| |
| Ext4 Filesystem |
| =============== |
| |
| Ext4 is an an advanced level of the ext3 filesystem which incorporates |
| scalability and reliability enhancements for supporting large filesystems |
| (64 bit) in keeping with increasing disk capacities and state-of-the-art |
| feature requirements. |
| |
| Mailing list: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org |
| Web site: http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org |
| |
| |
| 1. Quick usage instructions: |
| =========================== |
| |
| Note: More extensive information for getting started with ext4 can be |
| found at the ext4 wiki site at the URL: |
| http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto |
| |
| - Compile and install the latest version of e2fsprogs (as of this |
| writing version 1.41.3) from: |
| |
| http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2406 |
| |
| or |
| |
| ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/tytso/e2fsprogs/ |
| |
| or grab the latest git repository from: |
| |
| git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs.git |
| |
| - Note that it is highly important to install the mke2fs.conf file |
| that comes with the e2fsprogs 1.41.x sources in /etc/mke2fs.conf. If |
| you have edited the /etc/mke2fs.conf file installed on your system, |
| you will need to merge your changes with the version from e2fsprogs |
| 1.41.x. |
| |
| - Create a new filesystem using the ext4 filesystem type: |
| |
| # mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/hda1 |
| |
| Or to configure an existing ext3 filesystem to support extents: |
| |
| # tune2fs -O extents /dev/hda1 |
| |
| If the filesystem was created with 128 byte inodes, it can be |
| converted to use 256 byte for greater efficiency via: |
| |
| # tune2fs -I 256 /dev/hda1 |
| |
| (Note: we currently do not have tools to convert an ext4 |
| filesystem back to ext3; so please do not do try this on production |
| filesystems.) |
| |
| - Mounting: |
| |
| # mount -t ext4 /dev/hda1 /wherever |
| |
| - When comparing performance with other filesystems, it's always |
| important to try multiple workloads; very often a subtle change in a |
| workload parameter can completely change the ranking of which |
| filesystems do well compared to others. When comparing versus ext3, |
| note that ext4 enables write barriers by default, while ext3 does |
| not enable write barriers by default. So it is useful to use |
| explicitly specify whether barriers are enabled or not when via the |
| '-o barriers=[0|1]' mount option for both ext3 and ext4 filesystems |
| for a fair comparison. When tuning ext3 for best benchmark numbers, |
| it is often worthwhile to try changing the data journaling mode; '-o |
| data=writeback,nobh' can be faster for some workloads. (Note |
| however that running mounted with data=writeback can potentially |
| leave stale data exposed in recently written files in case of an |
| unclean shutdown, which could be a security exposure in some |
| situations.) Configuring the filesystem with a large journal can |
| also be helpful for metadata-intensive workloads. |
| |
| 2. Features |
| =========== |
| |
| 2.1 Currently available |
| |
| * ability to use filesystems > 16TB (e2fsprogs support not available yet) |
| * extent format reduces metadata overhead (RAM, IO for access, transactions) |
| * extent format more robust in face of on-disk corruption due to magics, |
| * internal redundancy in tree |
| * improved file allocation (multi-block alloc) |
| * lift 32000 subdirectory limit imposed by i_links_count[1] |
| * nsec timestamps for mtime, atime, ctime, create time |
| * inode version field on disk (NFSv4, Lustre) |
| * reduced e2fsck time via uninit_bg feature |
| * journal checksumming for robustness, performance |
| * persistent file preallocation (e.g for streaming media, databases) |
| * ability to pack bitmaps and inode tables into larger virtual groups via the |
| flex_bg feature |
| * large file support |
| * Inode allocation using large virtual block groups via flex_bg |
| * delayed allocation |
| * large block (up to pagesize) support |
| * efficient new ordered mode in JBD2 and ext4(avoid using buffer head to force |
| the ordering) |
| |
| [1] Filesystems with a block size of 1k may see a limit imposed by the |
| directory hash tree having a maximum depth of two. |
| |
| 2.2 Candidate features for future inclusion |
| |
| * Online defrag (patches available but not well tested) |
| * reduced mke2fs time via lazy itable initialization in conjunction with |
| the uninit_bg feature (capability to do this is available in e2fsprogs |
| but a kernel thread to do lazy zeroing of unused inode table blocks |
| after filesystem is first mounted is required for safety) |
| |
| There are several others under discussion, whether they all make it in is |
| partly a function of how much time everyone has to work on them. Features like |
| metadata checksumming have been discussed and planned for a bit but no patches |
| exist yet so I'm not sure they're in the near-term roadmap. |
| |
| The big performance win will come with mballoc, delalloc and flex_bg |
| grouping of bitmaps and inode tables. Some test results available here: |
| |
| - http://www.bullopensource.org/ext4/20080818-ffsb/ffsb-write-2.6.27-rc1.html |
| - http://www.bullopensource.org/ext4/20080818-ffsb/ffsb-readwrite-2.6.27-rc1.html |
| |
| 3. Options |
| ========== |
| |
| When mounting an ext4 filesystem, the following option are accepted: |
| (*) == default |
| |
| ro Mount filesystem read only. Note that ext4 will |
| replay the journal (and thus write to the |
| partition) even when mounted "read only". The |
| mount options "ro,noload" can be used to prevent |
| writes to the filesystem. |
| |
| journal_checksum Enable checksumming of the journal transactions. |
| This will allow the recovery code in e2fsck and the |
| kernel to detect corruption in the kernel. It is a |
| compatible change and will be ignored by older kernels. |
| |
| journal_async_commit Commit block can be written to disk without waiting |
| for descriptor blocks. If enabled older kernels cannot |
| mount the device. This will enable 'journal_checksum' |
| internally. |
| |
| journal=update Update the ext4 file system's journal to the current |
| format. |
| |
| journal_dev=devnum When the external journal device's major/minor numbers |
| have changed, this option allows the user to specify |
| the new journal location. The journal device is |
| identified through its new major/minor numbers encoded |
| in devnum. |
| |
| norecovery Don't load the journal on mounting. Note that |
| noload if the filesystem was not unmounted cleanly, |
| skipping the journal replay will lead to the |
| filesystem containing inconsistencies that can |
| lead to any number of problems. |
| |
| data=journal All data are committed into the journal prior to being |
| written into the main file system. |
| |
| data=ordered (*) All data are forced directly out to the main file |
| system prior to its metadata being committed to the |
| journal. |
| |
| data=writeback Data ordering is not preserved, data may be written |
| into the main file system after its metadata has been |
| committed to the journal. |
| |
| commit=nrsec (*) Ext4 can be told to sync all its data and metadata |
| every 'nrsec' seconds. The default value is 5 seconds. |
| This means that if you lose your power, you will lose |
| as much as the latest 5 seconds of work (your |
| filesystem will not be damaged though, thanks to the |
| journaling). This default value (or any low value) |
| will hurt performance, but it's good for data-safety. |
| Setting it to 0 will have the same effect as leaving |
| it at the default (5 seconds). |
| Setting it to very large values will improve |
| performance. |
| |
| barrier=<0|1(*)> This enables/disables the use of write barriers in |
| barrier(*) the jbd code. barrier=0 disables, barrier=1 enables. |
| nobarrier This also requires an IO stack which can support |
| barriers, and if jbd gets an error on a barrier |
| write, it will disable again with a warning. |
| Write barriers enforce proper on-disk ordering |
| of journal commits, making volatile disk write caches |
| safe to use, at some performance penalty. If |
| your disks are battery-backed in one way or another, |
| disabling barriers may safely improve performance. |
| The mount options "barrier" and "nobarrier" can |
| also be used to enable or disable barriers, for |
| consistency with other ext4 mount options. |
| |
| inode_readahead_blks=n This tuning parameter controls the maximum |
| number of inode table blocks that ext4's inode |
| table readahead algorithm will pre-read into |
| the buffer cache. The default value is 32 blocks. |
| |
| orlov (*) This enables the new Orlov block allocator. It is |
| enabled by default. |
| |
| oldalloc This disables the Orlov block allocator and enables |
| the old block allocator. Orlov should have better |
