No space left on almost empty JFFS2 filesystem

[Paul van Gool]

Hi,

I have created an small and almost empty JFFS2 filesystem and have put it
on my flash. The image is padded to 128K and there should be space left.
When I mount it though the filesystem shows up as full. Any hints where to
look?

I created the image with:

mkfs.jffs2 --pad --little-endian --squash -e 0x20000 -d /home/vangool/jffs -o jffs.img

/home/vangool/jffs contains:

[vangool at sb-lnx3 vangool]$ ls -l /home/vangool/jffs
total 16
-rwxr-xr-x 1 vangool develop 11769 Jun 25 07:49 hello
-rw-r--r-- 1 vangool develop 158 Jun 25 07:49 hello.c

When I mount it on my dev board I see:

# mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock4 /mnt/jffs
mtdblock_open
ok
# df
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs 7931 3682 4249 46% /
/dev/root 7931 3682 4249 46% /
10.0.2.11:/ 74730396 3471336 67462904 5% /mnt/camb-lnx1
10.0.2.12:/ 74754492 5980872 64976256 8% /mnt/camb-lnx2
/dev/mtdblock4 128 128 0 100% /mnt/jffs

And as a result:

# /mnt/jffs/hello > /mnt/jffs/hello.out
cannot create /mnt/jffs/hello.out: No space left on device

In case it's important, I flashed the image using Redboot:

load -r -v -b 0x8F000000 camb-devbrd1/jffs.img -m TFTP -h 10.0.2.12
fis create jffs -f 0x80300000 -l 0x20000 -b 0x8F000000 -r 0x8F000000

Thanks in advance.

Paul

[Jasmine Strong]

Post by Paul van Gool
Hi,
I have created an small and almost empty JFFS2 filesystem and have put
it
on my flash.

JFFS2 filesystems require a certain number of erase blocks reserved for
garbage collection before you can write anything to them.

128k is only one erase block for most CFI flashes and is thus far too
small
to have the five(?) free blocks that are required. There was talk of
proving
the GC for two free blocks, but either way, one block is not (and never
will
be) enough.

-Jas.

[Paul van Gool]

Post by Jasmine Strong
JFFS2 filesystems require a certain number of erase blocks reserved for
garbage collection before you can write anything to them.

I see. 1 Block will indeed never be enough then. Shows my ignorance ;-).

Thanks.

Paul

[Paul van Gool]

So I tried:

mkfs.jffs2 --pad=0x80000 --little-endian --squash -e 0x20000 -d /home/vangool/jffs -o jffs.img

thinking that that would give me 3 erase blocks but I still get the
same error. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

Paul

Post by Paul van Gool

Post by Jasmine Strong
JFFS2 filesystems require a certain number of erase blocks reserved for
garbage collection before you can write anything to them.

I see. 1 Block will indeed never be enough then. Shows my ignorance ;-).
Thanks.
Paul
--
Paul van Gool Rincon Networks
paul.vangool at rinconnetworks.com (805)-705-1442
______________________________________________________
Linux MTD discussion mailing list
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-mtd/

[Paul van Gool]

Creating am image with '-e 0x10000' and running with it, results in:

# mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock4 /mnt/jffs
mtdblock_open
ok
jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at 0x000017ac ends at 0x00010000 (with 0x200319y
CLEANMARKER node found at 0x00010000, not first node in block (0x00000000)
jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at 0x0002000c ends at 0x00030000 (with 0x200319y
CLEANMARKER node found at 0x00030000, not first node in block (0x00020000)
jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at 0x0004000c ends at 0x00050000 (with 0x200319y
CLEANMARKER node found at 0x00050000, not first node in block (0x00040000)
jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at 0x0006000c ends at 0x00070000 (with 0x200319y
CLEANMARKER node found at 0x00070000, not first node in block (0x00060000)
jffs2: No clean _or_ dirty blocks to GC from! Where are they all?
jffs2: Couldn't find erase block to garbage collect!
jffs2: No clean _or_ dirty blocks to GC from! Where are they all?
jffs2: Couldn't find erase block to garbage collect!
jffs2: No clean _or_ dirty blocks to GC from! Where are they all?
jffs2: Couldn't find erase block to garbage collect!
...

Paul

Post by Paul van Gool
mkfs.jffs2 --pad=0x80000 --little-endian --squash -e 0x20000 -d /home/vangool/jffs -o jffs.img
thinking that that would give me 3 erase blocks but I still get the
same error. Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks.
Paul

Post by Paul van Gool

Post by Jasmine Strong
JFFS2 filesystems require a certain number of erase blocks reserved for
garbage collection before you can write anything to them.

I see. 1 Block will indeed never be enough then. Shows my ignorance ;-).
Thanks.
Paul
--
Paul van Gool Rincon Networks
paul.vangool at rinconnetworks.com (805)-705-1442
______________________________________________________
Linux MTD discussion mailing list
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-mtd/

--
Paul van Gool Rincon Networks
paul.vangool at rinconnetworks.com (805)-705-1442

[Thomas Gleixner]

Post by Paul van Gool
# mount -t jffs2 /dev/mtdblock4 /mnt/jffs
mtdblock_open
ok
jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at 0x000017ac ends at 0x00010000 (with
0x200319y CLEANMARKER node found at 0x00010000, not first node in block
(0x00000000) jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at 0x0002000c ends at
0x00030000 (with 0x200319y CLEANMARKER node found at 0x00030000, not first
node in block (0x00020000) jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at 0x0004000c
ends at 0x00050000 (with 0x200319y CLEANMARKER node found at 0x00050000,
not first node in block (0x00040000) jffs2_scan_empty(): Empty block at
0x0006000c ends at 0x00070000 (with 0x200319y CLEANMARKER node found at
0x00070000, not first node in block (0x00060000) jffs2: No clean _or_ dirty
blocks to GC from! Where are they all?
jffs2: Couldn't find erase block to garbage collect!
jffs2: No clean _or_ dirty blocks to GC from! Where are they all?
jffs2: Couldn't find erase block to garbage collect!
jffs2: No clean _or_ dirty blocks to GC from! Where are they all?
jffs2: Couldn't find erase block to garbage collect!

Don't try to betray the pyhsiccal facts. Even if you tell mkfs.jffs2 that your
eraseblock size is < 128K, the physical eraseblock size will remain at 128K,
as this is given by the chip.

You can only erase eraseblocks and not a quarter of them, as you can't buy a
1/4 of a beerbottle. You can fill the bottle with 1/4 of the maximum content,
but the bottle still remains the same size. :)

[Paul van Gool]

Post by Thomas Gleixner
You can only erase eraseblocks and not a quarter of them, as you can't buy a
1/4 of a beerbottle. You can fill the bottle with 1/4 of the maximum content,
but the bottle still remains the same size. :)

I thought I would try and see what happened during the mount. I hoped it would
give me more data about whas was going on.

Thanks.

Paul

[Jörn Engel]

Post by Jasmine Strong

Post by Paul van Gool
I have created an small and almost empty JFFS2 filesystem and have put it
on my flash.

JFFS2 filesystems require a certain number of erase blocks reserved for
garbage collection before you can write anything to them.
128k is only one erase block for most CFI flashes and is thus far too
small
to have the five(?) free blocks that are required. There was talk of
proving
the GC for two free blocks, but either way, one block is not (and never
will
be) enough.

Two blocks will be tough, but three seem possible for NOR flash. If
you care about it, there was some discussion a couple of month back,
even an initial patch. But then priorities shifted, so that is the
latest status.

J?rn

[Jasmine Strong]

[snip]

Did you erase the flash properly? It looks like it's got messed up
somehow.

Re- the other point. You need, afaik, to have at least five empty
erase blocks
before jffs2 will try to write to the flash. This is, yes, half a
mibibit.

Unless this has changed, J?rn?

-J.

[Jörn Engel]

Post by Jasmine Strong

[snip]

Did you erase the flash properly? It looks like it's got messed up
somehow.
Re- the other point. You need, afaik, to have at least five empty
erase blocks
before jffs2 will try to write to the flash. This is, yes, half a
mibibit.
Unless this has changed, J?rn?

No, it hasn't. The changes were started, but never finished.

J?rn

[Paul van Gool]

J?rn and Jasmine,

thanks for the feedback. I'll give it a try.

Paul

Post by Jörn Engel

Post by Jasmine Strong

[snip]

Did you erase the flash properly? It looks like it's got messed up
somehow.
Re- the other point. You need, afaik, to have at least five empty
erase blocks
before jffs2 will try to write to the flash. This is, yes, half a
mibibit.
Unless this has changed, J?rn?

No, it hasn't. The changes were started, but never finished.
J?rn
--
With a PC, I always felt limited by the software available. On Unix,
I am limited only by my knowledge.
-- Peter J. Schoenster

[Paul van Gool]

That worked. Thanks.

Paul

Post by Paul van Gool
J?rn and Jasmine,
thanks for the feedback. I'll give it a try.
Paul

Post by Jörn Engel

Post by Jasmine Strong

[snip]

Did you erase the flash properly? It looks like it's got messed up
somehow.
Re- the other point. You need, afaik, to have at least five empty
erase blocks
before jffs2 will try to write to the flash. This is, yes, half a
mibibit.
Unless this has changed, J?rn?

No, it hasn't. The changes were started, but never finished.
J?rn
--
With a PC, I always felt limited by the software available. On Unix,
I am limited only by my knowledge.
-- Peter J. Schoenster

--
Paul van Gool Rincon Networks
paul.vangool at rinconnetworks.com (805)-705-1442