How to sync a dos file system externally

[Cliff Geschke]

It turns out that this bug was fixed last year

 

author    Sebastian Huber                 2017-09-06 12:30:00 (UTC)

committer              Sebastian Huber                 2017-09-06 12:40:38 (UTC)

dosfs: Fix fat_file_update()

Do not update the non-existant meta-data of the root directory.

Close #2944.

 

Apparently I have been working with an old snapshot of dosfs.  I hate it when
that happens!

 

Sorry for not checking before posting a question.

 

Cliff

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Johns

Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2018 6:32 PM
To: Cliff Geschke; 
Subject: Re: How to sync a dos file system externally

 

On 03/10/2018 04:56, Cliff Geschke wrote:

> I have implemented a dos file system (msdos_*) on a flash device.

 

Is the flash device a chip you have direct access too? The reason I ask is if

possible using JFFS2 (a journaling file system) or even YAFFS (commercial

license maybe needed) is a better solution.

 

> Because it is possible for the user to power down the system unexpectedly, I

> want to sync the file system to the flash device after a 3 second idle time. 

> How do I externally force a sync on msdos from another thread?

 

The following test ...

 

 https://git.rtems.org/rtems/tree/testsuites/fstests/fsdosfssync01/init.c

 

shows how to purge a disk at the block layer. Wrap something like this is the

way to purge the cache.

 

> A related problem is that I use FTP (ftpd.c) to externally read/write files on

> the msdos formatted flash.  I have the idle timeout set to 3 minutes for the
FTP

> connection.  After 3 minutes, ftpd issues a chdir("/") which eventually calls

> msdos_free_node_info() that calls fat_file_close() and may try to write out
data

> to the flash.  This is a problem because if the power is turned off at that
time

> the flash is corrupted.

> 

> So whatever method I use to sync msdos needs to update and write out the fat
so

> that the subsequent msdos_free_node_info() does nothing.

 

I should point out there is a finite chance the disk can still become corrupted.

How small the window becomes depends on the system design, for example how often

the disk is updated, power supply power down storage vs media write time,

non-bricking read-only partitions, etc.

 

I suspect triggering a timer to purge the cache as shown above is no different

to lowering the `swapout` task's period. It has been a while since I looked over

this code. The libblock cache implements separate threads to "sync" the cache to

the media on a periodic basis. The cache's configuration lets you set the

period. The values are documented here:

 

https://docs.rtems.org/doxygen/branches/master/group__rtems__bdbuf.html#define-m
embers

 

This however raises a difficult question which is documented in the code in a

comment:

 

 https://git.rtems.org/rtems/tree/cpukit/libblock/src/bdbuf.c#n1013

 

It is difficult when using a timer to know if the purge is 100% safe. If you can

arrange the purge call to happen after you know the update has finished it

lowers the chance the disk maybe become corrupted.

 

Chris

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.rtems.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20181005/4ea05036/attachment.html>