| performance - we'd like to get some feedback if it's |
| the contrary for you. |
| |
| user_xattr Enables Extended User Attributes. Additionally, you |
| need to have extended attribute support enabled in the |
| kernel configuration (CONFIG_EXT4_FS_XATTR). See the |
| attr(5) manual page and http://acl.bestbits.at/ to |
| learn more about extended attributes. |
| |
| nouser_xattr Disables Extended User Attributes. |
| |
| acl Enables POSIX Access Control Lists support. |
| Additionally, you need to have ACL support enabled in |
| the kernel configuration (CONFIG_EXT4_FS_POSIX_ACL). |
| See the acl(5) manual page and http://acl.bestbits.at/ |
| for more information. |
| |
| noacl This option disables POSIX Access Control List |
| support. |
| |
| bsddf (*) Make 'df' act like BSD. |
| minixdf Make 'df' act like Minix. |
| |
| debug Extra debugging information is sent to syslog. |
| |
| abort Simulate the effects of calling ext4_abort() for |
| debugging purposes. This is normally used while |
| remounting a filesystem which is already mounted. |
| |
| errors=remount-ro Remount the filesystem read-only on an error. |
| errors=continue Keep going on a filesystem error. |
| errors=panic Panic and halt the machine if an error occurs. |
| (These mount options override the errors behavior |
| specified in the superblock, which can be configured |
| using tune2fs) |
| |
| data_err=ignore(*) Just print an error message if an error occurs |
| in a file data buffer in ordered mode. |
| data_err=abort Abort the journal if an error occurs in a file |
| data buffer in ordered mode. |
| |
| grpid Give objects the same group ID as their creator. |
| bsdgroups |
| |
| nogrpid (*) New objects have the group ID of their creator. |
| sysvgroups |
| |
| resgid=n The group ID which may use the reserved blocks. |
| |
| resuid=n The user ID which may use the reserved blocks. |
| |
| sb=n Use alternate superblock at this location. |
| |
| quota These options are ignored by the filesystem. They |
| noquota are used only by quota tools to recognize volumes |
| grpquota where quota should be turned on. See documentation |
| usrquota in the quota-tools package for more details |
| (http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxquota). |
| |
| jqfmt=<quota type> These options tell filesystem details about quota |
| usrjquota=<file> so that quota information can be properly updated |
| grpjquota=<file> during journal replay. They replace the above |
| quota options. See documentation in the quota-tools |
| package for more details |
| (http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxquota). |
| |
| bh (*) ext4 associates buffer heads to data pages to |
| nobh (a) cache disk block mapping information |
| (b) link pages into transaction to provide |
| ordering guarantees. |
| "bh" option forces use of buffer heads. |
| "nobh" option tries to avoid associating buffer |
| heads (supported only for "writeback" mode). |
| |
| stripe=n Number of filesystem blocks that mballoc will try |
| to use for allocation size and alignment. For RAID5/6 |
| systems this should be the number of data |
| disks * RAID chunk size in file system blocks. |
| |
| delalloc (*) Defer block allocation until just before ext4 |
| writes out the block(s) in question. This |
| allows ext4 to better allocation decisions |
| more efficiently. |
| nodelalloc Disable delayed allocation. Blocks are allocated |
| when the data is copied from userspace to the |
| page cache, either via the write(2) system call |
| or when an mmap'ed page which was previously |
| unallocated is written for the first time. |
| |
| max_batch_time=usec Maximum amount of time ext4 should wait for |
| additional filesystem operations to be batch |
| together with a synchronous write operation. |
| Since a synchronous write operation is going to |
| force a commit and then a wait for the I/O |
| complete, it doesn't cost much, and can be a |
| huge throughput win, we wait for a small amount |
| of time to see if any other transactions can |
| piggyback on the synchronous write. The |
| algorithm used is designed to automatically tune |
| for the speed of the disk, by measuring the |
| amount of time (on average) that it takes to |
| finish committing a transaction. Call this time |
| the "commit time". If the time that the |
| transaction has been running is less than the |
| commit time, ext4 will try sleeping for the |
| commit time to see if other operations will join |
