linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 04/10] AXFS: axfs

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Message-Id: <200808221200.26052.arnd@arndb.de>
Date:	Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:00:25 +0200
From:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
To:	Phillip Lougher <phillip@...gher.demon.co.uk>
Cc:	jaredeh@...il.com, Linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-embedded@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mtd <linux-mtd@...ts.infradead.org>,
	Jörn Engel <joern@...fs.org>,
	tim.bird@...sony.com, cotte@...ibm.com, nickpiggin@...oo.com.au
Subject: Re: [PATCH 04/10] AXFS: axfs_inode.c

On Friday 22 August 2008, Phillip Lougher wrote:
> > 
> > This looks very nice, but could use some comments about how the data is
> > actually stored on disk. It took me some time to figure out that it actually
> > allows to do tail merging into compressed blocks, which I was about to suggest
> > you implement ;-). Cramfs doesn't have them, and I found that they are the
> > main reason why squashfs compresses better than cramfs, besides the default
> > block size, which you can change on either one.
> 
> Squashfs has much larger block sizes than cramfs (last time I looked it 
> was limited to 4K blocks), and it compresses the metadata which helps to 
> get better compression.  But tail merging (fragments in Squashfs 
> terminology) is obviously a major reason why Squashfs gets good compression.

The *default* block size in cramfs is smaller than in squashfs, but they both
have user selectable block sizes. I found the impact of compressed metadata
to be almost zero. I hacked up a mksquashfs to avoid tail merging, and found
that the image size for squashfs and cramfs is practically identical if you
use the same block size and no tail merging.

> The AXFS code is rather obscure but it doesn't look to me that it does 
> tail merging.  The following code wouldn't work if the block in question 
> was a tail contained in a larger block.  It assumes the block extends to 
> the end of the compressed block (cblk_size - cnode_offset).

yes, I thought the same thing when I first read that code, and was about
to send a lengthy reply about how it should be changed when I saw that
it already does exactly that ;-).

	Arnd <><
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