the revision count a bit
more human-readable.
---
This saves a small bit of code in the default build, at the cost of some
code for the runtime checks in the LFS_NOISY build. Though I'm hoping
future config work will let users opt-out of these runtime checks:
code stack ctx
before: 38548 2624 640
default after: 38508 (-0.1%) 2624 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
LFS_NOISY after: 38568 (+0.1%) 2624 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
Honestly the thing I'm more worried about is using one of our precious
mount flags for this... There's not that many bits left!
This just exposes the gcksum to the user, but exposing the gcksum allows
the user to store it externally for an extra layer of protection against
filesystem corruption.
As far as I'm aware this is the only real way to protect against global
rollback issues, which is a problem for any filesystem with logs (aka
any powerloss-resilient filesystem).
This required a comically small amount of code:
code stack ctx
before: 38492 2624 640
after: 38500 (+0.0%) 2624 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
We really shouldn't have two names for the same thing, it just makes
things more confusing, even if the public name doesn't quite match the
internal usage. Especially now that we internally rely on these being
the same flag.
This renames LFS_i_UNTIDY -> LFS_I_MKCONSISTENT and drops the untidy/
mktidy naming internally.
No code changes.
lfs->seed was already just the rough xor of all mdir cksums, so
replacing it with our gcksum doesn't really do anything but make its
definition more rigorous.
That and save both code and ctx:
code stack ctx
before: 38560 2624 644
after: 38492 (-0.2%) 2624 (+0.0%) 640 (-0.6%)
This adds a check that the on-disk gcksum matches the in-RAM gcksum
in lfsr_mtree_traverse, so ckmeta/ckdata scans should now be able to
at least detect global-rollback issues that occur while mounted.
This also moves the LFS_I_CKMETA/CKDATA flag clearing logic from
lfsr_mtree_gc -> lfsr_mtree_traverse. There's no reason to not clear
these flags if we've made a successful traversal. We weren't actually
calling lfsr_mtree_traverse with the right flags for this to matter, but
it does let us drop an explicit flag clear in lfsr_fs_ck.
---
These changes were a part of adding the harder versions of our ckmeta/
ckdata tests, where we flip individual bits instead of clobbering the
entire block. These are more realistic errors and stress our gcksum
system.
Recalculating the gcksum required another gcksum copy in
lfsr_traversal_t, which adds a bit of code and ctx to our incremental-gc
build:
code stack ctx
default before: 38428 2640 644
default after: 38560 (+0.3%) 2640 (+0.0%) 644 (+0.0%)
gc before: 38484 2640 788
gc after: 38616 (+0.3%) 2640 (+0.0%) 792 (+0.5%)
Unfortunately we can't easily abuse the copies in lfs_t since
multiple traversals may be open at once.
This was quite a puzzle.
The problem: How do we detect corrupt mdirs?
Seems like a simple question, but we can't just rely on mdir cksums. Our
mdirs are independently updateable logs, and logs have this annoying
tendency to "rollback" to previously valid states when corrupted.
Rollback issues aren't littlefs-specific, but what _is_ littlefs-
specific is that when one mdir rolls back, it can disagree with other
mdirs, resulting in wildly incorrect filesystem state.
To solve this, or at least protect against disagreeable mdirs, we need
to somehow include the state of all other mdirs in each mdir commit.
---
The first thought: Why not use gstate?
We already have a system for storing distributed state. If we add the
xor of all of our mdir cksums, we can rebuild it during mount and verify
that nothing changed:
.--------. .--------. .--------. .--------.
.| mdir 0 | .| mdir 1 | .| mdir 2 | .| mdir 3 |
|| | || | || | || |
|| gdelta | || gdelta | || gdelta | || gdelta |
|'-----|--' |'-----|--' |'-----|--' |'-----|--'
'------|-' '------|-' '------|-' '------|-'
'--.------' '--.------' '--.------' '--.------'
cksum | cksum | cksum | cksum |
| | v | v | v |
'---------> xor -------> xor -------> xor -------> gcksum
| v v v =?
'---------> xor -------> xor -------> xor ---> gcksum
Unfortunately it's not that easy. Consider what this looks like
mathematically (g is our gcksum, c_i is an mdir cksum, d_i is a
gcksumdelta, and +/-/sum is xor):
g = sum(c_i) = sum(d_i)
If we solve for a new gcksumdelta, d_i:
d_i = g' - g
d_i = g + c_i - g
d_i = c_i
The gcksum cancels itself out! We're left with an equation that depends
only on the current mdir, which doesn't help us at all.
