Christopher Haster
d1d69c0a52
The main idea here is to drop the flag-encoded tstate state machine, and
replace it with a matrix controlled by special mid + bid values:
-- mid ->
-5 -4 -3 -2 >=-1
bid -2 x x x --> mdir
v >=-1 x gbm gbm x --> bshrub/btree
'----|----|----|----|----> mroot anchor
'----|----|----|----> mroot chain + mtree
'----|----|----> gbmap (in-ram gbmap)
'----|----> gbmap_p (on-disk gbmap)
'----> file bshrubs/btrees
This was motivated by the observation that everything in our filesystem
can be modeled as mdir + bshrub/btree tuples, as long as some states are
noops. And we can cleanly encode these tuples in the unused negative
mid + bid ranges without needing an explicit state machine.
Well, that and the previous tstate state machine approach being an ugly
pile of switch cases and messy logic.
Note though that some mids may need to traverse multiple mdirs/bshrub/
btrees:
- The mroot chain + mtree (mid=-4) needs to traverse all mroots in the
mroot chain, and detect any cycles.
- File mdirs (mid>=-1) need to traverse both the on-disk bshrub/btree
and any opened file handles' bshrubs/btrees before moving onto the
next mid.
This grows O(n^2) because all file handles are in one big unsorted
linked-list, but as usual we don't care.
In addition to the greatly simplified traversal logic, the new state
matrix simplifies traversal clobbering: Setting bid=-2 always forces a
bshrub/btree refetch.
This comes at the cost of traversal _precision_, i.e. we can now revisit
previously visited bshrub/btree nodes. But I think this is well worth it
for more robust traversal clobbering. Traversal clobbering is delicate
and difficult to get right.
Besides, we can already revisit blocks due to CoW references, so what's
the harm in revisiting blocks when under mutation?
---
The simpler traversal logic leads to a nice amount of code savings
across the board:
code stack ctx
before: 36476 2304 660
after: 35940 (-1.5%) 2280 (-1.0%) 660 (+0.0%)
code stack ctx
gbmap before: 39524 2320 772
gbmap after: 38916 (-1.5%) 2296 (-1.0%) 772 (+0.0%)
code stack ctx
gc before: 36548 2304 804
gc after: 36012 (-1.5%) 2280 (-1.0%) 776 (-3.5%)
Note the ctx savings in LFS3_GC mode. Most of the stack/ctx savings
comes from the smaller lfs3_mtrv_t struct, which no longer needs to
stage bshrubs (we no longer care about bshrubs across mdir commit as a
part of the above clobbering simplifications):
before after
lfs3_mtrv_t: 128 100 (-21.9%)
lfs3_mgc_t: 128 100 (-21.9%)
lfs3_trv_t: 136 108 (-20.6%)
Unfortunately, the simpler clobbering means now any gc work needs the
block queue (i.e. lfs3_trv_t), solely so clobbering the block queue
doesn't clobber unallocated memory. Not great but hopefully fixable.
---
Some other notes:
- As a part of simplifying traversal clobbering, everything is triggered
by lfs3_alloc_ckpoint (via lfs3_trv_ckpoint_).
This may clobber traversals more than is strictly necessary, but
that's kinda the idea. Better safe than sorry.
And no more need to explicit lfs3_handle_clobber calls is nice.
- Opened file handle iteration is now tracked by the traversal handle's
position in the handle linked-list, instead of a separate handle
pointer. This means one less thing to disentangle and makes traversals
no longer a special case for things like lfs3_handle_close.
You may think this bumps traversals up to O(n^3) in-ram, but because
we only ever visit each unique handle + mid once, we can keep the
total O(n^2) if we're smart about linked-list updates!
- lfs3_mdir_commit needed to be tweaked to accept mids<=-1, instead of
just mid=-1 for the mroot. Unfortunately I don't know how much this
costs on its own.
- The reorganization of lfs3_mtrv_t means lfs3_mtortoise_t gets its own
struct again!
- No more tstate state machine also frees up a big chunk of the
traversal flag space, which was getting pretty cramped.
littlefs
A little fail-safe filesystem designed for microcontrollers.
| | | .---._____
.-----. | |
--|o |---| littlefs |
--| |---| |
'-----' '----------'
| | |
Power-loss resilience - littlefs is designed to handle random power failures. All file operations have strong copy-on-write guarantees and if power is lost the filesystem will fall back to the last known good state.
Dynamic wear leveling - littlefs is designed with flash in mind, and provides wear leveling over dynamic blocks. Additionally, littlefs can detect bad blocks and work around them.
Bounded RAM/ROM - littlefs is designed to work with a small amount of memory. RAM usage is strictly bounded, which means RAM consumption does not change as the filesystem grows. The filesystem contains no unbounded recursion and dynamic memory is limited to configurable buffers that can be provided statically.
