Documentation: lzo: document part of the encoding

Add a complete description of the LZO format as processed by the
decompressor. I have not found a public specification of this format
hence this analysis, which will be used to better understand the code.

Cc: Willem Pinckaers <willem@lekkertech.net>
Cc: "Don A. Bailey" <donb@securitymouse.com>
Cc: stable <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

1 files changed, 164 insertions, 0 deletions

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+
+LZO stream format as understood by Linux's LZO decompressor
+===========================================================
+
+Introduction
+
+  This is not a specification. No specification seems to be publicly available
+  for the LZO stream format. This document describes what input format the LZO
+  decompressor as implemented in the Linux kernel understands. The file subject
+  of this analysis is lib/lzo/lzo1x_decompress_safe.c. No analysis was made on
+  the compressor nor on any other implementations though it seems likely that
+  the format matches the standard one. The purpose of this document is to
+  better understand what the code does in order to propose more efficient fixes
+  for future bug reports.
+
+Description
+
+  The stream is composed of a series of instructions, operands, and data. The
+  instructions consist in a few bits representing an opcode, and bits forming
+  the operands for the instruction, whose size and position depend on the
+  opcode and on the number of literals copied by previous instruction. The
+  operands are used to indicate :
+
+    - a distance when copying data from the dictionary (past output buffer)
+    - a length (number of bytes to copy from dictionary)
+    - the number of literals to copy, which is retained in variable "state"
+      as a piece of information for next instructions.
+
+  Optionally depending on the opcode and operands, extra data may follow. These
+  extra data can be a complement for the operand (eg: a length or a distance
+  encoded on larger values), or a literal to be copied to the output buffer.
+
+  The first byte of the block follows a different encoding from other bytes, it
+  seems to be optimized for literal use only, since there is no dictionary yet
+  prior to that byte.
+
+  Lengths are always encoded on a variable size starting with a small number
+  of bits in the operand. If the number of bits isn't enough to represent the
+  length, up to 255 may be added in increments by consuming more bytes with a
+  rate of at most 255 per extra byte (thus the compression ratio cannot exceed
+  around 255:1). The variable length encoding using #bits is always the same :
+
+       length = byte & ((1 << #bits) - 1)
+       if (!length) {
+               length = ((1 << #bits) - 1)
+               length += 255*(number of zero bytes)
+               length += first-non-zero-byte
+       }
+       length += constant (generally 2 or 3)
+
+  For references to the dictionary, distances are relative to the output
+  pointer. Distances are encoded using very few bits belonging to certain
+  ranges, resulting in multiple copy instructions using different encodings.
+  Certain encodings involve one extra byte, others involve two extra bytes
+  forming a little-endian 16-bit quantity (marked LE16 below).
+
+  After any instruction except the large literal copy, 0, 1, 2 or 3 literals
+  are copied before starting the next instruction. The number of literals that
+  were copied may change the meaning and behaviour of the next instruction. In
+  practice, only one instruction needs to know whether 0, less than 4, or more
+  literals were copied. This is the information stored in the <state> variable
+  in this implementation. This number of immediate literals to be copied is
+  generally encoded in the last two bits of the instruction but may also be
+  taken from the last two bits of an extra operand (eg: distance).
+
+  End of stream is declared when a block copy of distance 0 is seen. Only one
+  instruction may encode this distance (0001HLLL), it takes one LE16 operand
+  for the distance, thus requiring 3 bytes.
+
+  IMPORTANT NOTE : in the code some length checks are missing because certain
+  instructions are called under the assumption that a certain number of bytes
+  follow because it has already been garanteed before parsing the instructions.
+  They just have to "refill" this credit if they consume extra bytes. This is
+  an implementation design choice independant on the algorithm or encoding.
+
+Byte sequences
+
+  First byte encoding :
+
+      0..17   : follow regular instruction encoding, see below. It is worth
+                noting that codes 16 and 17 will represent a block copy from
+                the dictionary which is empty, and that they will always be
+                invalid at this place.
+
+      18..21  : copy 0..3 literals
+                state = (byte - 17) = 0..3  [ copy <state> literals ]
+                skip byte
+
+      22..255 : copy literal string
+                length = (byte - 17) = 4..238
+                state = 4 [ don't copy extra literals ]
+                skip byte
+
+  Instruction encoding :
+
+      0 0 0 0 X X X X  (0..15)
+        Depends on the number of literals copied by the last instruction.
+        If last instruction did not copy any literal (state == 0), this
+        encoding will be a copy of 4 or more literal, and must be interpreted
+        like this :
+
+           0 0 0 0 L L L L  (0..15)  : copy long literal string
+           length = 3 + (L ?: 15 + (zero_bytes * 255) + non_zero_byte)
+           state = 4  (no extra literals are copied)
+
+        If last instruction used to copy between 1 to 3 literals (encoded in
+        the instruction's opcode or distance), the instruction is a copy of a
+        2-byte block from the dictionary within a 1kB distance. It is worth
+        noting that this instruction provides little savings since it uses 2
+        bytes to encode a copy of 2 other bytes but it encodes the number of
+        following literals for free. It must be interpreted like this :
+
+           0 0 0 0 D D S S  (0..15)  : copy 2 bytes from <= 1kB distance
+           length = 2
+           state = S (copy S literals after this block)
+         Always followed by exactly one byte : H H H H H H H H
+           distance = (H << 2) + D + 1
+
+        If last instruction used to copy 4 or more literals (as detected by
+        state == 4), the instruction becomes a copy of a 3-byte block from the
+        dictionary from a 2..3kB distance, and must be interpreted like this :
+
+           0 0 0 0 D D S S  (0..15)  : copy 3 bytes from 2..3 kB distance
+           length = 3
+           state = S (copy S literals after this block)
+         Always followed by exactly one byte : H H H H H H H H
+           distance = (H << 2) + D + 2049
+
+      0 0 0 1 H L L L  (16..31)
+           Copy of a block within 16..48kB distance (preferably less than 10B)
+           length = 2 + (L ?: 7 + (zero_bytes * 255) + non_zero_byte)
+        Always followed by exactly one LE16 :  D D D D D D D D : D D D D D D S S
+           distance = 16384 + (H << 14) + D
+           state = S (copy S literals after this block)
+           End of stream is reached if distance == 16384
+
+      0 0 1 L L L L L  (32..63)
+           Copy of small block within 16kB distance (preferably less than 34B)
+           length = 2 + (L ?: 31 + (zero_bytes * 255) + non_zero_byte)
+        Always followed by exactly one LE16 :  D D D D D D D D : D D D D D D S S
+           distance = D + 1
+           state = S (copy S literals after this block)
+
+      0 1 L D D D S S  (64..127)
+           Copy 3-4 bytes from block within 2kB distance
+           state = S (copy S literals after this block)
+           length = 3 + L
+         Always followed by exactly one byte : H H H H H H H H
+           distance = (H << 3) + D + 1
+
+      1 L L D D D S S  (128..255)
+           Copy 5-8 bytes from block within 2kB distance
+           state = S (copy S literals after this block)
+           length = 5 + L
+         Always followed by exactly one byte : H H H H H H H H
+           distance = (H << 3) + D + 1
+
+Authors
+
+  This document was written by Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> on 2014/07/19 during an
+  analysis of the decompression code available in Linux 3.16-rc5. The code is
+  tricky, it is possible that this document contains mistakes or that a few
+  corner cases were overlooked. In any case, please report any doubt, fix, or
+  proposed updates to the author(s) so that the document can be updated.