From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from protonic.prtnl (protonic.xs4all.nl [213.84.116.84]) by ozlabs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 44565679FB for ; Fri, 3 Mar 2006 03:06:14 +1100 (EST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by protonic.prtnl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3819829ECA for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2006 17:04:35 +0100 (CET) Received: from protonic.prtnl ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (protonic [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 25288-01 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2006 17:04:34 +0100 (CET) Received: from archvile (unknown [192.168.1.153]) by protonic.prtnl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48F2B29EC9 for ; Thu, 2 Mar 2006 17:04:34 +0100 (CET) From: David Jander To: "linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs.org" Subject: How to quickly write cleanmarkers to jffs2 partitions? Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 17:06:14 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message-Id: <200603021706.14618.david.jander@protonic.nl> List-Id: Linux on Embedded PowerPC Developers Mail List List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Hi, I was wondering if there is a trick or common technique I am ignoring to make this more efficient: This is for a 2.4 kernel based system. In production we use either u-boot or a NFS mounted linux system to erase flash and write jffs2 partitions to it. The jffs2 images are small (not padded to full partition size to save programming time), but the partitions are rather big (12 Mbyte in one case). Problem is that when booting for the first time, one has to wait several minutes (during which the system is more or less useless and busy) to get all cleanmarkers written to flash by the jffs2 gc thread. This huge delay is rather unacceptable for production, so we are looking for a work-around. One option would be to make jffs2 images that are padded to full partition size, but that also isn't very efficient, considering the image is only about 100k in beginning and the partition is 12 Mbyte in size. That would take a lot of time programming flash (less time than having the jffs2 driver fix this nevertheless). Another option is making a little program that writes cleanmarkers in every eraseblock starting from the first completely empty one in a partition before mounting that partition for the very first time after flashing. Since this seems to me like a common situation, I'd like to know if anybody knows about a better solution, or if anybody has already dealt with this before. Greetings, -- David Jander Protonic Holland. tel.: +31 (0) 229 212928 fax.: +31 (0) 229 210930 Factorij 36 / 1689 AL Zwaag