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On 29/03/2010 23:42, David Relson wrote: |
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> G'day, |
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> |
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> I'm porting the software for an embedded medical device from DOS to |
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> Linux and am wondering which file systems are appropriate and which are |
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> not. The device's mass storage is a Disk-on-Module solid state flash |
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> drive. Data is presently written at approx 100 bytes every 30 seconds |
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> but that might change to 100 bytes every second. The device has a |
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> watchdog (recently activated) and during today's session it was |
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> triggered and wiped out my file system. |
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> |
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> Anybody have recommendations on which file system to use and the |
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> appropriate settings? |
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> |
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> Anybody have suggested readings so I can educate myself? |
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> |
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|
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In addition to what everyone else has already noted you really need to |
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state your tradeoff between lifetime of the flash cards and minimising |
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the risk of loosing data. Fundamentally you can buffer the data and |
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write less frequently to the device (your device has a finite number of |
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writes before it perishes), or you can write more frequently, hence less |
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risk of dataloss |
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|
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Any journal'ed fs is *supposed* to be reasonably robust against disk |
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crashes during writes, but often there are layered levels of safety, eg |
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ext3 has three write modes depending how you want to trade safety for |
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speed (hint newest defaults are probably not optimal if your data is |
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very precious) |
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|
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I think one of the issues you will face is that whilst a journaling fs |
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with appropriate options should be very safe against you flipping the |
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power off whenever you feel like, long term your failure mode with flash |
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appears to be random files disappearing and getting corrupted - the wear |
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levelling appears to mean that unrelated files can get trashed as the |
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flash shuffles data around to maximise wear levels until the card |
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basically pretty much gives up? I haven't experienced this yet... |
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|
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I guess just plan ahead for this. |
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|
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Good luck |
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|
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Ed W |