[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH 2/4] ubinize-image: Change the rootfs to a static volume

[Maxime Ripard]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 10:54:18AM +0100, Daniel Golle wrote:
> Hi Maxime,
> 
> first of all sorry for the late reply.
> 
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 11:16:13AM +0100, Maxime Ripard wrote:
> > Hi Daniel,
> > > This will break things if rootfs is a read-write UBIFS volume which should
> > > by dynamic.
> > 
> > Indeed, but is this something that is usually done in OpenWRT?
> 
> Yes. Similar to having the option of using either JFFS2 (rw) or SquashFS (ro)
> as rootfs on NOR-based devices, allowing users to use UBIFS (rw) rootfs can
> make sense depending on the requirements further down the road.

Ok.

Who makes this decision? The user? The target? Someone else?

> > > I also saw weird things happening when trying to access static
> > > volumes in U-Boot and thus avoided them for now.
> > > Please also consider that ubootenv* and kernel could be static volumes as
> > > well, however, that needs to be tested with a more recent U-Boot (I hope
> > > it'll work).
> > 
> > Indeed, the kernel and bootloader might be static too.
> > 
> > The only other solution I could think of was to force the size of the
> > ubifs rootfs image to something like 10MB in our case. Which looks a
> > bit counter-productive.
> 
> I don't understand why that would be needed.
> From what I saw, support for static volumes is hardly being used anywhere
> and thus in exactly in the best shape.
> I never encountered any problems writing fixed-size read-only images into
> a dynamic UBI volume and just not using random-access write and dynamic
> resize features. The cost of using dynamic volumes vs. static volumes also
> seems neglectible (anyone?)

You're missing the point. The point is UBI for a dynamic volume
requires a bit less that 20 LEBs (I remember it being around 17, but
I'm not sure anymore, and don't have the board here to test).

20 LEBs on a NAND with a PEB-size of 512k represents around 10MB.

So far, OpenWRT generates UBI volumes for the rootfs that are of the
size of the rootfs image you put in it, aligned on a PEB. Which makes
sense. But for it to even just be mounted, this rootfs volume needs to
be more 10MB. Which never happens.

So there's two solutions here:
  - Don't make the rootfs volume dynamic
  - Align the rootfs volume on 20 PEBs, instead of a single one.

The second solution is just dumb, especially when you try to make such
aggressive changes to reduce the size of other components, while you
waste ~7MB on the other side.

I do believe it is the right solution. It might not be enforced at the
right place (but where then? target? board level? we then fall back to
another question I had that was unanswered on this same patch set...)

Maxime

-- 
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/attachments/20141116/a86f7a99/attachment.sig>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
openwrt-devel mailing list
openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel