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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
21The following git tree provides the file system formatting tool (mkfs.f2fs),
22a consistency checking tool (fsck.f2fs), and a debugging tool (dump.f2fs).
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
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
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
105                       will be turned off. If background_gc=sync, it will turn
106                       on synchronous garbage collection running in background.
107                       Default value for this option is on. So garbage
108                       collection is on by default.
109disable_roll_forward   Disable the roll-forward recovery routine
110norecovery             Disable the roll-forward recovery routine, mounted read-
111                       only (i.e., -o ro,disable_roll_forward)
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.
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.
127inline_xattr           Enable the inline xattrs feature.
128noinline_xattr         Disable the inline xattrs feature.
129inline_data            Enable the inline data feature: New created small(<~3.4k)
130                       files can be written into inode block.
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.
135noinline_dentry        Diable the inline dentry feature.
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.
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.
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.
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
151                       increasing the cache hit ratio. Set by default.
152noextent_cache         Disable an extent cache based on rb-tree explicitly, see
153                       the above extent_cache mount option.
154noinline_data          Disable the inline data feature, inline data feature is
155                       enabled by default.
156data_flush             Enable data flushing before checkpoint in order to
157                       persist data of regular and symlink.
158mode=%s                Control block allocation mode which supports "adaptive"
159                       and "lfs". In "lfs" mode, there should be no random
160                       writes towards main area.
161io_bits=%u             Set the bit size of write IO requests. It should be set
162                       with "mode=lfs".
163usrquota               Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
164grpquota               Enable plain group disk quota accounting.
165prjquota               Enable plain project quota accounting.
166usrjquota=<file>       Appoint specified file and type during mount, so that quota
167grpjquota=<file>       information can be properly updated during recovery flow,
168prjjquota=<file>       <quota file>: must be in root directory;
169jqfmt=<quota type>     <quota type>: [vfsold,vfsv0,vfsv1].
170offusrjquota           Turn off user journelled quota.
171offgrpjquota           Turn off group journelled quota.
172offprjjquota           Turn off project journelled quota.
173quota                  Enable plain user disk quota accounting.
174noquota                Disable all plain disk quota option.
175whint_mode=%s          Control which write hints are passed down to block
176                       layer. This supports "off", "user-based", and
177                       "fs-based".  In "off" mode (default), f2fs does not pass
178                       down hints. In "user-based" mode, f2fs tries to pass
179                       down hints given by users. And in "fs-based" mode, f2fs
180                       passes down hints with its policy.
181alloc_mode=%s          Adjust block allocation policy, which supports "reuse"
182                       and "default".
183fsync_mode=%s          Control the policy of fsync. Currently supports "posix",
184                       "strict", and "nobarrier". In "posix" mode, which is
185                       default, fsync will follow POSIX semantics and does a
186                       light operation to improve the filesystem performance.
187                       In "strict" mode, fsync will be heavy and behaves in line
188                       with xfs, ext4 and btrfs, where xfstest generic/342 will
189                       pass, but the performance will regress. "nobarrier" is
190                       based on "posix", but doesn't issue flush command for
191                       non-atomic files likewise "nobarrier" mount option.
192test_dummy_encryption  Enable dummy encryption, which provides a fake fscrypt
193                       context. The fake fscrypt context is used by xfstests.
194
195================================================================================
196DEBUGFS ENTRIES
197================================================================================
198
199/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/ contains information about all the partitions mounted as
200f2fs. Each file shows the whole f2fs information.
201
202/sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/status includes:
203 - major file system information managed by f2fs currently
204 - average SIT information about whole segments
205 - current memory footprint consumed by f2fs.
206
207================================================================================
208SYSFS ENTRIES
209================================================================================
210
211Information about mounted f2f2 file systems can be found in
212/sys/fs/f2fs.  Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
213/sys/fs/f2fs based on its device name (i.e., /sys/fs/f2fs/sda).
214The files in each per-device directory are shown in table below.
215
216Files in /sys/fs/f2fs/<devname>
217(see also Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-fs-f2fs)
218..............................................................................
