summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/drivers/mtd/ubi/eba.c
AgeCommit message (Collapse)AuthorFilesLines
2009-09-21trivial: fix typo "to to" in multiple filesAnand Gadiyar1-1/+1
Signed-off-by: Anand Gadiyar <gadiyar@ti.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2009-07-24UBI: fix double free on error pathAdrian Hunter1-0/+1
If we fail in 'ubi_eba_init_scan()', we free 'ubi->volumes[i]->eba_tbl' in there, but also later free it in 'free_internal_volumes()'. Fix this by assigning NULL to 'ubi->volumes[i]->eba_tbl' after it is freed. Signed-off-by: Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@nokia.com> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2009-06-10UBI: handle more error codesArtem Bityutskiy1-7/+34
The UBIFS WL worker may encounter read errors and there is logic which makes a decision whether we should do one of: 1. cancel the operation and move the PEB with the read errors to the 'erroneous' list; 2. switch to R/O mode. ATM, only -EIO errors trigger 1., other errors trigger 2. The idea is that if we know we encountered an I/O error, do 1. Otherwise, we do not know how to react, and do 2., just in case. E.g., if the underlying driver became crazy because of a bug, we do not want to harm any data, and switch to R/O mode. This patch does 2 things: 1. Makes sure reads from the source PEB always cause 1. This is more consistent with other reads which come from the upper layers and never cause R/O. 2. Teaches UBI to do 1. also on -EBADMSG, UBI_IO_BAD_VID_HDR, -ENOMEM, and -ETIMEOUT. But this is only when reading the target PEB. This preblems were hunted by Adrian Hunter. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2009-06-10UBI: fix multiple spelling typosArtem Bityutskiy1-1/+1
Some of the typos were indicated by Adrian Hunter, some by 'aspell'. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2009-06-02UBI: do not switch to R/O mode on read errorsArtem Bityutskiy1-6/+13
This patch improves UBI errors handling. ATM UBI switches to R/O mode when the WL worker fails to read the source PEB. This means that the upper layers (e.g., UBIFS) has no chances to unmap the erroneous PEB and fix the error. This patch changes this behaviour and makes UBI put PEBs like this into a separate RB-tree, thus preventing the WL worker from hitting the same read errors again and again. But there is a 10% limit on a maximum amount of PEBs like this. If there are too much of them, UBI switches to R/O mode. Additionally, this patch teaches UBI not to panic and switch to R/O mode if after a PEB has been copied, the target LEB cannot be read back. Instead, now UBI cancels the operation and schedules the target PEB for torturing. The error paths has been tested by ingecting errors into 'ubi_eba_copy_leb()'. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2009-06-02UBI: fix and clean-up error paths in WL workerArtem Bityutskiy1-7/+7
This patch fixes the error path in the WL worker - in same cases UBI oopses when 'goto out_error' happens and e1 or e2 are NULL. This patch also cleans up the error paths a little. And I have tested nearly all error paths in the WL worker. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2009-06-02UBI: introduce new constantsArtem Bityutskiy1-19/+14
This patch is a clean-up and a preparation for the following patches. It introduece constants for the return values of the 'ubi_eba_copy_leb()' function. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2009-01-06trivial: fix then -> than typos in comments and documentationFrederik Schwarzer1-1/+1
- (better, more, bigger ...) then -> (...) than Signed-off-by: Frederik Schwarzer <schwarzerf@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2008-12-05UBI: handle write errors in WL workerArtem Bityutskiy1-13/+24
When a PEB is moved and a write error happens, UBI switches to R/O mode, which is wrong, because we just copy the data and may select a different PEB and re-try this. This patch fixes WL worker's behavior. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-12-05UBI: fix deadlockArtem Bityutskiy1-7/+7
We cannot call 'ubi_wl_get_peb()' with @ubi->buf_mutex locked, because 'ubi_wl_get_peb()' may force erasure, which, in turn, may call 'torture_peb()' which also locks the @ubi->buf_mutex and deadlocks. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-11-06UBI: fix EBADMSG handlingZoltan Sogor1-1/+1
