filesystems

The «B-Tree» filesystem uses B-Trees and is designed to meet the expanding scalability requirements of large storage subsystems.

The B-Trees allow to efficiently access and update large blocks of data no matter how large the tree grows.

Important features:

• Copy-on-write allows to create both readable and writable snapshots, and to roll back a file system to a previous state.
• Checksums to enforce data integrity («Self healing»)
• Transparent compression
• Integrated logical volume management allows to implement RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 10 configurations, and to dynamically add and remove storage capacity.

TODO: See ftrace

A pseudo filesystem, usually mounted on /dev/pts.

the standard Linux filesystem.

A version of ext2, enhanced with journaling.

ext3 with scalability and reliality enchancments.

ext4 is a reliable all-purpose filesystem for all platforms.

ext4 lacks modern features like reflinks, compare with xfs.

FAT stands for file allocation table.

FAT was the default file system for MS-DOS and Windows 9x.

In Windows XP and Windows NT, FAT was replaced by NTFS.

A FAT partition can be converted to NTFS with the command line tool convert.exe.

There are three major variants of FAT: FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32

Although dated, FAT is still used for EFI system partitions.

FUSE stands for filesystem in userspace: it allows to implement a filesystem in user- (as opposed to kernel-) space.

ntfs-3g is dependent on fuse.

For example, curlftpfs converts file accesses into curl ftp calls.

Also, Gaetan Bisson has written StirFS that apparently builds upon fuse. It is a »Secure, transparent and irrestible filesystem«.

See also CONFIG_FUSE_FS.

The flash-friendly file system, originally created by Samsung for the use with NAND flash memory.

The standard filesystem for CD-ROMs. See also udf.

Filenames are in the DOS format 8.3. The Rock Ridge extension provides UNIX like features and makes it indistinguishable from a UNIX filesystem (except that it is read only).

NFS - Network File System

NTFS

The proc pseudo filesystem provides an interface to kernel data structures in order to provide information about running processes and the kernel.

This filesystem is described in more detail in proc(5).

It is usually mounted at /proc.

See also Documentation/filesystems/proc

A memory based filesystem. See ramfs

A journaling filesystem.

A compressed, read-only filesystem, used for example for Live CD versions.

The filesystem for exporting kernel objects. See sysfs

Mounted on /sys.

TODO: free

A flash file system which works on top of UBI volumes.

Universal disk format.

See also iso9660.

XFS is a high-performance journaling file system, initially created by Silicon Graphics, Inc. for the IRIX operating system, and later ported to Linux.

XFS is a modern all-purpose filesystem for all platform, that also supports reflinks and copy on write (CoW), compare with ext4.

Filesystem