Enhanced Read-Only File System - EROFS¶
Overview¶
EROFS file-system stands for Enhanced Read-Only File System. Different from other read-only file systems, it aims to be designed for flexibility, scalability, but be kept simple and high performance.
It is designed as a better filesystem solution for the following scenarios:
- read-only storage media or
- part of a fully trusted read-only solution, which means it needs to be immutable and bit-for-bit identical to the official golden image for their releases due to security and other considerations and
- hope to save some extra storage space with guaranteed end-to-end performance by using reduced metadata and transparent file compression, especially for those embedded devices with limited memory (ex, smartphone);
Here is the main features of EROFS:
Little endian on-disk design;
Currently 4KB block size (nobh) and therefore maximum 16TB address space;
Metadata & data could be mixed by design;
2 inode versions for different requirements:
Inode metadata size 32 bytes 64 bytes Max file size 4 GB 16 EB (also limited by max. vol size) Max uids/gids 65536 4294967296 File change time no yes (64 + 32-bit timestamp) Max hardlinks 65536 4294967296 Metadata reserved 4 bytes 14 bytes Support extended attributes (xattrs) as an option;
Support xattr inline and tail-end data inline for all files;
Support POSIX.1e ACLs by using xattrs;
Support transparent file compression as an option: LZ4 algorithm with 4 KB fixed-sized output compression for high performance.
The following git tree provides the file system user-space tools under development (ex, formatting tool mkfs.erofs):
- git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/xiang/erofs-utils.git
Bugs and patches are welcome, please kindly help us and send to the following linux-erofs mailing list:
- linux-erofs mailing list <linux-erofs@lists.ozlabs.org>
Mount options¶
| (no)user_xattr | Setup Extended User Attributes. Note: xattr is enabled by default if CONFIG_EROFS_FS_XATTR is selected. | ||||||
| (no)acl | Setup POSIX Access Control List. Note: acl is enabled by default if CONFIG_EROFS_FS_POSIX_ACL is selected. | ||||||
| cache_strategy=%s | Select a strategy for cached decompression from now on:
|
On-disk details¶
Summary¶
Different from other read-only file systems, an EROFS volume is designed to be as simple as possible:
|-> aligned with the block size
____________________________________________________________
| |SB| | ... | Metadata | ... | Data | Metadata | ... | Data |
|_|__|_|_____|__________|_____|______|__________|_____|______|
0 +1K
All data areas should be aligned with the block size, but metadata areas may not. All metadatas can be now observed in two different spaces (views):
Inode metadata space
Each valid inode should be aligned with an inode slot, which is a fixed value (32 bytes) and designed to be kept in line with compact inode size.
- Each inode can be directly found with the following formula:
inode offset = meta_blkaddr * block_size + 32 * nid
|-> aligned with 8B |-> followed closely + meta_blkaddr blocks |-> another slot _____________________________________________________________________ | ... | inode | xattrs | extents | data inline | ... | inode ... |________|_______|(optional)|(optional)|__(optional)_|_____|__________ |-> aligned with the inode slot size . . . . . . . . . . . . .____________________________________________________|-> aligned with 4B | xattr_ibody_header | shared xattrs | inline xattrs | |____________________|_______________|_______________| |-> 12 bytes <-|->x * 4 bytes<-| . . . . . . . . . . ._______________________________.______________________. | id | id | id | id | ... | id | ent | ... | ent| ... | |____|____|____|____|______|____|_____|_____|____|_____| |-> aligned with 4B |-> aligned with 4BInode could be 32 or 64 bytes, which can be distinguished from a common field which all inode versions have – i_format:
__________________ __________________ | i_format | | i_format | |__________________| |__________________| | ... | | ... | | | | | |__________________| 32 bytes | | | | |__________________| 64 bytesXattrs, extents, data inline are followed by the corresponding inode with proper alignment, and they could be optional for different data mappings. _currently_ total 4 valid data mappings are supported:
0 flat file data without data inline (no extent); 1 fixed-sized output data compression (with non-compacted indexes); 2 flat file data with tail packing data inline (no extent); 3 fixed-sized output data compression (with compacted indexes, v5.3+). The size of the optional xattrs is indicated by i_xattr_count in inode header. Large xattrs or xattrs shared by many different files can be stored in shared xattrs metadata rather than inlined right after inode.
Shared xattrs metadata space
Shared xattrs space is similar to the above inode space, started with a specific block indicated by xattr_blkaddr, organized one by one with proper align.
- Each share xattr can also be directly found by the following formula:
xattr offset = xattr_blkaddr * block_size + 4 * xattr_id
|-> aligned by 4 bytes + xattr_blkaddr blocks |-> aligned with 4 bytes _________________________________________________________________________ | ... | xattr_entry | xattr data | ... | xattr_entry | xattr data ... |________|_____________|_____________|_____|______________|_______________
Directories¶
All directories are now organized in a compact on-disk format. Note that each directory block is divided into index and name areas in order to support random file lookup, and all directory entries are _strictly_ recorded in alphabetical order in order to support improved prefix binary search algorithm (could refer to the related source code).
___________________________
/ |
/ ______________|________________
/ / | nameoff1 | nameoffN-1
____________.______________._______________v________________v__________
| dirent | dirent | ... | dirent | filename | filename | ... | filename |
|___.0___|____1___|_____|___N-1__|____0_____|____1_____|_____|___N-1____|
\ ^
\ | * could have
\ | trailing '\0'
\________________________| nameoff0
Directory block
Note that apart from the offset of the first filename, nameoff0 also indicates the total number of directory entries in this block since it is no need to introduce another on-disk field at all.
Compression¶
Currently, EROFS supports 4KB fixed-sized output transparent file compression, as illustrated below:
|---- Variant-Length Extent ----|-------- VLE --------|----- VLE -----
clusterofs clusterofs clusterofs
| | | logical data
_________v_______________________________v_____________________v_______________
... | . | | . | | . | ...
____|____.________|_____________|________.____|_____________|__.__________|____
|-> cluster <-|-> cluster <-|-> cluster <-|-> cluster <-|-> cluster <-|
size size size size size
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
_______._____________._____________._____________._____________________
... | | | | ... physical data
_______|_____________|_____________|_____________|_____________________
|-> cluster <-|-> cluster <-|-> cluster <-|
size size size
Currently each on-disk physical cluster can contain 4KB (un)compressed data at most. For each logical cluster, there is a corresponding on-disk index to describe its cluster type, physical cluster address, etc.
See “struct z_erofs_vle_decompressed_index” in erofs_fs.h for more details.