Reworked tag encoding a little bit
Mainly to make room for some future planned stuff:
- Moved the mroot's redund bits from LFSR_TAG_GEOMETRY to
LFSR_TAG_MAGIC:
LFSR_TAG_MAGIC 0x003r v--- ---- --11 --rr
This has the benefit of living in a fixed location (off=0x5), which
may make mounting/debugging easier. It also makes LFSR_TAG_GEOMETRY
less of a special case (LFSR_TAG_MAGIC is already a _very_ special
case).
Unfortunately, this does get in the way of our previous magic=0x3
encoding. To compensate (and to avoid conflicts with LFSR_TAG_NULL),
I've added the 0x3_ prefix. This has the funny side-effect of
rendering redunds 0-3 as ascii 0-3 (0x30-0x33), which is a complete
accident but may actually be useful when debugging.
Currently all config tags fit in the 0x3_ prefix, which is nice for
debugging but not a hard requirement.
- Flipped LFSR_TAG_FILELIMIT/NAMELIMIT:
LFSR_TAG_FILELIMIT 0x0039 v--- ---- --11 1--1
LFSR_TAG_NAMELIMIT 0x003a v--- ---- --11 1-1-
The file limit is a _bit_ more fundamental. It's effectively the
required integer size for the filesystem.
These may also be followed by LFSR_TAG_ATTRLIMIT based on how future
attr revisits go.
- Rearranged struct tags so that LFSR_TAG_BRANCH = 0x300:
LFSR_TAG_BRANCH 0x030r v--- --11 ---- --rr
LFSR_TAG_DATA 0x0304 v--- --11 ---- -1--
LFSR_TAG_BLOCK 0x0308 v--- --11 ---- 1err
LFSR_TAG_DDKEY* 0x0310 v--- --11 ---1 ----
LFSR_TAG_DID 0x0314 v--- --11 ---1 -1--
LFSR_TAG_BSHRUB 0x0318 v--- --11 ---1 1---
LFSR_TAG_BTREE 0x031c v--- --11 ---1 11rr
LFSR_TAG_MROOT 0x032r v--- --11 --1- --rr
LFSR_TAG_MDIR 0x0324 v--- --11 --1- -1rr
LFSR_TAG_MTREE 0x032c v--- --11 --1- 11rr
*Planned
LFSR_TAG_BRANCH is a very special tag when it comes to bshrub/btree
traversal, so I think it deserves the subtype=0 slot.
This also just makes everything fit together better, and makes room
for the future planned ddkey tag.
Code changes minimal:
code stack ctx
before: 35728 2440 640
after: 35732 (+0.0%) 2440 (+0.0%) 640 (+0.0%)
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.
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); }
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.
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.
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.
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
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/
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.