UBI: R/O block driver on top of UBI volumes

This commit introduces read-only block device emulation on top of UBI volumes.

Given UBI takes care of wear leveling and bad block management it's possible
to add a thin layer to enable block device access to UBI volumes.
This allows to use a block-oriented filesystem on a flash device.

The UBI block devices are meant to be used in conjunction with any
regular, block-oriented file system (e.g. ext4), although it's primarily
targeted at read-only file systems, such as squashfs.

Block devices are created upon user request through new ioctls:
UBI_IOCVOLATTBLK to attach and UBI_IOCVOLDETBLK to detach.
Also, a new UBI module parameter is added 'ubi.block'. This parameter is
needed in order to attach a block device on boot-up time, allowing to
mount the rootfs on a ubiblock device.
For instance, you could have these kernel parameters:

  ubi.mtd=5 ubi.block=0,0 root=/dev/ubiblock0_0

Or, if you compile ubi as a module:

  $ modprobe ubi mtd=/dev/mtd5 block=/dev/ubi0_0

Artem: amend commentaries and massage the patch a little bit.

Signed-off-by: Ezequiel Garcia <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <[email protected]>

Author: ezequielgarcia

drivers/mtd/ubi/Kconfig

@@ -87,4 +87,19 @@ config MTD_UBI_GLUEBI
 	   work on top of UBI. Do not enable this unless you use legacy
 	   software.
 
+config MTD_UBI_BLOCK
+	bool "Read-only block devices on top of UBI volumes"
+	default n
+	help
+	   This option enables read-only UBI block devices support. UBI block
+	   devices will be layered on top of UBI volumes, which means that the
+	   UBI driver will transparently handle things like bad eraseblocks and
+	   bit-flips. You can put any block-oriented file system on top of UBI
+	   volumes in read-only mode (e.g., ext4), but it is probably most
+	   practical for read-only file systems, like squashfs.
+
+	   When selected, this feature will be built in the UBI driver.
+
+	   If in doubt, say "N".
+
 endif # MTD_UBI

drivers/mtd/ubi/Makefile

@@ -3,5 +3,6 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_MTD_UBI) += ubi.o
 ubi-y += vtbl.o vmt.o upd.o build.o cdev.o kapi.o eba.o io.o wl.o attach.o
 ubi-y += misc.o debug.o
 ubi-$(CONFIG_MTD_UBI_FASTMAP) += fastmap.o
+ubi-$(CONFIG_MTD_UBI_BLOCK) += block.o
 
 obj-$(CONFIG_MTD_UBI_GLUEBI) += gluebi.o