219 File                         Content
220
221 gc_max_sleep_time            This tuning parameter controls the maximum sleep
222                              time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
223                              in milliseconds.
224
225 gc_min_sleep_time            This tuning parameter controls the minimum sleep
226                              time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
227                              in milliseconds.
228
229 gc_no_gc_sleep_time          This tuning parameter controls the default sleep
230                              time for the garbage collection thread. Time is
231                              in milliseconds.
232
233 gc_idle                      This parameter controls the selection of victim
234                              policy for garbage collection. Setting gc_idle = 0
235                              (default) will disable this option. Setting
236                              gc_idle = 1 will select the Cost Benefit approach
237                              & setting gc_idle = 2 will select the greedy approach.
238
239 gc_urgent                    This parameter controls triggering background GCs
240                              urgently or not. Setting gc_urgent = 0 [default]
241                              makes back to default behavior, while if it is set
242                              to 1, background thread starts to do GC by given
243                              gc_urgent_sleep_time interval.
244
245 gc_urgent_sleep_time         This parameter controls sleep time for gc_urgent.
246                              500 ms is set by default. See above gc_urgent.
247
248 reclaim_segments             This parameter controls the number of prefree
249                              segments to be reclaimed. If the number of prefree
250			      segments is larger than the number of segments
251			      in the proportion to the percentage over total
252			      volume size, f2fs tries to conduct checkpoint to
253			      reclaim the prefree segments to free segments.
254			      By default, 5% over total # of segments.
255
256 max_small_discards	      This parameter controls the number of discard
257			      commands that consist small blocks less than 2MB.
258			      The candidates to be discarded are cached until
259			      checkpoint is triggered, and issued during the
260			      checkpoint. By default, it is disabled with 0.
261
262 trim_sections                This parameter controls the number of sections
263                              to be trimmed out in batch mode when FITRIM
264                              conducts. 32 sections is set by default.
265
266 ipu_policy                   This parameter controls the policy of in-place
267                              updates in f2fs. There are five policies:
268                               0x01: F2FS_IPU_FORCE, 0x02: F2FS_IPU_SSR,
269                               0x04: F2FS_IPU_UTIL,  0x08: F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL,
270                               0x10: F2FS_IPU_FSYNC.
271
272 min_ipu_util                 This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
273                              in-place-updates. The number indicates percentage
274                              of the filesystem utilization, and used by
275                              F2FS_IPU_UTIL and F2FS_IPU_SSR_UTIL policies.
276
277 min_fsync_blocks             This parameter controls the threshold to trigger
278                              in-place-updates when F2FS_IPU_FSYNC mode is set.
279			      The number indicates the number of dirty pages
280			      when fsync needs to flush on its call path. If
281			      the number is less than this value, it triggers
282			      in-place-updates.
283
284 max_victim_search	      This parameter controls the number of trials to
285			      find a victim segment when conducting SSR and
286			      cleaning operations. The default value is 4096
287			      which covers 8GB block address range.
288
289 dir_level                    This parameter controls the directory level to
290			      support large directory. If a directory has a
291			      number of files, it can reduce the file lookup
292			      latency by increasing this dir_level value.
293			      Otherwise, it needs to decrease this value to
294			      reduce the space overhead. The default value is 0.
295
296 ram_thresh                   This parameter controls the memory footprint used
297			      by free nids and cached nat entries. By default,
298			      10 is set, which indicates 10 MB / 1 GB RAM.
299
300================================================================================
301USAGE
302================================================================================
303
3041. Download userland tools and compile them.
305
3062. Skip, if f2fs was compiled statically inside kernel.
307   Otherwise, insert the f2fs.ko module.
308 # insmod f2fs.ko
309
3103. Create a directory trying to mount
311 # mkdir /mnt/f2fs
312
3134. Format the block device, and then mount as f2fs
314 # mkfs.f2fs -l label /dev/block_device
315 # mount -t f2fs /dev/block_device /mnt/f2fs
316
317mkfs.f2fs
318---------
319The mkfs.f2fs is for the use of formatting a partition as the f2fs filesystem,
320which builds a basic on-disk layout.