Next thought: What if we permute the gcksum with a function t before
distributing it over our gcksumdeltas?
.--------. .--------. .--------. .--------.
.| mdir 0 | .| mdir 1 | .| mdir 2 | .| mdir 3 |
|| | || | || | || |
|| gdelta | || gdelta | || gdelta | || gdelta |
|'-----|--' |'-----|--' |'-----|--' |'-----|--'
'------|-' '------|-' '------|-' '------|-'
'--.------' '--.------' '--.------' '--.------'
cksum | cksum | cksum | cksum |
| | v | v | v |
'---------> xor -------> xor -------> xor -------> gcksum
| | | | .--t--'
| | | | '-> t(gcksum)
| v v v =?
'---------> xor -------> xor -------> xor ---> t(gcksum)
In math terms:
t(g) = t(sum(c_i)) = sum(d_i)
In order for this to work, t needs to be non-linear. If t is linear, the
same thing happens:
d_i = t(g') - t(g)
d_i = t(g + c_i) - t(g)
d_i = t(g) + t(c_i) - t(g)
d_i = t(c_i)
This was quite funny/frustrating (funnistrating?) during development,
because it means a lot of seemingly obvious functions don't work!
- t(g) = g - Doesn't work
- t(g) = crc32c(g) - Doesn't work because crc32cs are linear
- t(g) = g^2 in GF(2^n) - g^2 is linear in GF(2^n)!?
Fortunately, powers coprime with 2 finally give us a non-linear function
in GF(2^n), so t(g) = g^3 works:
d_i = g'^3 - g^3
d_i = (g + c_i)^3 - g^3
d_i = (g^2 + gc_i + gc_i + c_i^2)(g + c_i) - g^3
d_i = (g^2 + c_i^2)(g + c_i) - g^3
d_i = g^3 + gc_i^2 + g^2c_i + c_i^3 - g^3
d_i = gc_i^2 + g^2c_i + c_i^3
---
Bleh, now we need to implement finite-field operations? Well, not
entirely!
Note that our algorithm never uses division. This means we don't need a
full finite-field (+, -, *, /), but can get away with a finite-ring (+,
-, *). And conveniently for us, our crc32c polynomial defines a ring
epimorphic to a 31-bit finite-field.
All we need to do is define crc32c multiplication as polynomial
multiplication mod our crc32c polynomial:
crc32cmul(a, b) = pmod(pmul(a, b), P)
And since crc32c is more-or-less just pmod(x, P), this lets us take
advantage of any crc32c hardware/tables that may be available.
---
Bunch of notes:
- Our 2^n-bit crc-ring maps to a 2^n-1-bit finite-field because our crc
polynomial is defined as P(x) = Q(x)(x + 1), where Q(x) is a 2^n-1-bit
irreducible polynomial.
This is a common crc construction as it provides optimal odd-bit/2-bit
error detection, so it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to other
crc sizes.
- t(g) = g^3 is not the only function that works, but it turns out to be
a pretty good one:
- 3 and 2^(2^n-1)-1 are coprime, which means our function t(g) = g^3
provides a one-to-one mapping in the underlying fields of all crc
rings of size 2^(2^n).
We know 3 and 2^(2^n-1)-1 are coprime because 2^(2^n-1)-1 =
2^(2^n)-1 (a Fermat number) - 2^(2^n-1) (a power-of-2), and 3
divides Fermat numbers >=3 (A023394) and is not 2.
- Our delta, when viewed as a polynomial in g: d(g) = gc^2 + g^2c +
c^3, has degree 2, which implies there are at most 2 solutions or
1-bit of information loss in the underlying field.
This is optimal since the original definition already had 2
solutions before we even chose a function:
d(g) = t(g + c) - t(g)
d(g) = t(g + c) - t((g + c) - c)
d(g) = t((g + c) + c) - t(g + c)
d(g) = d(g + c)
Though note the mapping of our crc-ring to the underlying field
already represents 1-bit of information loss.
- If you're using a cryptographic hash or other non-crc, you should
probably just use an equal sized finite-field.
Though note changing from a 2^n-1-bit field to a 2^n-bit field does
change the math a bit, with t(g) = g^7 being a better non-linear
function:
- 7 is the smallest odd-number coprime with 2^n-1, a Fermat number,
which makes t(g) = g^7 a one-to-one mapping.
3 humorously divides all 2^n-1 Fermat numbers.
- Expanding delta with t(g) = g^7 gives us a 6 degree polynomial,
which implies at most 6 solutions or ~3-bits of information loss.
