78 lines
3.3 KiB
ReStructuredText
78 lines
3.3 KiB
ReStructuredText
Data and metadata are checksummed by default, the checksum is calculated before
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write and verified after reading the blocks from devices. The whole metadata
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block has a checksum stored inline in the b-tree node header, each data block
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has a detached checksum stored in the checksum tree.
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There are several checksum algorithms supported. The default and backward
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compatible is *crc32c*. Since kernel 5.5 there are three more with different
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characteristics and trade-offs regarding speed and strength. The following list
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may help you to decide which one to select.
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CRC32C (32bit digest)
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default, best backward compatibility, very fast, modern CPUs have
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instruction-level support, not collision-resistant but still good error
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detection capabilities
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XXHASH (64bit digest)
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can be used as CRC32C successor, very fast, optimized for modern CPUs utilizing
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instruction pipelining, good collision resistance and error detection
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SHA256 (256bit digest)
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a cryptographic-strength hash, relatively slow but with possible CPU
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instruction acceleration or specialized hardware cards, FIPS certified and
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in wide use
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BLAKE2b (256bit digest)
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a cryptographic-strength hash, relatively fast with possible CPU acceleration
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using SIMD extensions, not standardized but based on BLAKE which was a SHA3
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finalist, in wide use, the algorithm used is BLAKE2b-256 that's optimized for
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64bit platforms
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The *digest size* affects overall size of data block checksums stored in the
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filesystem. The metadata blocks have a fixed area up to 256 bits (32 bytes), so
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there's no increase. Each data block has a separate checksum stored, with
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additional overhead of the b-tree leaves.
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Approximate relative performance of the algorithms, measured against CRC32C
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using reference software implementations on a 3.5GHz intel CPU:
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======== ============ ======= ================
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Digest Cycles/4KiB Ratio Implementation
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======== ============ ======= ================
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CRC32C 1700 1.00 CPU instruction
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XXHASH 2500 1.44 reference impl.
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SHA256 105000 61 reference impl.
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SHA256 36000 21 libgcrypt/AVX2
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SHA256 63000 37 libsodium/AVX2
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BLAKE2b 22000 13 reference impl.
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BLAKE2b 19000 11 libgcrypt/AVX2
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BLAKE2b 19000 11 libsodium/AVX2
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======== ============ ======= ================
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Many kernels are configured with SHA256 as built-in and not as a module.
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The accelerated versions are however provided by the modules and must be loaded
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explicitly (**modprobe sha256**) before mounting the filesystem to make use of
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them. You can check in */sys/fs/btrfs/FSID/checksum* which one is used. If you
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see *sha256-generic*, then you may want to unmount and mount the filesystem
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again, changing that on a mounted filesystem is not possible.
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Check the file */proc/crypto*, when the implementation is built-in, you'd find
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.. code-block:: none
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name : sha256
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driver : sha256-generic
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module : kernel
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priority : 100
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...
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while accelerated implementation is e.g.
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.. code-block:: none
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name : sha256
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driver : sha256-avx2
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module : sha256_ssse3
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priority : 170
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...
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