'ubi_io_read_data()' may return EBADMSG in case of an ECC error, and we should not panic because of this. We have CRC32 checksum and may check the data. So just ignore the EBADMSG error. This patch also fixes a minor spelling error at the same time. Signed-off-by: Zoltan Sogor <weth@inf.u-szeged.hu> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-07-24UBI: fix checkpatch.pl errors and warningsArtem Bityutskiy1-5/+2
Just out or curiousity ran checkpatch.pl for whole UBI, and discovered there are quite a few of stylistic issues. Fix them. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-07-24UBI: bugfix - do not torture PEB needlesslyArtem Bityutskiy1-1/+1
This is probably a copy-paste bug - we torture the old PEB in the atomic LEB change function, but we should not do this. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-07-24UBI: amend commentariesArtem Bityutskiy1-11/+11
Hch asked not to use "unit" for sub-systems, let it be so. Also some other commentaries modifications. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-07-24UBI: fix LEB lockingArtem Bityutskiy1-20/+7
leb_read_unlock() may be called simultaniously by several tasks. The would race at the following code: up_read(&le->mutex); if (free) kfree(le); And it is possible that one task frees 'le' before the other tasks do 'up_read()'. Fix this by doing up_read and free inside the 'ubi->ltree' lock. Below it the oops we had because of this: BUG: spinlock bad magic on CPU#0, integck/7504 BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at 6b6b6c4f IP: [<c0211221>] spin_bug+0x5c/0xdb *pde = 00000000 Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP Modules linked in: ubifs ubi nandsim nand nand_ids nand_ecc video output Pid: 7504, comm: integck Not tainted (2.6.26-rc3ubifs26 #8) EIP: 0060:[<c0211221>] EFLAGS: 00010002 CPU: 0 EIP is at spin_bug+0x5c/0xdb EAX: 00000032 EBX: 6b6b6b6b ECX: 6b6b6b6b EDX: f7f7ce30 ESI: f76491dc EDI: c044f51f EBP: e8a736cc ESP: e8a736a8 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 00d8 GS: 0033 SS: 0068 Process integck (pid: 7504, ti=e8a72000 task=f7f7ce30 task.ti=e8a72000) Stack: c044f754 c044f51f 00000000 f7f7d024 00001d50 00000001 f76491dc 00000296 f6df50e0 e8a736d8 c02112f0 f76491dc e8a736e8 c039157a f7d9e830 f76491d8 e8a7370c c020b975 f76491dc 00000296 f76491f8 00000000 f76491d8 00000000 Call Trace: [<c02112f0>] ? _raw_spin_unlock+0x50/0x7c [<c039157a>] ? _spin_unlock_irqrestore+0x20/0x58 [<c020b975>] ? rwsem_wake+0x4b/0x122 [<c0390e0a>] ? call_rwsem_wake+0xa/0xc [<c0139ee7>] ? up_read+0x28/0x31 [<f8873b3c>] ? leb_read_unlock+0x73/0x7b [ubi] [<f88742a3>] ? ubi_eba_read_leb+0x195/0x2b0 [ubi] [<f8872a04>] ? ubi_leb_read+0xaf/0xf8 [ubi] Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-07-24UBI: fix memory leakArtem Bityutskiy1-17/+0
ubi_free_volume() function sets ubi->volumes[] to NULL, so ubi_eba_close() is useless, it does not free what has to be freed. So zap it and free vol->eba_tbl at the volume release function. Pointed-out-by: Adrian Hunter <ext-adrian.hunter@nokia.com> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-07-24UBI: avoid unnecessary division operationsKyungmin Park1-1/+1
UBI already checks that @min io size is the power of 2 at io_init. It is save to use bit operations then. Signed-off-by: Kyungmin Park <kyungmin.park@samsung.com> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-01-25UBI: handle zero-length caseArtem Bityutskiy1-0/+11
ubi_eba_atomic_leb_change() has to just map the LEB to a free PEB if data length is zero. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-01-25UBI: add layout volume informationArtem Bityutskiy1-1/+1
Add more information about layout volume to make userspace tools use the macros instead of constants. Also rename UBI_LAYOUT_VOL_ID to make it consistent with other macros. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-01-25UBI: add auto-resize featureArtem Bityutskiy1-15/+0
