Reduced SquashFS Memory Use With The Linux 6.14 Kernel, More NILFS2 Fixes

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 27 January 2025 at 06:32 AM EST. 2 Comments

In addition to all of the exciting "MM" changes for Linux 6.14 that were submitted by Andrew Morton's pull request, he also sent out the set of "non-MM" updates for the Linux 6.14 merge window.

Arguably most notable with the non-MM updates for Linux 6.14 are lowering the memory use for those using the SquashFS file-system. Reduced memory usage for the SquashFS file-system will help those using Live DVD/USB Linux distributions and similar uses for this compressed read-only file system. Phillip Lougher explained in the patch to lower SquashFS memory use by not allocating the read_page cache if SQUASHFS_FILE_DIRECT is enabled:

"If Squashfs has been configured to directly read datablocks into the page cache (SQUASHFS_FILE_DIRECT), then the read_page cache is unnecessary.
...
This reduces the amount of memory used when mounting a filesystem by block_size * maximum number of threads."

There are also fixes to the NILFS2 file-system with Linux 6.14, OCFS2 has been converted to use folios, and other minor changes as part of this non-MM pull request.

See the non-MM pull for the full list of feature changes now merged for the Linux 6.14 kernel.