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Advanced Filesystem Implementors Guide Continues
Tom writes: "This is part six of the Advanced filesystem implementor's
guide. I've been following an outstanding series of articles about implementing the advanced filesystems that are available with Linux 2.4. The author really knows his stuff and has done a great job with explaining Reiserfs, XFS, GFS, and the other file systems that are available." The series gets into greater depth as it goes on; you may want to start with Part One and work on from there.
Not completely true. One file system might make it to be the 'default instalation choice' in most distributions, but each of the 3 journaled FS's has there own set of features and targeted markets.
ReiserFS, is a top-tech journaling file system which can be _very_ fast with some situations (large directories, etc), but as hans reiser pointed out, his purpouse is not to make a stable FS, but to keep development up, inventing new and cool technikes.. so not your #1 production choice for some.
XFS is known for its high output and parralism. In its roots it was tuned for streaming video and audio, and to work wel with _many_ cpu's (think >> 32).
JFS has a bit more mainframe background, stable (slower?), and secure..
ofcource each day they grow a little closer together (each wants all advantages), but untill one of them reaches the status 'ultimate FS', i think there is plenty of room for multiple visions and implimentations.
Why does it seem like all the responses to this are full of hot air ?
Some journalling filesystems exist because there are UNIX companies with expertise in them that support them, like XFS and JFS.
Some journalling filesystems are a natural migration for most linux users - like ext3.
And some people want to re-invent filesystems en todo like Hans Reiser, and a good journalled filesystem is just the first stop.
More than one is just "value added". They all work. They are all secure and stable. Some are faster than others - but XFS, ReiserFS and ext3 are all "fast enough" for almost any uses.
The parent echos a common complaint about Free Software - that developer resources are not dedicated appropriately. Well, developers work on what they want, or what they are paid to work on. This often leads to multiple efforts that accomplish similar goals - like window managers, desktop environments, word processors, journalled filesystems, VM management etc. But ultimately competition is good if intelligent test results are publicized.
Look at the Mindcraft web server benchmark results about 18 months ago. Now, linux blows the doors off IIS in the exact same test. The same is becoming true of filesystems. Test results show ext2/3 is slow with lots of small files - so a developer named Daniel Phillips added a directory hash that fixes this shortcoming.
I once had a file in an NTFS drive that even administrator could not delete for some reason, so I searched around for an answer and learned that if I schedule a command prompt to open at a given time I can then use that command prompt (started with the scheduler's SERVICE level permissions) to delete the file. ... makes you wonder what other neat little ways to bypass security are built into windows.