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XFS is a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc (SGI) in 1993. It was the default file system in SGI's IRIX operating system starting with its version 5.3. XFS was ported to the Linux kernel in 2001; as of June 2014, XFS is supported by most Linux distributions; Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses it as default filesystem.
ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions. Stephen Tweedie first revealed that he was working on extending ext2 in Journaling the Linux ext2fs Filesystem in a 1998 paper, and later in a February 1999 kernel mailing list posting. The filesystem was merged with the mainline Linux kernel in November 2001 from 2.4.15 onward. Its main advantage over ext2 is journaling, which improves reliability and eliminates the need to check the file system after an unclean shutdown. Its successor is ext4.
In computing, a loadable kernel module (LKM) is an object file that contains code to extend the running kernel, or so-called base kernel, of an operating system. LKMs are typically used to add support for new hardware and/or filesystems, or for adding system calls. When the functionality provided by an LKM is no longer required, it can be unloaded in order to free memory and other resources.
The Installable File System (IFS) is a filesystem API in MS-DOS/PC DOS 4.x, IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows that enables the operating system to recognize and load drivers for file systems.
The fstab file is a system configuration file commonly found at /etc/fstab on Unix and Unix-like computer systems. In Linux, it is part of the util-linux package. The fstab file typically lists all available disk partitions and other types of file systems and data sources that may not necessarily be disk-based, and indicates how they are to be initialized or otherwise integrated into the larger file system structure.
vmlinux is a statically linked executable file that contains the Linux kernel in one of the object file formats supported by Linux, which includes Executable and Linkable Format (ELF), Common Object File Format (COFF) and a.out. The vmlinux file might be required for kernel debugging, symbol table generation or other operations, but must be made bootable before being used as an operating system kernel by adding a multiboot header, bootsector and setup routines.
Filesystem in USErspace (FUSE) is a software interface for Unix and Unix-like computer operating systems that lets non-privileged users create their own file systems without editing kernel code. This is achieved by running file system code in user space while the FUSE module provides only a bridge to the actual kernel interfaces.
The proc filesystem (procfs) is a special filesystem in Unix-like operating systems that presents information about processes and other system information in a hierarchical file-like structure, providing a more convenient and standardized method for dynamically accessing process data held in the kernel than traditional tracing methods or direct access to kernel memory. Typically, it is mapped to a mount point named /proc at boot time. The proc file system acts as an interface to internal data structures about running processes in the kernel. In Linux, it can also be used to obtain information about the kernel and to change certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).
sysfs is a pseudo file system provided by the Linux kernel that exports information about various kernel subsystems, hardware devices, and associated device drivers from the kernel's device model to user space through virtual files. In addition to providing information about various devices and kernel subsystems, exported virtual files are also used for their configuration.
Extended file attributes are file system features that enable users to associate computer files with metadata not interpreted by the filesystem, whereas regular attributes have a purpose strictly defined by the filesystem. Unlike forks, which can usually be as large as the maximum file size, extended attributes are usually limited in size to a value significantly smaller than the maximum file size. Typical uses include storing the author of a document, the character encoding of a plain-text document, or a checksum, cryptographic hash or digital certificate, and discretionary access control information.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file systems.
binfmt_misc is a capability of the Linux kernel which allows arbitrary executable file formats to be recognized and passed to certain user space applications, such as emulators and virtual machines. It is one of a number of binary format handlers in the kernel that are involved in preparing a user-space program to run.
Linux startup process is the multi-stage initialization process performed during booting a Linux installation. It is in many ways similar to the BSD and other Unix-style boot processes, from which it derives.
Btrfs is a computer storage format that combines a file system based on the copy-on-write (COW) principle with a logical volume manager, developed together. It was initially designed at Oracle Corporation in 2007 for use in Linux, and since November 2013, the file system's on-disk format has been declared stable in the Linux kernel. According to Oracle, Btrfs "is not a true acronym".
Toybox is a free and open-source software implementation of over 200 Unix command line utilities such as ls, cp, and mv. The Toybox project was started in 2006, and became a 0BSD licensed BusyBox alternative. Toybox is used for most of Android's command line tools in all currently supported Android versions, and is also used to build Android on Linux and macOS. All of the tools are tested on Linux, and many of them also work on BSD and macOS.
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was conceived and created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system, which was created as a free replacement for UNIX. Since then, it has spawned a large number of operating system distributions, commonly also called Linux.
cgroups is a Linux kernel feature that limits, accounts for, and isolates the resource usage of a collection of processes.
ftrace is a tracing framework for the Linux kernel. Although its original name, Function Tracer, came from ftrace's ability to record information related to various function calls performed while the kernel is running, ftrace's tracing capabilities cover a much broader range of kernel's internal operations.
In computing, OverlayFS is a union mount filesystem implementation for Linux. It combines multiple different underlying mount points into one, resulting in single directory structure that contains underlying files and sub-directories from all sources. Common applications overlay a read/write partition over a read-only partition, such as with LiveCDs and IoT devices with limited flash memory write cycles.
References
- ↑ Linux: DebugFS Archived 2010-02-01 at the Wayback Machine , by Jeremy, December 11, 2004, KernelTrap. (Announcement of debugfs by Greg KH.)
- ↑ "Debugfs". LWN.net. 2004-12-13.
- ↑ Linux Kernel Documentation :: filesystems : debugfs.txt documentation from the source code (Based on kernel version 2.6.35.4. Page generated on 2010-09-02 21:39 EST.)
- ↑ An updated guide to debugfs, By Jonathan Corbet, May 25, 2009, LWN
- ↑ 2.5 Debugfs A guide to using debugfs, Ariane Keller, Version 0.8, July 2008, Kernel Space - User Space Interfaces