321
322The options consist of:
323-l [label]   : Give a volume label, up to 512 unicode name.
324-a [0 or 1]  : Split start location of each area for heap-based allocation.
325               1 is set by default, which performs this.
326-o [int]     : Set overprovision ratio in percent over volume size.
327               5 is set by default.
328-s [int]     : Set the number of segments per section.
329               1 is set by default.
330-z [int]     : Set the number of sections per zone.
331               1 is set by default.
332-e [str]     : Set basic extension list. e.g. "mp3,gif,mov"
333-t [0 or 1]  : Disable discard command or not.
334               1 is set by default, which conducts discard.
335
336fsck.f2fs
337---------
338The fsck.f2fs is a tool to check the consistency of an f2fs-formatted
339partition, which examines whether the filesystem metadata and user-made data
340are cross-referenced correctly or not.
341Note that, initial version of the tool does not fix any inconsistency.
342
343The options consist of:
344  -d debug level [default:0]
345
346dump.f2fs
347---------
348The dump.f2fs shows the information of specific inode and dumps SSA and SIT to
349file. Each file is dump_ssa and dump_sit.
350
351The dump.f2fs is used to debug on-disk data structures of the f2fs filesystem.
352It shows on-disk inode information recognized by a given inode number, and is
353able to dump all the SSA and SIT entries into predefined files, ./dump_ssa and
354./dump_sit respectively.
355
356The options consist of:
357  -d debug level [default:0]
358  -i inode no (hex)
359  -s [SIT dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
360  -a [SSA dump segno from #1~#2 (decimal), for all 0~-1]
361
362Examples:
363# dump.f2fs -i [ino] /dev/sdx
364# dump.f2fs -s 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SIT dump)
365# dump.f2fs -a 0~-1 /dev/sdx (SSA dump)
366
367================================================================================
368DESIGN
369================================================================================
370
371On-disk Layout
372--------------
373
374F2FS divides the whole volume into a number of segments, each of which is fixed
375to 2MB in size. A section is composed of consecutive segments, and a zone
376consists of a set of sections. By default, section and zone sizes are set to one
377segment size identically, but users can easily modify the sizes by mkfs.
378
379F2FS splits the entire volume into six areas, and all the areas except superblock
380consists of multiple segments as described below.
381
382                                            align with the zone size <-|
383                 |-> align with the segment size
384     _________________________________________________________________________
385    |            |            |   Segment   |    Node     |   Segment  |      |
386    | Superblock | Checkpoint |    Info.    |   Address   |   Summary  | Main |
387    |    (SB)    |   (CP)     | Table (SIT) | Table (NAT) | Area (SSA) |      |
388    |____________|_____2______|______N______|______N______|______N_____|__N___|
389                                                                       .      .
390                                                             .                .
391                                                 .                            .
392                                    ._________________________________________.
393                                    |_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|_..._|_Segment_|
394                                    .           .
395                                    ._________._________
396                                    |_section_|__...__|_
397                                    .            .
398		                    .________.
399	                            |__zone__|
400
401- Superblock (SB)
402 : It is located at the beginning of the partition, and there exist two copies
403   to avoid file system crash. It contains basic partition information and some
404   default parameters of f2fs.
405
406- Checkpoint (CP)
407 : It contains file system information, bitmaps for valid NAT/SIT sets, orphan
408   inode lists, and summary entries of current active segments.
409
410- Segment Information Table (SIT)
411 : It contains segment information such as valid block count and bitmap for the
412   validity of all the blocks.
413
414- Node Address Table (NAT)
415 : It is composed of a block address table for all the node blocks stored in
416   Main area.
417
418- Segment Summary Area (SSA)
419 : It contains summary entries which contains the owner information of all the
420   data and node blocks stored in Main area.
421
422- Main Area
423 : It contains file and directory data including their indices.
