Memory Technology Device (MTD) Subsystem for Linux

Design aims

We're working on a generic Linux subsystem for memory devices, especially Flash devices.

The aim of the system is to make it simple to provide a driver for new hardware, by providing a generic interface between the hardware drivers and the upper layers of the system.

Hardware drivers need to know nothing about the storage formats used, such as FTL, FFS2, etc., but will only need to provide simple routines for read, write and erase. Presentation of the device's contents to the user in an appropriate form will be handled by the upper layers of the system.


Mailing list

There is a majordomo-managed mailing list: lists-mtd@lists.infradead.org - Full archives are available at http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/. Now that I've finally managed to get Mailman to display them properly, this includes all the previous messages from before the changeover to Mailman.

To subscribe, go here or send "subscribe" in the body of a mail to linux-mtd-request@lists.infradead.org

NOTE: DO NOT SEND YOUR SUBSCRIPTION REQUEST TO THE LIST ITSELF.
SEND IT TO linux-mtd-request@lists.infradead.org AS THE ABOVE SAYS.


Download and CVS

Very occasionally, I make snapshot releases. Now that the MTD code is in the 2.4 kernel, it's become even rarer. Your best option is to obtain the latest code from CVS, by following the instructions below. We do break the CVS build occasionally, but we're also fairly good at fixing it quickly when we do so.

Anonymous CVS access is available, and full CVS access may also be granted to developers on request.

cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.infradead.org:/home/cvs login (password: anoncvs)
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.infradead.org:/home/cvs co mtd
    

If you can't access anoncvs for some reason, daily snapshots are also available at ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/people/dwmw2/mtd/cvs/


Documentation

There is now some MTD API documentation available. It's a little out of date - the API has been evolving over the last few months as we encounter strange pieces of hardware that we hadn't anticipated, and occasionally when I'd just overlooked something blatantly obvious. Volunteers to update the docs are welcome.

13th Feb 2001: A mtd-jffs-HOWTO is now also available under CVS. Not all topics are covered yet, but it's a start.


Booting

You can now replace the firmware on the DiskOnChip 2000, and possibly also the DiskOnChip Millennium, with a version of GNU Grub which runs directly from the flash.

The patches to make Grub aware of the DiskOnChip and the NFTL format used on it, along with a first-stage loader to load Grub itself into memory from the DiskOnChip, are in the CVS repository.


TODO

I'm impressed. The TODO list is getting much shorter.


Changelog


MTD User modules

These are the modules which provide interfaces that can be used directly from userspace. The user modules currently planned include:


MTD hardware device drivers

These provide physical access to memory devices, and are not used directly - they are accessed through the user modules above.


David Woodhouse
$Id: index.html,v 1.23 2001/08/12 17:04:52 dwmw2 Exp $