| the transaction. The commit time is capped by |
| the max_batch_time, which defaults to 15000us |
| (15ms). This optimization can be turned off |
| entirely by setting max_batch_time to 0. |
| |
| min_batch_time=usec This parameter sets the commit time (as |
| described above) to be at least min_batch_time. |
| It defaults to zero microseconds. Increasing |
| this parameter may improve the throughput of |
| multi-threaded, synchronous workloads on very |
| fast disks, at the cost of increasing latency. |
| |
| journal_ioprio=prio The I/O priority (from 0 to 7, where 0 is the |
| highest priorty) which should be used for I/O |
| operations submitted by kjournald2 during a |
| commit operation. This defaults to 3, which is |
| a slightly higher priority than the default I/O |
| priority. |
| |
| auto_da_alloc(*) Many broken applications don't use fsync() when |
| noauto_da_alloc replacing existing files via patterns such as |
| fd = open("foo.new")/write(fd,..)/close(fd)/ |
| rename("foo.new", "foo"), or worse yet, |
| fd = open("foo", O_TRUNC)/write(fd,..)/close(fd). |
| If auto_da_alloc is enabled, ext4 will detect |
| the replace-via-rename and replace-via-truncate |
| patterns and force that any delayed allocation |
| blocks are allocated such that at the next |
| journal commit, in the default data=ordered |
| mode, the data blocks of the new file are forced |
| to disk before the rename() operation is |
| committed. This provides roughly the same level |
| of guarantees as ext3, and avoids the |
| "zero-length" problem that can happen when a |
| system crashes before the delayed allocation |
| blocks are forced to disk. |
| |
| noinit_itable Do not initialize any uninitialized inode table |
| blocks in the background. This feature may be |
| used by installation CD's so that the install |
| process can complete as quickly as possible; the |
| inode table initialization process would then be |
| deferred until the next time the file system |
| is unmounted. |
| |
| init_itable=n The lazy itable init code will wait n times the |
| number of milliseconds it took to zero out the |
| previous block group's inode table. This |
| minimizes the impact on the systme performance |
| while file system's inode table is being initialized. |
| |
| discard Controls whether ext4 should issue discard/TRIM |
| nodiscard(*) commands to the underlying block device when |
| blocks are freed. This is useful for SSD devices |
| and sparse/thinly-provisioned LUNs, but it is off |
| by default until sufficient testing has been done. |
| |
| nouid32 Disables 32-bit UIDs and GIDs. This is for |
| interoperability with older kernels which only |
| store and expect 16-bit values. |
| |
| resize Allows to resize filesystem to the end of the last |
| existing block group, further resize has to be done |
| with resize2fs either online, or offline. It can be |
| used only with conjunction with remount. |
| |
| block_validity This options allows to enables/disables the in-kernel |
| noblock_validity facility for tracking filesystem metadata blocks |
| within internal data structures. This allows multi- |
| block allocator and other routines to quickly locate |
| extents which might overlap with filesystem metadata |
| blocks. This option is intended for debugging |
| purposes and since it negatively affects the |
| performance, it is off by default. |
| |
| dioread_lock Controls whether or not ext4 should use the DIO read |
| dioread_nolock locking. If the dioread_nolock option is specified |
| ext4 will allocate uninitialized extent before buffer |
| write and convert the extent to initialized after IO |
| completes. This approach allows ext4 code to avoid |
| using inode mutex, which improves scalability on high |
| speed storages. However this does not work with nobh |
| option and the mount will fail. Nor does it work with |
| data journaling and dioread_nolock option will be |
| ignored with kernel warning. Note that dioread_nolock |
| code path is only used for extent-based files. |
| Because of the restrictions this options comprises |
| it is off by default (e.g. dioread_lock). |
| |
| i_version Enable 64-bit inode version support. This option is |
| off by default. |
| |
| Data Mode |
| ========= |
| There are 3 different data modes: |
| |
| * writeback mode |
| In data=writeback mode, ext4 does not journal data at all. This mode provides |
| a similar level of journaling as that of XFS, JFS, and ReiserFS in its default |
