Update kernel and use F2FS for the root partition

Der Vogel

Hi,
First, I wonder if the next version of RuneAudio will include a more recent version of the Linux kernel, which should recognize more devices among other improvement.
Secondly, as a user of the Raspberry Pi version of RuneAudio, I tried to format the root file system of RuneAudio with F2FS, following this tutorial. F2FS is "the new file system designed by Samsung [which] improves the performance and durability of flash memories".
Here the steps:

Update Archlinux:

pacman -Syu

Follow this tutorial, but resize the root partition to 2.4 Gb. I realized this after a first attempt. Not sure how many space is needed exactly.
Optionally add a partition on your SDCard to put music. Modify /etc/fstab to mount in /mnt/MPD/Directory-of-your-choice.

ACX

Hi Der Vogel, in the upcoming 0.3 we are going to use a custom recompiled version of this kernel:

Linux studio 3.12.19-2-ARCH #1 PREEMPT Thu May 22 15:35:00 UTC 2014 armv6l GNU/Linux

About F2FS: we already considered the option of switching file system and that seems to us the way to go, but we hadn't the time to test it deeply yet. Could you give us your feedback after a reasonable time of testing?

Der Vogel

Hi there, it is working very well until now, with a daily use and updating ArchLinux time to time.

ACX

Der Vogel wroteHi there, it is working very well until now, with a daily use and updating ArchLinux time to time.

Good to hear, thank you for the feedback.

Der Vogel

I will test it also on the next version of RuneAudio. I still have to check how big should be the root partition to support pacman's caching as a side effect of regular updates of the ArchLinux system.

Midnight

Is F2FS really intended for SD cards and eMMC devices? The description sound like a file system for bare NAND devices (like JFFS2, YAFFS, UBIFS).
AFAIK SD cards and eMMC devices already have a built-in controller, that does the wear levelling for the NAND flash and bad block detection/marking.

Midnight

Well, I've found this myself

Unlike jffs2 and logfs, f2fs is not targeted at raw flash devices, but rather at the specific hardware that is commonly available to consumers — SSDs, eMMC, SD cards, and other flash storage with an FTL (flash translation layer) already built in. It seems that as hardware gets smarter, we need to make even more clever software to manage that "smartness". Does this sound like parenting to anyone else?

http://lwn.net/Articles/518988/

EDIT:

Der Vogel wroteSecondly, as a user of the Raspberry Pi version of RuneAudio, I tried to format the root file system of RuneAudio with F2FS, following this tutorial. F2FS is "the new file system designed by Samsung [which] improves the performance and durability of flash memories".

While reading the beginning of the article it seems to me that F2FS improves the performance, but not the durability of SD/eMMC memories, e.g. it does no wear levelling (which is left to the controller).

Seems like a "nice to have" but nothing that is really needed in Runeaudio so far