Re: [PATCH] jffs2: implement mount option to configure endianness

From: Nikunj Kela (nkela)
Date: Wed Nov 07 2018 - 13:04:43 EST


On 11/7/18, 1:05 AM, "David Woodhouse" <dwmw2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 2018-11-06 at 13:49 -0800, Nikunj Kela wrote:
>> This patch allows the endianness of the JFSS2 filesystem to be
>> specified by mount option 'force_endian=big|little|native'. If
>> endianness is not specified, it defaults to 'native' endianness
>> thus retaining the existing behavior.
>>
>> Some architectures benefit from having a single known endianness
>> of JFFS2 filesystem (for data, not executables) independent of the
>> endianness of the processor (ARM processors can be switched to either
>> endianness at run-time).
>>
>> We have boards that are shipped with BE jffs2 and BE kernel. We are
>> now migrating to LE kernel. This mount option helps us in mounting
>> BE jffs2 on LE kernel.

>Thanks for implementing this. JFFS2 has often been very sensitive to
>performance at mount time â I'd love to see how this affects the time
>taken to mount a large file system. If it's significant, we may want a
>config option to make this conditional?
>
>Also, perhaps we should improve the behaviour when the user
>accidentally tries to mount a wrong-endian file system. If we can't
>just make it autodetect and use the "correct" endianness, perhaps we
>should at least printk a message suggesting that the user try again
>with the other endianness?

I had tried to use configs to start with via the following patch however I was advised to have a mount option:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2018-November/085126.html

Thanks,
-Nikunj