The problem: NAND flashes have different amount of initial bad physical eraseblocks (marked as bad by the manufacturer). For example, for 256MiB Samsung OneNAND flash there might be from 0 to 40 bad initial eraseblocks, which is about 2%. When UBI is used as the base system, one needs to know the exact amount of good physical eraseblocks, because this number is needed to create the UBI image which is put to the devices during production. But this number is not know, which forces us to use the minimum number of good physical eraseblocks. And UBI additionally reserves some percentage of physical eraseblocks for bad block handling (default is 1%), so we have 1-3% of PEBs reserved at the end, depending on the amount of initial bad PEBs. But it is desired to always have 1% (or more, depending on the configuration). Solution: this patch adds an "auto-resize" flag to the volume table. The volume which has the "auto-resize" flag will automatically be re-sized (enlarged) on the first UBI initialization. UBI clears the flag when the volume is re-sized. Only one volume may have the "auto-resize" flag. So, the production UBI image may have one volume with "auto-resize" flag set, and its size is automatically adjusted on the first boot of the device. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2008-01-25UBI: get rid of ubi_ltree_slabArtem Bityutskiy1-5/+7
This slab cache is not really needed since the number of objects is low and the constructor does not make much sense because we allocate oblects when doint I/O, which is way slower then allocation. Suggested-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: add UBI devices reference countingArtem Bityutskiy1-0/+5
This is one more step on the way to "removable" UBI devices. It adds reference counting for UBI devices. Every time a volume on this device is opened - the device's refcount is increased. It is also increased if someone is reading any sysfs file of this UBI device or of one of its volumes. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: bugfix: protect from volume removalArtem Bityutskiy1-45/+100
When the WL worker is moving an LEB, the volume might go away occasionally. UBI does not handle these situations correctly. This patch introduces a new mutex which serializes wear-levelling worker and the the 'ubi_wl_put_peb()' function. Now, if one puts an LEB, and its PEB is being moved, it will wait on the mutex. And because we unmap all LEBs when removing volumes, this will make the volume remove function to wait while the LEB movement finishes. Below is an example of an oops which should be fixed by this patch: Pid: 9167, comm: io_paral Not tainted (2.6.24-rc5-ubi-2.6.git #2) EIP: 0060:[<f884a379>] EFLAGS: 00010246 CPU: 0 EIP is at prot_tree_del+0x2a/0x63 [ubi] EAX: f39a90e0 EBX: 00000000 ECX: 00000000 EDX: 00000134 ESI: f39a90e0 EDI: f39a90e0 EBP: f2d55ddc ESP: f2d55dd4 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 00d8 GS: 0033 SS: 0068 Process io_paral (pid: 9167, ti=f2d54000 task=f72a8030 task.ti=f2d54000) Stack: f39a95f8 ef6aae50 f2d55e08 f884a511 f88538e1 f884ecea 00000134 00000000 f39a9604 f39a95f0 efea8280 00000000 f39a90e0 f2d55e40 f8847261 f8850c3c f884eaad 00000001 000000b9 00000134 00000172 000000b9 00000134 00000001 Call Trace: [<c0105227>] show_trace_log_lvl+0x1a/0x30 [<c01052e2>] show_stack_log_lvl+0xa5/0xca [<c01053d6>] show_registers+0xcf/0x21b [<c0105648>] die+0x126/0x224 [<c0119a62>] do_page_fault+0x27f/0x60d [<c037dd62>] error_code+0x72/0x78 [<f884a511>] ubi_wl_put_peb+0xf0/0x191 [ubi] [<f8847261>] ubi_eba_unmap_leb+0xaf/0xcc [ubi] [<f8843c21>] ubi_remove_volume+0x102/0x1e8 [ubi] [<f8846077>] ubi_cdev_ioctl+0x22a/0x383 [ubi] [<c017d768>] do_ioctl+0x68/0x71 [<c017d7c6>] vfs_ioctl+0x55/0x271 [<c017da15>] sys_ioctl+0x33/0x52 [<c0104152>] sysenter_past_esp+0x5f/0xa5 ======================= Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: introduce volume refcountingArtem Bityutskiy1-0/+10
Add ref_count field to UBI volumes and remove weired "vol->removed" field. This way things are better understandable and we do not have to do whold show_attr operation under spinlock. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: add some more commentsArtem Bityutskiy1-1/+7
Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: improve internal interfacesArtem Bityutskiy1-27/+24
Pass volume description object to the EBA function which makes more sense, and EBA function do not have to find the volume description object by volume ID. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: create ltree_entry slab on initializationArtem Bityutskiy1-67/+18
