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* UBI: Bitrot checking
@ 2015-03-29 12:13 ` Richard Weinberger
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 49+ messages in thread
From: Richard Weinberger @ 2015-03-29 12:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-mtd; +Cc: linux-kernel, dedekind1, boris.brezillon

As of today UBI does not offer a way to reliable deal with
data retention and especially read disturb. Read disturb means that
a page X will face bitflips if you read page Y,
Y != X but within the same block, very often.
People who care about data retention often have cron jobs on their
targets which read from time to time whole UBI volumes.
Something like "dd if=/dev/ubi0_0 of=/dev/zero" every week.
If UBI faces bitflips while reading it will schedule the affected PEB
for scrubbing.
The major downside of this approach is that you don't catch all pages.
e.g. UBI EC and VID headers are not always read.
Also UBI internal data structure like volume table are not checked.
These pages are mostly read at attach time. So, if you run a
cron job and reboot often you are on the safe side.
With fastmap the issue is even worse as you don't scan every PEB at
attach time. In fact, I've seen read disturb issues on a customer's
target where he has installed such a cronjob.
But some targets still died due to read disturb issues.
It turned out that only targets with very high uptimes were affected.

To overcome that issue this patch series adds a bitrot checking
mechanism to UBI.
It can be triggered by writing to /sys/class/ubi/ubiX/trigger_bitrot_check.
Then UBI will read every PEB and schedule scrubbing or an appropriated
action if it detects flipped bits. Reading is done within the wear-leveling
thread such that it does not block other IO. I can also think of adding
a new thread to UBI which has a very low priority.
User can then replace the dd command in their cron jobs by a simple
"echo 1 > /sys/class/ubi/ubiX/trigger_bitrot_check".

This series is only part one of two. Part two will add new ioctl()
commands to the UBI device nodes such that we can develop something
like a ubi-healthd.
This daemon will be able to fetch statistics about every known PEB
and can trigger scrubbing. Especially for MLC NAND support more
advanced techniques are needed to deal with data retention. 

[PATCH 1/4] UBI: Introduce ubi_schedule_fm_work()
[PATCH 2/4] UBI: Introduce prepare_erase_work()
[PATCH 3/4] UBI: Introduce in_pq()
[PATCH 4/4] UBI: Implement bitrot checking

Thanks,
//richard

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 49+ messages in thread
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end of thread, other threads:[~2015-04-13 17:18 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 49+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2015-03-29 12:13 UBI: Bitrot checking Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13 ` Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13 ` [PATCH 1/4] UBI: Introduce ubi_schedule_fm_work() Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13   ` Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13 ` [PATCH 2/4] UBI: Introduce prepare_erase_work() Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13   ` Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13 ` [PATCH 3/4] UBI: Introduce in_pq() Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13   ` Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13 ` [PATCH 4/4] UBI: Implement bitrot checking Richard Weinberger
2015-03-29 12:13   ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-02 17:34   ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-02 17:34     ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-02 17:54     ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-02 17:54       ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-02 19:19       ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-02 19:19         ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-08 10:34         ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-08 10:34           ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-08 21:02           ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-08 21:02             ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-08 11:48   ` David Oberhollenzer
2015-04-12 14:12   ` Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 16:09     ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 16:43       ` Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 16:55         ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 20:42           ` [PATCH 4/4] UBI: Implement bitrot checking (linux-mtd Digest, Vol 145, Issue 24) Andrea Scian
2015-04-12 20:42             ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-12 21:01             ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 21:01               ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 21:30               ` Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 21:37                 ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 21:33               ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-12 21:33                 ` Andrea Scian
2015-04-12 21:42                 ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 21:42                   ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-13 17:17                   ` linux-mtd digest emails (was Re: [PATCH 4/4] UBI: Implement bitrot checking) Brian Norris
2015-04-13 17:17                     ` Brian Norris
2015-04-12 15:14   ` [PATCH 4/4] UBI: Implement bitrot checking Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 16:14     ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 16:31       ` Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 16:32         ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 17:01   ` Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 17:09     ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 19:20       ` Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 19:53         ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-12 21:24           ` Boris Brezillon
2015-04-12 21:34             ` Richard Weinberger
2015-04-13  3:36               ` nick
2015-04-12 17:36     ` Richard Weinberger
     [not found] <mailman.40253.1428858576.22890.linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org>
     [not found] <mailman.38750.1427638218.22890.linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org>

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