Is SPIFFS Upload Broken... Again?

Using Arduino Programming Questions
1

I've been using ESP8266 v2.6.3 on NODEMCU for quite a while. Today I had to update some of the files in the SPIFFS partition. I now find I can open the files, but all reads return all data as 0xff. It is not the board, as I've tried several. This is the first time in perhaps months I have tried to update the files. I updated to v2.7.1, but get the exact same result.

I seem to recall a previous version, several months ago, that also had an upload problem, and required manually installing the upload program separately from the board package, but I don't recall where I found that, or how to do it again.

I LOVE the NODEMCU, but I am CONSTANTLY running into bugs in the board packages. I've lost count of how many different versions I've had to run over the last couple of years, to get around various bugs.

Anyone know what the problem is?

Regards,
Ray L.

2

Does this have something to do with SPIFFS being deprecated, and replaced by LittleFS? Is there a migration document that describes how to "upgrade" from SPIFFS to LittleFS?

Regards,
Ray L.

3

This is odd.... I can create files, but the file upload, using SPIFFS or LittleFS, does not work. The files are there, but with SPIFFS the data is all FFs, and with LittleFS, the files are just empty.

Regards,
Ray L.

4

I have a suspicion that maybe.. Anyway this is what has happened to me (a few times already) that since a have quite a few different boards (even if you have just 2) you switch the board type in the IDE, upload an updated version of the sketch, but the settings for flashsize & SPIFFS size are not remembered by the core/IDE (don't know who is supposed to do that, but neither does) and they get set back to default, (which is No SPIFFS), destroying the SPIFFS partition. Anyway it's just a thought.

5

I switched to LittleFS, and it's working fine. I don't know why it failed the first time. It seems the files did not upload correctly the first time, but since then it's been ok. SPIFFS and LittleFS both inherit from FS, so its a simple change, and SPIFFS is apparently now unsupported and deprecated, so it makes sense to change.

Regards,
Ray L.