Since the ltree_entry slab cache is a global entity, which is used by all UBI devices, it is more logical to create it on module initialization time and destro on module exit time. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: add ubi_leb_map interfaceArtem Bityutskiy1-5/+8
The idea of this interface belongs to Adrian Hunter. The interface is extremely useful when one has to have a guarantee that an LEB will contain all 0xFFs even in case of an unclean reboot. UBI does have an 'ubi_leb_erase()' call which may do this, but it is stupid and ineffecient, because it flushes whole queue. I should be re-worked to just be a pair of unmap, map calls. The user of the interfaci is UBIFS at the moment. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-12-26UBI: bugfix: allocate mandatory EBs firstArtem Bityutskiy1-9/+9
First allocate the necessary eraseblocks, then the optional ones. Otherwise it allocates all PEBs for bad EB handling, and fails on then following EBA LEB allocation. Reported-by: Adrian Hunter <ext-adrian.hunter@nokia.com> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-10-17Slab API: remove useless ctor parameter and reorder parametersChristoph Lameter1-2/+1
Slab constructors currently have a flags parameter that is never used. And the order of the arguments is opposite to other slab functions. The object pointer is placed before the kmem_cache pointer. Convert ctor(void *object, struct kmem_cache *s, unsigned long flags) to ctor(struct kmem_cache *s, void *object) throughout the kernel [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coupla fixes] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-14UBI: return correct error codeArtem Bityutskiy1-0/+1
Fix the following warning: drivers/mtd/ubi/eba.c: In function 'ubi_eba_init_scan': drivers/mtd/ubi/eba.c:1116: warning: 'err' may be used uninitialized in this function Pointed-to-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-10-14UBI: fix atomic LEB change problemsArtem Bityutskiy1-19/+29
When the UBI device is nearly full, i.e. all LEBs are mapped, we have only one spare LEB left - the one we reserved for WL purposes. Well, I do not count the LEBs which were reserved for bad PEB handling - suppose NOR flash for simplicity. If an "atomic LEB change operation" is run, and the WL unit is moving a LEB, we have no spare LEBs to finish the operation and fail, which is not good. Moreover, if there are 2 or more simultanious "atomic LEB change" requests, only one of them has chances to succeed, the other will fail with -ENOSPC. Not good either. This patch does 2 things: 1. Reserves one PEB for the "atomic LEB change" operation. 2. Serealize the operations so that only on of them may run at a time (by means of a mutex). Pointed-to-by: Brijesh Singh <brijesh.s.singh@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-10-14UBI: do not use vmalloc on I/O pathArtem Bityutskiy1-46/+24
Similar reason as in case of the previous patch: it causes deadlocks if a filesystem with writeback support works on top of UBI. So pre-allocate needed buffers when attaching MTD device. We also need mutexes to protect the buffers, but they do not cause much contantion because they are used in recovery, torture, and WL copy routines, which are called seldom. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-10-14UBI: allocate memory with GFP_NOFSArtem Bityutskiy1-6/+6
Use GFP_NOFS flag when allocating memory on I/O path, because otherwise we may deadlock the filesystem which works on top of us. We observed the deadlocks with UBIFS. Example: VFS->FS lock a lock->UBI->kmalloc()->VFS writeback->FS locks the same lock again. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-07-20mm: Remove slab destructors from kmem_cache_create().Paul Mundt1-1/+1
Slab destructors were no longer supported after Christoph's c59def9f222d44bb7e2f0a559f2906191a0862d7 change. They've been BUGs for both slab and slub, and slob never supported them either. This rips out support for the dtor pointer from kmem_cache_create() completely and fixes up every single callsite in the kernel (there were about 224, not including the slab allocator definitions themselves, or the documentation references). Signed-off-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