| mode - metadata journaling. A crash+recovery can cause incorrect data to |
| appear in files which were written shortly before the crash. This mode will |
| typically provide the best ext4 performance. |
| |
| * ordered mode |
| In data=ordered mode, ext4 only officially journals metadata, but it logically |
| groups metadata information related to data changes with the data blocks into a |
| single unit called a transaction. When it's time to write the new metadata |
| out to disk, the associated data blocks are written first. In general, |
| this mode performs slightly slower than writeback but significantly faster than journal mode. |
| |
| * journal mode |
| data=journal mode provides full data and metadata journaling. All new data is |
| written to the journal first, and then to its final location. |
| In the event of a crash, the journal can be replayed, bringing both data and |
| metadata into a consistent state. This mode is the slowest except when data |
| needs to be read from and written to disk at the same time where it |
| outperforms all others modes. Currently ext4 does not have delayed |
| allocation support if this data journalling mode is selected. |
| |
| /proc entries |
| ============= |
| |
| Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in |
| /proc/fs/ext4. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in |
| /proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or |
| /proc/fs/ext4/dm-0). The files in each per-device directory are shown |
| in table below. |
| |
| Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname> |
| .............................................................................. |
| File Content |
| mb_groups details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks |
| .............................................................................. |
| |
| /sys entries |
| ============ |
| |
| Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in |
| /sys/fs/ext4. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in |
| /sys/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /sys/fs/ext4/hdc or |
| /sys/fs/ext4/dm-0). The files in each per-device directory are shown |
| in table below. |
| |
| Files in /sys/fs/ext4/<devname> |
| (see also Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-fs-ext4) |
| .............................................................................. |
| File Content |
| |
| delayed_allocation_blocks This file is read-only and shows the number of |
| blocks that are dirty in the page cache, but |
| which do not have their location in the |
| filesystem allocated yet. |
| |
| inode_goal Tuning parameter which (if non-zero) controls |
| the goal inode used by the inode allocator in |
| preference to all other allocation heuristics. |
| This is intended for debugging use only, and |
| should be 0 on production systems. |
| |
| inode_readahead_blks Tuning parameter which controls the maximum |
| number of inode table blocks that ext4's inode |
| table readahead algorithm will pre-read into |
| the buffer cache |
| |
| lifetime_write_kbytes This file is read-only and shows the number of |
| kilobytes of data that have been written to this |
| filesystem since it was created. |
| |
| max_writeback_mb_bump The maximum number of megabytes the writeback |
| code will try to write out before move on to |
| another inode. |
| |
| mb_group_prealloc The multiblock allocator will round up allocation |
| requests to a multiple of this tuning parameter if |
| the stripe size is not set in the ext4 superblock |
| |
| mb_max_to_scan The maximum number of extents the multiblock |
| allocator will search to find the best extent |
| |
| mb_min_to_scan The minimum number of extents the multiblock |
| allocator will search to find the best extent |
| |
| mb_order2_req Tuning parameter which controls the minimum size |
| for requests (as a power of 2) where the buddy |
| cache is used |
| |
| mb_stats Controls whether the multiblock allocator should |
| collect statistics, which are shown during the |
| unmount. 1 means to collect statistics, 0 means |
| not to collect statistics |
| |
| mb_stream_req Files which have fewer blocks than this tunable |
| parameter will have their blocks allocated out |
| of a block group specific preallocation pool, so |
| that small files are packed closely together. |
| Each large file will have its blocks allocated |
| out of its own unique preallocation pool. |
| |
| session_write_kbytes This file is read-only and shows the number of |