This isn't actually the best you can do, some exhaustive searching
over small fields (<=2^16) suggests t(g) = g^(2^(n-1)-1) _might_ be
optimal, but that's a heck of a lot more multiplications.
- Because our crc32cs preserve parity/are epimorphic to parity bits,
addition (xor) and multiplication (crc32cmul) also preserve parity,
which can be used to show our entire gcksum system preserves parity.
This is quite neat, and means we are guaranteed to detect any odd
number of bit-errors across the entire filesystem.
- Another idea was to use two different addition operations: xor and
overflowing addition (or mod a prime).
This probably would have worked, but lacks the rigor of the above
solution.
- You might think an RS-like construction would help here, where g =
sum(c_ia^i), but this suffers from the same problem:
d_i = g' - g
d_i = g + c_ia^i - g
d_i = c_ia^i
Nothing here depends on anything outside of the current mdir.
- Another question is should we be using an RS-like construction anyways
to include location information in our gcksum?
Maybe in another system, but I don't think it's necessary in littlefs.
While our mdir are independently updateable, they aren't _entirely_
independent. The location of each mdir is stored in either the mtree
or a parent mdir, so it always gets mixed into the gcksum somewhere.
The only exception being the mrootanchor which is always at the fixed
blocks 0x{0,1}.
- This does _not_ catch "global-rollback" issues, where the most recent
commit in the entire filesystem is corrupted, revealing an older, but
still valid, filesystem state.
But as far as I am aware this is just a fundamental limitation of
powerloss-resilient filesystems, short of doing destructive
operations.
At the very least, exposing the gcksum would allow the user to store
it externally and prevent this issue.
---
Implementation details:
- Our gcksumdelta depends on the rbyd's cksum, so there's a catch-22 if
we include it in the rbyd itself.
We can avoid this by including it in the commit tags (actually the
separate canonical cksum makes this easier than it would have been
earlier), but this does mean LFSR_TAG_GCKSUMDELTA is not an
LFSR_TAG_GDELTA subtype. Unfortunate but not a dealbreaker.
- Reading/writing the gcksumdelta gets a bit annoying with it not being
in the rbyd. For now I've extended the low-level lfsr_rbyd_fetch_/
lfsr_rbyd_appendcksum_ to accept an optional gcksumdelta pointer,
which is a bit awkward, but I don't know of a better solution.
- Unlike the grm, _every_ mdir commit involves the gcksum, which means
we either need to propagate the gcksumdelta up the mroot chain
correctly, or somehow keep track of partially flushed gcksumdeltas.
To make this work I modified the low-level lfsr_mdir_commit__
functions to accept start_rid=-2 to indicate when gcksumdeltas should
be flushed.
It's a bit of a hack, but I think it might make sense to extend this
to all gdeltas eventually.
The gcksum cost both code and RAM, but I think it's well worth it for
removing an entire category of filesystem corruption:
code stack ctx
before: 37796 2608 620
after: 38428 (+1.7%) 2640 (+1.2%) 644 (+3.9%)
This is mainly to free up space for flags, we're pretty close to running
out of 32-bits with future planned features:
1. Reduced file type info from 8 -> 4 bits
We don't really need more than this, but it does mean type info is
no longer a simple byte load.
2. Moved most internal file-state flags into the next 4 bits
These are mostly file-type specific (except LFS_o_ZOMBIE), so we
don't need to worry too much about overlap.
3. Compacted ck-flags into 5 bits:
LFS_M_CKPROGS 0x00000800
LFS_M_CKFETCHES 0x00001000
LFS_M_CKPARITY 0x00002000
LFS_M_CKMETAREDUND* 0x00004000
LFS_M_CKDATACKSUMS 0x00008000
*Planned
Now that ck-flags are a bit more mature, it's pretty clear we'll
probably never have CKMETACKSUMS (ckcksums + small tag reads is
crazy expensive) or CKDATAREDUND (non-trivial parity fanout makes
this crazy expensives. So reserving bits for these just wastes bits.
This also moves things around so ck-flags no longer overlap with open
flags.
It's a tight fit, and I still think file-specific ck-flags are out-of-
scope, but this at least decreases flag ambiguity.
New jenga:
8 8 8 8
.----++----++----++----.