2007-07-18UBI: fix bug in atomic_leb_change()Artem Bityutskiy1-1/+1
atomic_leb_change() is only allowed for dynamic volumes, so set the volume type correctly. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-07-18UBI: bugfix in ubi_leb_change()Artem Bityutskiy1-5/+7
Do not call 'ubi_wl_put_peb()' if the LEB was unmapped. Reported-by: Gabor Loki <loki@inf.u-szeged.hu> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-07-18UBI: kill homegrown endian macrosChristoph Hellwig1-31/+31
Kill UBI's homegrown endianess handling and replace it with the standard kernel endianess handling. Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-07-18UBI: use vmalloc for large buffersArtem Bityutskiy1-11/+11
UBI allocates temporary buffers of PEB size, which may be 256KiB. Use vmalloc instead of kmalloc for such big temporary buffers. Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
2007-07-17drivers/*: mark variables with uninitialized_var()Jeff Garzik1-1/+1
Mark variables in drivers/* with uninitialized_var() if such a warning appears, and analysis proves that the var is initialized properly on all paths it is used. Signed-off-by: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>
2007-07-17drivers/mtd/ubi/eba: minor cleanup: tighten scope of a local varJeff Garzik1-2/+2
Signed-off-by: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>
2007-05-17Remove SLAB_CTOR_CONSTRUCTORChristoph Lameter1-3/+0
SLAB_CTOR_CONSTRUCTOR is always specified. No point in checking it. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> Cc: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> Cc: Steven French <sfrench@us.ibm.com> Cc: Michael Halcrow <mhalcrow@us.ibm.com> Cc: OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@mail.parknet.co.jp> Cc: Miklos Szeredi <miklos@szeredi.hu> Cc: Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@redhat.com> Cc: Roman Zippel <zippel@linux-m68k.org> Cc: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org> Cc: Dave Kleikamp <shaggy@austin.ibm.com> Cc: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> Cc: "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org> Cc: Anton Altaparmakov <aia21@cantab.net> Cc: Mark Fasheh <mark.fasheh@oracle.com> Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@ucw.cz> Cc: David Chinner <dgc@sgi.com> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-07slab allocators: Remove SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL flagChristoph Lameter1-2/+1
I have never seen a use of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL. It is only supported by SLAB. I think its purpose was to have a callback after an object has been freed to verify that the state is the constructor state again? The callback is performed before each freeing of an object. I would think that it is much easier to check the object state manually before the free. That also places the check near the code object manipulation of the object. Also the SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL callback is only performed if the kernel was compiled with SLAB debugging on. If there would be code in a constructor handling SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL then it would have to be conditional on SLAB_DEBUG otherwise it would just be dead code. But there is no such code in the kernel. I think SLUB_DEBUG_INITIAL is too problematic to make real use of, difficult to understand and there are easier ways to accomplish the same effect (i.e. add debug code before kfree). There is a related flag SLAB_CTOR_VERIFY that is frequently checked to be clear in fs inode caches. Remove the pointless checks (they would even be pointless without removeal of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL) from the fs constructors. This is the last slab flag that SLUB did not support. Remove the check for unimplemented flags from SLUB. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-04-27UBI: Unsorted Block ImagesArtem B. Bityutskiy1-0/+1241