424
425In order to avoid misalignment between file system and flash-based storage, F2FS
426aligns the start block address of CP with the segment size. Also, it aligns the
427start block address of Main area with the zone size by reserving some segments
428in SSA area.
429
430Reference the following survey for additional technical details.
431https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Projects/FlashCardSurvey
432
433File System Metadata Structure
434------------------------------
435
436F2FS adopts the checkpointing scheme to maintain file system consistency. At
437mount time, F2FS first tries to find the last valid checkpoint data by scanning
438CP area. In order to reduce the scanning time, F2FS uses only two copies of CP.
439One of them always indicates the last valid data, which is called as shadow copy
440mechanism. In addition to CP, NAT and SIT also adopt the shadow copy mechanism.
441
442For file system consistency, each CP points to which NAT and SIT copies are
443valid, as shown as below.
444
445  +--------+----------+---------+
446  |   CP   |    SIT   |   NAT   |
447  +--------+----------+---------+
448  .         .          .          .
449  .            .              .              .
450  .               .                 .                 .
451  +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
452  | CP #0 | CP #1 | SIT #0 | SIT #1 | NAT #0 | NAT #1 |
453  +-------+-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
454     |             ^                          ^
455     |             |                          |
456     `----------------------------------------'
457
458Index Structure
459---------------
460
461The key data structure to manage the data locations is a "node". Similar to
462traditional file structures, F2FS has three types of node: inode, direct node,
463indirect node. F2FS assigns 4KB to an inode block which contains 923 data block
464indices, two direct node pointers, two indirect node pointers, and one double
465indirect node pointer as described below. One direct node block contains 1018
466data blocks, and one indirect node block contains also 1018 node blocks. Thus,
467one inode block (i.e., a file) covers:
468
469  4KB * (923 + 2 * 1018 + 2 * 1018 * 1018 + 1018 * 1018 * 1018) := 3.94TB.
470
471   Inode block (4KB)
472     |- data (923)
473     |- direct node (2)
474     |          `- data (1018)
475     |- indirect node (2)
476     |            `- direct node (1018)
477     |                       `- data (1018)
478     `- double indirect node (1)
479                         `- indirect node (1018)
480			              `- direct node (1018)
481	                                         `- data (1018)
482
483Note that, all the node blocks are mapped by NAT which means the location of
484each node is translated by the NAT table. In the consideration of the wandering
485tree problem, F2FS is able to cut off the propagation of node updates caused by
486leaf data writes.
487
488Directory Structure
489-------------------
490
491A directory entry occupies 11 bytes, which consists of the following attributes.
492
493- hash		hash value of the file name
494- ino		inode number
495- len		the length of file name
496- type		file type such as directory, symlink, etc
497
498A dentry block consists of 214 dentry slots and file names. Therein a bitmap is
499used to represent whether each dentry is valid or not. A dentry block occupies
5004KB with the following composition.
501
502  Dentry Block(4 K) = bitmap (27 bytes) + reserved (3 bytes) +
503	              dentries(11 * 214 bytes) + file name (8 * 214 bytes)
504
505                         [Bucket]
506             +--------------------------------+
507             |dentry block 1 | dentry block 2 |
508             +--------------------------------+
509             .               .
510       .                             .
511  .       [Dentry Block Structure: 4KB]       .
512  +--------+----------+----------+------------+
513  | bitmap | reserved | dentries | file names |
514  +--------+----------+----------+------------+
515  [Dentry Block: 4KB] .   .
516		 .               .
517            .                          .
518            +------+------+-----+------+
519            | hash | ino  | len | type |
520            +------+------+-----+------+
521            [Dentry Structure: 11 bytes]
522
523F2FS implements multi-level hash tables for directory structure. Each level has
524a hash table with dedicated number of hash buckets as shown below. Note that
525"A(2B)" means a bucket includes 2 data blocks.
526
527----------------------
528A : bucket
529B : block
530N : MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH
531----------------------
532
533level #0   | A(2B)
534           |
535level #1   | A(2B) - A(2B)
536           |
537level #2   | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B)
538     .     |   .       .       .       .