.-..-..-.-------.------.
o_flags: |t||f||t| | o |
|-||-||-|-------:--.---'
|-||-||-'--.----.------.
t_flags: |t||f|| t | | tstt |
'-''-'|----|----'------'
.----.|----|.--.:--:.--.
m_flags: | f || t ||c ||o ||m |
|----||-.--'|--|'--''--'
|----||-|---|--|.------.
f_flags: | f ||t| |c || f |
'----''-'---'--''------'
Fortunately no major code costs:
code stack ctx
before: 37792 2608 620
after: 37788 (-0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
dbgerr.py and dbgtag.py have proven to be incredibly useful for quick
debugging/introspection, so I figured why not have more of that.
My favorite part is being able to quickly see all flags set on an open
file handle:
(gdb) p file.o.o.flags
$2 = 24117517
(gdb) !./scripts/dbgflags.py o 24117517
LFS_O_WRONLY 0x00000001 Open a file as write only
LFS_O_CREAT 0x00000004 Create a file if it does not exist
LFS_O_EXCL 0x00000008 Fail if a file already exists
LFS_O_DESYNC 0x00000100 Do not sync or recieve file updates
LFS_o_REG 0x01000000 Type = regular-file
LFS_o_UNFLUSH 0x00100000 File's data does not match disk
LFS_o_UNSYNC 0x00200000 File's metadata does not match disk
LFS_o_UNCREAT 0x00400000 File does not exist yet
The only concern is if dbgflags.py falls out-of-sync often, I suspect
flag encoding will have quite a bit more churn than flags/tags. But we
can always drop this script in the future if this turns into a problem.
---
While poking around this also ended up with a bunch of other small
changes:
- Added LFS_*_MODE masks for consistency with other "type<->flag
embeddings"
- Added compat flag comments
- Adopted lowercase prefix for internal flags (LFS_o_ZOMBIE), though
not sure if I'll keep this yet...
- Tweaked dbgerr.py to also match ERR_ prefixes and to ignore case
Since we dropped lfsr_gc_setflags/setsteps, it was no longer possible to
set gc_flags to zero (perfectly valid and useful for system bringup/
testing things). Supporting gc_flags=0 means it's not possible to
provide a default, but this is probably ok as users need to opt-in to
LFS_GC anyways.
Note that at least gc_steps=0 doesn't make sense, so the default there
is reasonable.
Fixing this also highlighted that gc_flags/steps are no longer mutable,
making the comment in lfs_init out-of-date. Dropping these saves a bit
of lfs_t size, so that's nice.
And then testing also revealed that LFS_GC_CKDATA implying LFS_GC_CKDATA
means it should probably clear the LFS_I_CKMETA flag as well.
---
And here I thought this was going to be just a simple test-writing
exercise!
Code changes:
code stack ctx
default before: 37792 2608 620
default after: 37792 (-0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
gc before: 37896 2608 768
gc after: 37848 (-0.1%) 2608 (+0.0%) 760 (-1.0%)
The argument for this flag is pretty brittle. Yes it's _technically_
possible to end up with a compactable filesystem during lfsr_format, but
it's pretty unlikely. And keeping LFS_F_COMPACT around means we'd always
need the lfsr_mtree_gc circuitry in lfsr_format, for such a niche
situation, that can be easily cleaned up in lfsr_mount.
So dropping for now.
No code changes, but this does mean one less feature to support:
code stack ctx
before: 37804 2608 620
after: 37804 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
Looking at future planned features, we're running into some real issues
fitting all these flags into 32 bits.
I think the only real use case for LFS_T_MTREEONLY is in
lfsr_traversal_t, where the depth of traversal can't be infered. So no
reason to keep this flag around in the other APIs.
No code changes:
code stack ctx
default before: 37804 2608 620
default after: 37804 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
gc before: 37940 2608 768
gc after: 37940 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 768 (+0.0%)
- LFS_I_INCONSISTENT -> LFS_I_MKCONSISTENT
- LFS_I_CANLOOKAHEAD -> LFS_I_LOOKAHEAD
- LFS_I_UNCOMPACTED -> LFS_I_COMPACT
- LFS_I_CANCKMETA -> LFS_I_CKMETA
- LFS_I_CANCKDATA -> LFS_I_CKDATA
This just makes everything easier to read/pattern match, even if it's
a bit inaccurate english-wise. The imperative transformations were also
wildly inconsistent...
- lfsr_gc -> lfsr_fs_gc
- lfsr_gc_unck -> lfsr_fs_unck
lfsr_fs_unck is surprisingly still useful in non-gc builds, since we
still have ckmeta/ckdata state. These flags can still be queried with
lfsr_fs_stat and cleared with lfsr_fs_ckmeta/ckdata/lfsr_traversal_t, so
it seems useful to keep this function around.