UBI (Latin: "where?") manages multiple logical volumes on a single flash device, specifically supporting NAND flash devices. UBI provides a flexible partitioning concept which still allows for wear-levelling across the whole flash device. In a sense, UBI may be compared to the Logical Volume Manager (LVM). Whereas LVM maps logical sector numbers to physical HDD sector numbers, UBI maps logical eraseblocks to physical eraseblocks. More information may be found at http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubi.html Partitioning/Re-partitioning An UBI volume occupies a certain number of erase blocks. This is limited by a configured maximum volume size, which could also be viewed as the partition size. Each individual UBI volume's size can be changed independently of the other UBI volumes, provided that the sum of all volume sizes doesn't exceed a certain limit. UBI supports dynamic volumes and static volumes. Static volumes are read-only and their contents are protected by CRC check sums. Bad eraseblocks handling UBI transparently handles bad eraseblocks. When a physical eraseblock becomes bad, it is substituted by a good physical eraseblock, and the user does not even notice this. Scrubbing On a NAND flash bit flips can occur on any write operation, sometimes also on read. If bit flips persist on the device, at first they can still be corrected by ECC, but once they accumulate, correction will become impossible. Thus it is best to actively scrub the affected eraseblock, by first copying it to a free eraseblock and then erasing the original. The UBI layer performs this type of scrubbing under the covers, transparently to the UBI volume users. Erase Counts UBI maintains an erase count header per eraseblock. This frees higher-level layers (like file systems) from doing this and allows for centralized erase count management instead. The erase counts are used by the wear-levelling algorithm in the UBI layer. The algorithm itself is exchangeable. Booting from NAND For booting directly from NAND flash the hardware must at least be capable of fetching and executing a small portion of the NAND flash. Some NAND flash controllers have this kind of support. They usually limit the window to a few kilobytes in erase block 0. This "initial program loader" (IPL) must then contain sufficient logic to load and execute the next boot phase. Due to bad eraseblocks, which may be randomly scattered over the flash device, it is problematic to store the "secondary program loader" (SPL) statically. Also, due to bit-flips it may become corrupted over time. UBI allows to solve this problem gracefully by storing the SPL in a small static UBI volume. UBI volumes vs. static partitions UBI volumes are still very similar to static MTD partitions: * both consist of eraseblocks (logical eraseblocks in case of UBI volumes, and physical eraseblocks in case of static partitions; * both support three basic operations - read, write, erase. But UBI volumes have the following advantages over traditional static MTD partitions: * there are no eraseblock wear-leveling constraints in case of UBI volumes, so the user should not care about this; * there are no bit-flips and bad eraseblocks in case of UBI volumes. So, UBI volumes may be considered as flash devices with relaxed restrictions. Where can it be found? Documentation, kernel code and applications can be found in the MTD gits. What are the applications for? The applications help to create binary flash images for two purposes: pfi files (partial flash images) for in-system update of UBI volumes, and plain binary images, with or without OOB data in case of NAND, for a manufacturing step. Furthermore some tools are/and will be created that allow flash content analysis after a system has crashed.. Who did UBI? The original ideas, where UBI is based on, were developed by Andreas Arnez, Frank Haverkamp and Thomas Gleixner. Josh W. Boyer and some others were involved too. The implementation of the kernel layer was done by Artem B. Bityutskiy. The user-space applications and tools were written by Oliver Lohmann with contributions from Frank Haverkamp, Andreas Arnez, and Artem. Joern Engel contributed a patch which modifies JFFS2 so that it can be run on a UBI volume. Thomas Gleixner did modifications to the NAND layer. Alexander Schmidt made some testing work as well as core functionality improvements. Signed-off-by: Artem B. Bityutskiy <dedekind@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Frank Haverkamp <haver@vnet.ibm.com>