filesystems

Does a typical Linux system or Mandrake boot using the ext2 filesystem? Do all filesystems have or use commands such as stat, read, write and chmod. I am trying to figure out without looking through the code how a VFS filesystem works. I am assuming that it does not use the major minor system, for faster access to data? On my system I have:

ext2
msdos
nodev proc

Yes I did a man filesystems, man virtual filesystems, and manVFS. What does the nodev stand for? I have seen other systems containing filesystems such as:

ext2
minix
msdos
vfat
nodev proc
nodev nfs

            iso9660
            ufs

nodev autofs
nodev devpts

Basically, do you mount a VFS filesystem, does it keep pages in RAM longer than other filesystems. How would a VFS filesystem handle system calls such as "stat" or "open"? I am just looking for something that can easily help me visualize the VFS process.

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nodev means the filesystem is not of type FS_REQ|UIRES_DEV, i.e. does not require a block device to be mounted. In folklore, such are sometimes called "virtual" filesystems. Examples are sockfs, shm, pipefs, proc, nfs, devpts.

you do not mount a VFS filesystem. VFS is not a filesystem. VFS is a Virtual Filesystem Switch, i.e. a set of concepts, philosophy, data structures and functions which together make writing new filesystems easy. The name is derived from the SVR4 data structure vfssw (sic?) whence all the good concepts of VFS came (yea, yea, I know, AV (and history books) will tell me that Sun had a vnode/vfs layer and that even FreeBSD has a sort of VFS/vnode layer but we all know that the really good form of VFS came from SVR4, like it or not, the others, except Linux of course, are impostors)

when doing stat system call, the VFS does a name lookup which causes the relevant inode to be read from disk (by means of s_op->read_inode method the filesystem registered) and so, all the relevant information is already there in the incore inode, which is then copied to userspace.

You cannot visualize VFS without looking at the source code. In fact, you cannot even do so by looking at the source, it is so complex. But it is definitely worth a try -- just remember, it is a lifelong process. Nevertheless, it is certainly a good thing to dedicate whole life to study the subject so complex, and which changes so frequently that nobody in the whole world has an overall picture of it. But we all try :) One day, we will understand it all and rewrite it to be even better than it is now :)

Regards,
Tigran

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perhaps I invented a new English word "achronal impostor", i.e. impostor even if he was there before others ;)

And, to emphasize my respect to Al Viro, I would like to explain that I sometimes spell "my personal humble opinion" as "we all know", just read between the lines and you will be Ok.

Regards,
Tigran

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