It's also a relatively cheap function.
Though this does mean it deserves a rename. Dropping the gc prefix
hopefully makes it clearer this function is not entirely gc-specific.
And since we no longer have lfsr_gc_setflags/setsteps, it makes sense to
rename lfsr_gc back to lfsr_fs_gc, to be consistent with the other
filesystem-wide utilities.
Code changes, apparently lfsr_fs_unck costs 12 bytes:
code stack ctx
default before: 37792 2608 620
default after: 37804 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
gc before: 37938 2608 768
gc after: 37940 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 768 (+0.0%)
LFS_GC_CKMETA and LFS_GC_CKDATA are a bit unique in that their work is
never really done.
Where LFS_GC_MKCONSISTENT/COMPACT can prove things about the system,
LFS_GC_CKMETA/CKDATA can't, because it's always possible for new
bit-errors to develop. Even _during_ an LFS_GC_CKMETA/CKDATA traversal.
But while this is technically true, it's not a very useful state of
things for our lfsr_gc API...
---
What we really want is some way to know if ckmeta/ckdata has completed
"recently" (for some definition of recently), and to let users indicate
when they need another ckmeta/ckdata scan.
To try to solve this:
1. Added LFS_I_CANCKMETA and LFS_I_CANCKDATA to indicate when lfsr_gc
has not checked metadata/data.
These are set during mount (unless mounting with
LFS_M_CKMETA/CKDATA), and cleared when either lfsr_gc completes or
lfsr_fs_ckmeta/data is called. Once cleared, littlefs will not reset
them on its own.
2. Added lfsr_gc_unck to allow users to explicitly reset LFS_I_CKMETA
and/or LFS_I_CKDATA, which will tell lfsr_gc to check metadata/data
again on the next call.
There is some subtlety around clobbering ongoing traversals, but a
mask and some tests should prevent this from being a problem.
Currently, lfsr_gc_unck also allows clearing of other gc flags, but
I'm not sure there's any real use-case for this...
Note that you can still get the previous behavior if you just call
lfsr_gc_unck after every lfsr_gc call.
This also changes info flag behavior slightly in default mode, with
LFS_I_CANCKMETA/CANCKDATA telling you if metadata/data has been checked
since mount. Which does seem useful? Maybe these flags deserve a better
name?
Code changes:
code stack ctx
default before: 37796 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
default after: 37792 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
gc before: 37896 2608 768
gc after: 37938 (+0.1%) 2608 (+0.0%) 768 (+0.0.%)
Now that you can provide gc_flags/gc_steps in lfs_config, I think it's a
bit more clear that _mutating_ the flags/steps is a niche feature, and
not worth implementing/testing.
It raises the question why not have a similar lfsr_setflags or
lfsr_file_setflags, and the answer there is it would be a pain-in-the-
ass to make sure all possible corner cases are covered.
It actually already was a pain-in-the-ass to test lfsr_gcsetflags/
setsteps... but just because we already did the work is not a good
reason for keeping complexity around.
---
Note that most of the use cases for lfsr_gc_setflags/setsteps can be
covered by either remounting the filesystem or through the
lfsr_traversal_t APIs directly.
The end result is a bit of code savings when incremental gc is enabled:
code stack ctx
default before: 37796 2608 620
default after: 37796 (+0.0%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (+0.0%)
gc before: 37944 2608 768
gc after 37896 (-0.1%) 2608 (+0.0%) 768 (+0.0%)
Incremental gc, being stateful and not gc-able (ironic), was always
going to need to be conditionally compilable.
This moves incremental gc behind the LFS_GC define, so that we can focus
on the "default" costs. This cuts lfs_t in nearly half!
lfs_t with LFS_GC: 308
lfs_t without LFS_C: 168 (-45.5%)
This does save less code than one might expect though. We still need
most of the internal traversal/gc logic for things like block allocation
and orphan cleanup, so most of the savings is limited to the RAM storing
the incremental state:
code stack ctx
before: 37916 2608 768
after with LFS_CFG: 37944 (+0.1%) 2608 (+0.0%) 768 (+0.0%)
after without LFS_CFG: 37796 (-0.3%) 2608 (+0.0%) 620 (-19.3%)
On the flip side, this does mean most of the incremental gc
functionality is still availables in the lfsr_traversal_t APIs.
Applications with more advanced gc use-cases may actually benefit from
_not_ enabling the incremental gc APIs, and instead use the
lfsr_traversal_t APIs directly.
Christopher Haster