Example
Here's a simple example that updates a file named boot_count every time
main runs. The program can be interrupted at any time without losing track
of how many times it has been booted and without corrupting the filesystem:
#include "lfs.h"
// variables used by the filesystem
lfs_t lfs;
lfs_file_t file;
// configuration of the filesystem is provided by this struct
const struct lfs_config cfg = {
// block device operations
.read = user_provided_block_device_read,
.prog = user_provided_block_device_prog,
.erase = user_provided_block_device_erase,
.sync = user_provided_block_device_sync,
// block device configuration
.read_size = 16,
.prog_size = 16,
.block_size = 4096,
.block_count = 128,
.cache_size = 16,
.lookahead_size = 16,
.block_cycles = 500,
};
// entry point
int main(void) {
// mount the filesystem
int err = lfs_mount(&lfs, &cfg);
// reformat if we can't mount the filesystem
// this should only happen on the first boot
if (err) {
lfs_format(&lfs, &cfg);
lfs_mount(&lfs, &cfg);
}
// read current count
uint32_t boot_count = 0;
lfs_file_open(&lfs, &file, "boot_count", LFS_O_RDWR | LFS_O_CREAT);
lfs_file_read(&lfs, &file, &boot_count, sizeof(boot_count));
// update boot count
boot_count += 1;
lfs_file_rewind(&lfs, &file);
lfs_file_write(&lfs, &file, &boot_count, sizeof(boot_count));
// remember the storage is not updated until the file is closed successfully
lfs_file_close(&lfs, &file);
// release any resources we were using
lfs_unmount(&lfs);
// print the boot count
printf("boot_count: %d\n", boot_count);
}
Usage
Detailed documentation (or at least as much detail as is currently available) can be found in the comments in lfs.h.
littlefs takes in a configuration structure that defines how the filesystem operates. The configuration struct provides the filesystem with the block device operations and dimensions, tweakable parameters that tradeoff memory usage for performance, and optional static buffers if the user wants to avoid dynamic memory.
The state of the littlefs is stored in the lfs_t type which is left up
to the user to allocate, allowing multiple filesystems to be in use
simultaneously. With the lfs_t and configuration struct, a user can
format a block device or mount the filesystem.
Once mounted, the littlefs provides a full set of POSIX-like file and directory functions, with the deviation that the allocation of filesystem structures must be provided by the user.
All POSIX operations, such as remove and rename, are atomic, even in event of power-loss. Additionally, file updates are not actually committed to the filesystem until sync or close is called on the file.
Other notes
Littlefs is written in C, and specifically should compile with any compiler
that conforms to the C99 standard.
All littlefs calls have the potential to return a negative error code. The
errors can be either one of those found in the enum lfs_error in
lfs.h, or an error returned by the user's block device operations.
In the configuration struct, the prog and erase function provided by the
user may return a LFS_ERR_CORRUPT error if the implementation already can
detect corrupt blocks. However, the wear leveling does not depend on the return
code of these functions, instead all data is read back and checked for
integrity.
If your storage caches writes, make sure that the provided sync function
flushes all the data to memory and ensures that the next read fetches the data
from memory, otherwise data integrity can not be guaranteed. If the write
function does not perform caching, and therefore each read or write call
hits the memory, the sync function can simply return 0.
Design
At a high level, littlefs is a block based filesystem that uses small logs to store metadata and larger copy-on-write (COW) structures to store file data.
In littlefs, these ingredients form a sort of two-layered cake, with the small logs (called metadata pairs) providing fast updates to metadata anywhere on storage, while the COW structures store file data compactly and without any wear amplification cost.
Both of these data structures are built out of blocks, which are fed by a common block allocator. By limiting the number of erases allowed on a block per allocation, the allocator provides dynamic wear leveling over the entire filesystem.
root
.--------.--------.
| A'| B'| |
| | |-> |
| | | |
'--------'--------'
.----' '--------------.
A v B v
.--------.--------. .--------.--------.
| C'| D'| | | E'|new| |
| | |-> | | | E'|-> |
| | | | | | | |
'--------'--------' '--------'--------'
.-' '--. | '------------------.
v v .-' v
.--------. .--------. v .--------.
| C | | D | .--------. write | new E |
| | | | | E | ==> | |
| | | | | | | |
'--------' '--------' | | '--------'
'--------' .-' |
.-' '-. .-------------|------'
v v v v
.--------. .--------. .--------.
| F | | G | | new F |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
'--------' '--------' '--------'
More details on how littlefs works can be found in DESIGN.md and SPEC.md.
-
DESIGN.md - A fully detailed dive into how littlefs works. I would suggest reading it as the tradeoffs at work are quite interesting.
-
SPEC.md - The on-disk specification of littlefs with all the nitty-gritty details. May be useful for tooling development.
Testing
The littlefs comes with a test suite designed to run on a PC using the
emulated block device found in the bd directory.
The tests assume a Linux environment and can be started with make:
make test
License
The littlefs is provided under the BSD-3-Clause license. See LICENSE.md for more information. Contributions to this project are accepted under the same license.
Individual files contain the following tag instead of the full license text.
SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
This enables machine processing of license information based on the SPDX License Identifiers that are here available: http://spdx.org/licenses/
Related projects
-
littlefs-fuse - A FUSE wrapper for littlefs. The project allows you to mount littlefs directly on a Linux machine. Can be useful for debugging littlefs if you have an SD card handy.
-
littlefs-js - A javascript wrapper for littlefs. I'm not sure why you would want this, but it is handy for demos. You can see it in action here.
-
littlefs-python - A Python wrapper for littlefs. The project allows you to create images of the filesystem on your PC. Check if littlefs will fit your needs, create images for a later download to the target memory or inspect the content of a binary image of the target memory.
-
mklfs - A command line tool built by the Lua RTOS guys for making littlefs images from a host PC. Supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
-
Mbed OS - The easiest way to get started with littlefs is to jump into Mbed which already has block device drivers for most forms of embedded storage. littlefs is available in Mbed OS as the LittleFileSystem class.
-
SPIFFS - Another excellent embedded filesystem for NOR flash. As a more traditional logging filesystem with full static wear-leveling, SPIFFS will likely outperform littlefs on small memories such as the internal flash on microcontrollers.
-
Dhara - An interesting NAND flash translation layer designed for small MCUs. It offers static wear-leveling and power-resilience with only a fixed O(|address|) pointer structure stored on each block and in RAM.