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And now with cpufreq settings changed to "performance" (the cpufreq defaults starting with kernel 4.0 are somewhat problematic if you're after storage performance since defaults means: ondemand without io_is_busy) f2fs with performance cpufreq governor on the same fast SanDisk "Extreme Pro" TF card: Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP bananapipro 2G 117 99 18831 12 9967 8 675 100 28788 9 2037 75 Latency 70771us 29371us 5436ms 14823us 38940us 20005us Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- bananapipro -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 2446 31 +++++ +++ 12839 87 2762 37 +++++ +++ 6759 82 Latency 782us 847us 3372us 753us 85us 2021us

Some results (tested using "bonnie++ -u nobody" on a Banana Pro with kernel 4.1.1 and default settings): ext4 on slow Intenso TF card: Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP bananapipro 2G 93 95 9875 19 6020 12 650 99 19163 13 38.5 3 Latency 236ms 27892us 6445ms 49584us 134ms 29474us Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- bananapipro -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 2059 20 +++++ +++ 932 10 1661 16 +++++ +++ 605 10 Latency 1632ms 10146us 4828ms 5130ms 10087us 5125ms ext4 on fast SanDisk "Extreme Pro" TF card: Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP bananapipro 2G 96 99 21209 15 10929 8 675 99 28457 8 1737 63 Latency 92653us 18445us 2968ms 15123us 25312us 11677us Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- bananapipro -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 6862 60 +++++ +++ 2151 14 5815 49 +++++ +++ 1545 10 Latency 137ms 2480us 1429ms 670ms 97us 1671ms f2fs on the same fast SanDisk "Extreme Pro" TF card: Version 1.96 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random- Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks-- Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP bananapipro 2G 116 99 20736 22 10241 18 664 99 27806 20 2012 147 Latency 196ms 5023ms 4332ms 41126us 119ms 36883us Version 1.96 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create-------- bananapipro -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP 16 2446 35 +++++ +++ 12308 87 2778 38 +++++ +++ 6677 83 Latency 13341us 1319us 9974us 10020us 154us 10824us

I removed 'errors=remount-ro' from fstab that now looks like: /dev/mmcblk0p2 / f2fs defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 0 /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 0 0 And now I'm in: root@bananapipro:/bonnie# cat /etc/mtab /dev/root / f2fs rw,noatime,nodiratime,background_gc=off,nouser_xattr,noacl,noinline_data,active_logs=6 0 0 devtmpfs /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=514128k,nr_inodes=128532,mode=755 0 0 tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=131072k,mode=755 0 0 tmpfs /run/lock tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k 0 0 proc /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0 tmpfs /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=131072k 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0 /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot ext4 rw,noatime,nodiratime,data=ordered 0 0 tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=1048576k 0 0

Made some progress: I ended up with this boot.cmd: setenv bootargs console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=f2fs sunxi_ve_mem_reserve=0 sunxi_g2d_mem_reserve=0 sunxi_no_mali_mem_reserve sunxi_fb_mem_reserve=16 hdmi.audio=EDID:0 disp.screen0_output_mode=1920x1080p60 panic=10 consoleblank=0 enforcing=0 loglevel=1 #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Boot loader script to boot with different boot methods for old and new kernel #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- if ext4load mmc 0 0x00000000 /.next then # sunxi mainline kernel #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ext4load mmc 0 0x49000000 /dtb/${fdtfile} ext4load mmc 0 0x46000000 /zImage env set fdt_high ffffffff bootz 0x46000000 - 0x49000000 #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- else # sunxi android kernel #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ext4load mmc 0 0x43000000 /boot/script.bin ext4load mmc 0 0x48000000 /boot/zImage bootz 0x48000000 #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- fi And I had to relink the kernel (since pointing to /boot/ does not work when /dev/mmcblk0p1 is / from U-boot's point of view: zImage -> vmlinuz-4.1.1-bananapipro But now I'm stuck at this point: Debian GNU/Linux 7 bananapipro ttyS0 bananapipro login: root Password: You are required to change your password immediately (root enforced) Changing password for root. (current) UNIX password: Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: Authentication token manipulation error Debian GNU/Linux 7 bananapipro ttyS0 bananapipro login: Looks like for whatever reasons / is mounted read-only.

What to do to switch from ext4 to F2FS (one big caveat: Partition/filesystem resizing doesn't work with F2FS so this is only for you if you know the size of your SD card prior to building the image)? I tried the following so far: apt-get install f2fs-tools define size of f2fs partition in compile.sh (eg. for a 4 GB SD card use »SDSIZE="3600"«) adjust »BOOTSIZE=16« in lib/configuration.sh (line 26) replace »mkfs.vfat -n "$IMAGEVOLUME"« with »mkfs.ext4 -q« in lib/deboostrap.sh (line 66) replace »mkfs.ext4 -q« with »mkfs.f2fs« in lib/deboostrap.sh (line 67) add »-tf2fs« to mount option in lib/deboostrap.sh (line 68) comment »shrinking_raw_image "$DEST/output/$VERSION.raw"« out in lib/common.sh (line 463) change fstab entry to »echo "/dev/mmcblk0p2 / f2fs defaults,noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 0" >> $DEST/output/sdcard/etc/fstab« in lib/distributions.sh (line 105) comment »install -m 755 $SRC/lib/scripts/resize2fs $DEST/output/rootfs/$CHOOSEN_ROOTFS/etc/init.d« out in lib/distributions.sh (line 138) avoid partition resizing on first run by removing lines 89-101 in lib/scripts/firstrun But the Banana Pro I test with doesn't boot. I would assume that I have to modify boot.cmd (and exchange /boot/ with /)? Thx

Well, you are fast guys. Thank you very much for enlightening me! Very interesting, thank you. Yep, I thought that. Again, thank you for info. Yes, you are right. It should be pointed out often, but I think that it won't help, since people will save family photos on F2FS on RAID 0 via crappy SATA multiplier and because network transfers will be slow they will overclock with the vision of better speeds. And because "in worst case it will just freeze", they dont care about warnings. And later something will go wrong and they will lose all family photos (joking, but lets say "some backups"), because it will not be possible to recover them. It is fight with wind mills. I think that everyone has to learn the hard way. I would not even expect this, very interesting! I will re-check myself later. It is possible that I made mistake last night, maybe I did not check if frequencies were changed, I do not remember, I was very tired. :-/ Thank you again for your time. All questions answered and I am smarter again.

All A20 based boards seem to be limited to approx. 16,x MB/s when reading/writing sequentially from/to SD card. What really makes a difference when you're frequently accessing files on the SD card will be random I/O. And there some SD cards outperforman others easily and sequential writes (or class xy) do not count any more. In my eyes it depends whether you use an SSD or a HDD on the SATA port. In case it's a spinning disk there might be many situations where it's better to keep the rootfs on SD card (and using Wheezy and Igor's ramlog configuration to minimize writes to SD card) to let the HDD spin down when idle after longer periods. When you're using an SSD IMO it's a no-brainer to move the rootfs to SSD. On my TODO list are experiments with F2FS on SD card (only possible using a different partition scheme than the one Igor's using now since u-boot can not directly read from F2FS at the moment). That might both decrease wear-out of the SD card and increase (random) performance. But I won't have the time to test this the next weeks/months. But if I'm done I'll report back.