| kilobytes of data that have been written to this |
| filesystem since it was mounted. |
| .............................................................................. |
| |
| Ioctls |
| ====== |
| |
| There is some Ext4 specific functionality which can be accessed by applications |
| through the system call interfaces. The list of all Ext4 specific ioctls are |
| shown in the table below. |
| |
| Table of Ext4 specific ioctls |
| .............................................................................. |
| Ioctl Description |
| EXT4_IOC_GETFLAGS Get additional attributes associated with inode. |
| The ioctl argument is an integer bitfield, with |
| bit values described in ext4.h. This ioctl is an |
| alias for FS_IOC_GETFLAGS. |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_SETFLAGS Set additional attributes associated with inode. |
| The ioctl argument is an integer bitfield, with |
| bit values described in ext4.h. This ioctl is an |
| alias for FS_IOC_SETFLAGS. |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_GETVERSION |
| EXT4_IOC_GETVERSION_OLD |
| Get the inode i_generation number stored for |
| each inode. The i_generation number is normally |
| changed only when new inode is created and it is |
| particularly useful for network filesystems. The |
| '_OLD' version of this ioctl is an alias for |
| FS_IOC_GETVERSION. |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_SETVERSION |
| EXT4_IOC_SETVERSION_OLD |
| Set the inode i_generation number stored for |
| each inode. The '_OLD' version of this ioctl |
| is an alias for FS_IOC_SETVERSION. |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_GROUP_EXTEND This ioctl has the same purpose as the resize |
| mount option. It allows to resize filesystem |
| to the end of the last existing block group, |
| further resize has to be done with resize2fs, |
| either online, or offline. The argument points |
| to the unsigned logn number representing the |
| filesystem new block count. |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_MOVE_EXT Move the block extents from orig_fd (the one |
| this ioctl is pointing to) to the donor_fd (the |
| one specified in move_extent structure passed |
| as an argument to this ioctl). Then, exchange |
| inode metadata between orig_fd and donor_fd. |
| This is especially useful for online |
| defragmentation, because the allocator has the |
| opportunity to allocate moved blocks better, |
| ideally into one contiguous extent. |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_GROUP_ADD Add a new group descriptor to an existing or |
| new group descriptor block. The new group |
| descriptor is described by ext4_new_group_input |
| structure, which is passed as an argument to |
| this ioctl. This is especially useful in |
| conjunction with EXT4_IOC_GROUP_EXTEND, |
| which allows online resize of the filesystem |
| to the end of the last existing block group. |
| Those two ioctls combined is used in userspace |
| online resize tool (e.g. resize2fs). |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_MIGRATE This ioctl operates on the filesystem itself. |
| It converts (migrates) ext3 indirect block mapped |
| inode to ext4 extent mapped inode by walking |
| through indirect block mapping of the original |
| inode and converting contiguous block ranges |
| into ext4 extents of the temporary inode. Then, |
| inodes are swapped. This ioctl might help, when |
| migrating from ext3 to ext4 filesystem, however |
| suggestion is to create fresh ext4 filesystem |
| and copy data from the backup. Note, that |
| filesystem has to support extents for this ioctl |
| to work. |
| |
| EXT4_IOC_ALLOC_DA_BLKS Force all of the delay allocated blocks to be |
| allocated to preserve application-expected ext3 |
| behaviour. Note that this will also start |
| triggering a write of the data blocks, but this |
| behaviour may change in the future as it is |
| not necessary and has been done this way only |
| for sake of simplicity. |
| .............................................................................. |
| |
| References |
| ========== |
| |
| kernel source: <file:fs/ext4/> |
| <file:fs/jbd2/> |
| |
| programs: http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/ |
| |
| useful links: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ext3-devel |
| http://www.bullopensource.org/ext4/ |
| http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page |
| http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Ext4 |