Plan 9 from Bell Labs’s /usr/web/sources/plan9/sys/src/cmd/venti/words/notes

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Distributed under the MIT License.
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all data is big-endian on disk.

arena layout:

ArenaPart (first at offset PartBlank = 256kB in the disk file)
	magic[4] 0xA9E4A5E7
	version[4] 3
	blockSize[4]
	arenaBase[4] offset of first ArenaHead structure in the disk file

the ArenaMap starts at the first block at offset >= PartBlank+512 bytes.
it is a sequence of text lines
/*
 * amap: n '\n' amapelem * n
 * n: u32int
 * amapelem: name '\t' astart '\t' asize '\n'
 * astart, asize: u64int
 */

the astart and astop are byte offsets in the disk file.
they are the offsets to the ArenaHead and the end of the Arena block.

ArenaHead 
[base points here in the C code]
size bytes
	Clumps
	ClumpInfo blocks
Arena

Arena
	magic[4] 0xF2A14EAD
	version[4] 4
	name[64]
	clumps[4]
	cclumps[4]
	ctime[4]
	wtime[4]
	used[8]
	uncsize[8]
	sealed[1]
	optional score[20]

once sealed, the sha1 hash of every block from the
ArenaHead to the Arena is checksummed, as though
the final score in Arena were the zeroScore.  strangely,
the tail of the Arena block (the last one) is not included in the checksum
(i.e., the unused data after the score).

clumpMax = blocksize/ClumpInfoSize = blocksize/25
dirsize = ((clumps/clumpMax)+1) * blocksize
want used+dirsize <= size
want cclumps <= clumps
want uncsize+clumps*ClumpSize+blocksize < used
want ctime <= wtime

clump info is stored packed into blocks in order.
clump info moves forward through a block but the
blocks themselves move backwards.  so if cm=clumpMax
and there are two blocks worth of clumpinfo, the blocks
look like;

	[cm..2*cm-1] [0..cm-1] [Arena]

with the blocks pushed right up against the Arena trailer.

ArenaHead
	magic[4] 0xD15C4EAD
	version[4] = Arena.version
	name[64]
	blockSize[4]
	size[8]

Clump
	magic[4] 0xD15CB10C (0 for an unused clump)
	type[1]
	size[2]
	uncsize[2]
	score[20]
	encoding[1] raw=1, compress=2
	creator[4]
	time[4]

ClumpInfo
	type[1]
	size[2]
	uncsize[2]
	score[20]

the arenas are mapped into a single address space corresponding
to the index that brings them together.  if each arena has 100M bytes
excluding the headers and there are 4 arenas, then there's 400M of
index address space between them.  index address space starts at 1M
instead of 0, so the index addresses assigned to the first arena are
1M up to 101M, then 101M to 201M, etc.

of course, the assignment of addresses has nothing to do with the index,
but that's what they're called.


the index is split into index sections, which are put on different disks
to get parallelism of disk heads.  each index section holds some number
of hash buckets, each in its own disk block.  collectively the index sections
hold ix->buckets between them. 

the top 32-bits of the score is used to assign scores to buckets.
div = ceil(2³² / ix->buckets) is the amount of 32-bit score space per bucket.

to look up a block, take the top 32 bits of score and divide by div
to get the bucket number.  then look through the index section headers
to figure out which index section has that bucket.

then load that block from the index section.  it's an IBucket.

the IBucket has ib.n IEntry structures in it, sorted by score and then by type.
do the lookup and get an IEntry.  the ia.addr will be a logical address
that you then use to get the 

ISect
	magic[4] 0xD15C5EC7
	version[4]
	name[64]
	index[64]
	blockSize[4]
	blockBase[4]	address in partition where bucket blocks start
	blocks[4]
	start[4]
	stop[4]	stop - start <= blocks, but not necessarily ==

IEntry
	score[20]
	wtime[4]
	train[2]
	ia.addr[8]		index address (see note above)
	ia.size[2]		size of uncompressed block data
	ia.type[1]
	ia.blocks[1]	number of blocks of clump on disk

IBucket
	n[2]
	next[4]	not sure; either 0 or inside [start,stop) for the ISect
	data[n*IEntrySize]

final piece: all the disk partitions start with PartBlank=256kB of unused disk
(presumably to avoid problems with boot sectors and layout tables
and the like).

actually the last 8k of the 256k (that is, at offset 248kB) can hold
a venti config file to help during bootstrap of the venti file server.


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