Commit Graph

10 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
David Woodhouse ac0c955d50 Merge branch 'master' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6 2007-08-23 10:43:14 +01:00
Satyam Sharma bec4947756 [MTD] Makefile fix for mtdsuper
We want drivers/mtd/{mtdcore, mtdsuper, mtdpart}.c to be built and linked
into the same mtd.ko module. Fix the Makefile to ensure this, and remove
duplicate MODULE_ declarations in mtdpart.c, as mtdcore.c already has them.

Signed-off-by: Satyam Sharma <satyam@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
2007-08-03 12:42:40 +01:00
Richard Purdie 4b23aff083 [MTD] oops and panic message logging to MTD device
Kernel oops and panic messages are invaluable when debugging crashes.
These messages often don't make it to flash based logging methods (say a
syslog on jffs2) due to the overheads involved in writing to flash.

This patch allows you to turn an MTD partition into a circular log
buffer where kernel oops and panic messages are written to. The messages
are obtained by registering a console driver and checking
oops_in_progress. Erases are performed in advance to maximise the
chances of a saving messages.

To activate it, add console=ttyMTDx to the kernel commandline (where x
is the mtd device number to use).

Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@openedhand.com>
Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
2007-06-28 20:18:02 +01:00
David Howells acaebfd8a7 [MTD] generalise the handling of MTD-specific superblocks
Generalise the handling of MTD-specific superblocks so that JFFS2 and ROMFS
can both share it.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
2007-05-11 12:14:15 +01:00
Artem B. Bityutskiy 801c135ce7 UBI: Unsorted Block Images
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>
2007-04-27 14:23:33 +03:00
Josh Boyer f6a7ecb18d [MTD] add MTD_BLKDEVS Kconfig option
Add a MTD_BLKDEVS Kconfig option to cleanup the makefile a bit

Signed-off-by: Josh Boyer <jwboyer@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind@infradead.org>
2006-11-29 16:58:15 +02:00
Claudio Lanconelli 51197abf29 [MTD] Add SSFDC (SmartMedia) read-only translation layer
Signed-off-by: Claudio Lanconelli <lanconelli.claudio@eptar.com>
Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
2006-09-22 11:01:37 +01:00
Kyungmin Park cd5f6346bc [MTD] Add initial support for OneNAND flash chips
OneNAND is a new flash technology from Samsung with integrated SRAM
buffers and logic interface.

Signed-off-by: Kyungmin Park <kyungmin.park@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
2005-11-06 21:17:24 +01:00
Sean Young e27a9960af [MTD] Add Resident Flash Disk (RFD) support
This type of flash translation layer (FTL) is used by the Embedded BIOS
by General Software. It is known as the Resident Flash Disk (RFD), see:

http://www.gensw.com/pages/prod/bios/rfd.htm

Signed-off-by: Sean Young <sean@mess.org>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
2005-11-06 20:08:54 +01:00
Linus Torvalds 1da177e4c3 Linux-2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.

Let it rip!
2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00