3. SQUASHFS FILESYSTEM DESIGN
-----------------------------
-A squashfs filesystem consists of a maximum of eight parts, packed together on a byte
-alignment:
+A squashfs filesystem consists of a maximum of nine parts, packed together on a
+byte alignment:
---------------
| superblock |
|---------------|
+ | compression |
+ | options |
+ |---------------|
| datablocks |
| & fragments |
|---------------|
written the completed inode, directory, fragment, export and uid/gid lookup
tables are written.
-3.1 Inodes
+3.1 Compression options
+-----------------------
+
+Compressors can optionally support compression specific options (e.g.
+dictionary size). If non-default compression options have been used, then
+these are stored here.
+
+3.2 Inodes
----------
Metadata (inodes and directories) are compressed in 8Kbyte blocks. Each
regular files and directories, and extended types where extra
information has to be stored.
-3.2 Directories
+3.3 Directories
---------------
Like inodes, directories are packed into compressed metadata blocks, stored
This scheme has the advantage that it doesn't require extra memory overhead
and doesn't require much extra storage on disk.
-3.3 File data
+3.4 File data
-------------
Regular files consist of a sequence of contiguous compressed blocks, and/or a
The index cache is designed to be memory efficient, and by default uses
16 KiB.
-3.4 Fragment lookup table
+3.5 Fragment lookup table
-------------------------
Regular files can contain a fragment index which is mapped to a fragment
speed of access (and because it is small) is read at mount time and cached
in memory.
-3.5 Uid/gid lookup table
+3.6 Uid/gid lookup table
------------------------
For space efficiency regular files store uid and gid indexes, which are
locate these. This second index table for speed of access (and because it
is small) is read at mount time and cached in memory.
-3.6 Export table
+3.7 Export table
----------------
To enable Squashfs filesystems to be exportable (via NFS etc.) filesystems
used to locate these. This second index table for speed of access (and because
it is small) is read at mount time and cached in memory.
-3.7 Xattr table
+3.8 Xattr table
---------------
The xattr table contains extended attributes for each inode. The xattrs