539level #N/2 | A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - A(2B) - ... - A(2B)
540     .     |   .       .       .       .
541level #N   | A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - A(4B) - ... - A(4B)
542
543The number of blocks and buckets are determined by,
544
545                            ,- 2, if n < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
546  # of blocks in level #n = |
547                            `- 4, Otherwise
548
549                             ,- 2^(n + dir_level),
550			     |        if n + dir_level < MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2,
551  # of buckets in level #n = |
552                             `- 2^((MAX_DIR_HASH_DEPTH / 2) - 1),
553			              Otherwise
554
555When F2FS finds a file name in a directory, at first a hash value of the file
556name is calculated. Then, F2FS scans the hash table in level #0 to find the
557dentry consisting of the file name and its inode number. If not found, F2FS
558scans the next hash table in level #1. In this way, F2FS scans hash tables in
559each levels incrementally from 1 to N. In each levels F2FS needs to scan only
560one bucket determined by the following equation, which shows O(log(# of files))
561complexity.
562
563  bucket number to scan in level #n = (hash value) % (# of buckets in level #n)
564
565In the case of file creation, F2FS finds empty consecutive slots that cover the
566file name. F2FS searches the empty slots in the hash tables of whole levels from
5671 to N in the same way as the lookup operation.
568
569The following figure shows an example of two cases holding children.
570       --------------> Dir <--------------
571       |                                 |
572    child                             child
573
574    child - child                     [hole] - child
575
576    child - child - child             [hole] - [hole] - child
577
578   Case 1:                           Case 2:
579   Number of children = 6,           Number of children = 3,
580   File size = 7                     File size = 7
581
582Default Block Allocation
583------------------------
584
585At runtime, F2FS manages six active logs inside "Main" area: Hot/Warm/Cold node
586and Hot/Warm/Cold data.
587
588- Hot node	contains direct node blocks of directories.
589- Warm node	contains direct node blocks except hot node blocks.
590- Cold node	contains indirect node blocks
591- Hot data	contains dentry blocks
592- Warm data	contains data blocks except hot and cold data blocks
593- Cold data	contains multimedia data or migrated data blocks
594
595LFS has two schemes for free space management: threaded log and copy-and-compac-
596tion. The copy-and-compaction scheme which is known as cleaning, is well-suited
597for devices showing very good sequential write performance, since free segments
598are served all the time for writing new data. However, it suffers from cleaning
599overhead under high utilization. Contrarily, the threaded log scheme suffers
600from random writes, but no cleaning process is needed. F2FS adopts a hybrid
601scheme where the copy-and-compaction scheme is adopted by default, but the
602policy is dynamically changed to the threaded log scheme according to the file
603system status.
604
605In order to align F2FS with underlying flash-based storage, F2FS allocates a
606segment in a unit of section. F2FS expects that the section size would be the
607same as the unit size of garbage collection in FTL. Furthermore, with respect
608to the mapping granularity in FTL, F2FS allocates each section of the active
609logs from different zones as much as possible, since FTL can write the data in
610the active logs into one allocation unit according to its mapping granularity.
611
612Cleaning process
613----------------
614
615F2FS does cleaning both on demand and in the background. On-demand cleaning is
616triggered when there are not enough free segments to serve VFS calls. Background
617cleaner is operated by a kernel thread, and triggers the cleaning job when the
618system is idle.
619
620F2FS supports two victim selection policies: greedy and cost-benefit algorithms.
621In the greedy algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment having the smallest number
622of valid blocks. In the cost-benefit algorithm, F2FS selects a victim segment
623according to the segment age and the number of valid blocks in order to address
624log block thrashing problem in the greedy algorithm. F2FS adopts the greedy
625algorithm for on-demand cleaner, while background cleaner adopts cost-benefit
626algorithm.
627
628In order to identify whether the data in the victim segment are valid or not,
629F2FS manages a bitmap. Each bit represents the validity of a block, and the
630bitmap is composed of a bit stream covering whole blocks in main area.
631