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Beginner Filesystem

DISCUSSION atticclaw 4 participants 4 messages Aug 30, 2003 – Aug 31, 2003 VFS

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atticclaw

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#0 lore raw

Hi,
I am a beginner to filesystem and linux kernel coding in general . I found a number of file system in linux kernel . I would like to know which is the easiest one to understand (It should be non journalled and non distributed ) and pref should have a write support . Also I would be thankfull if the filesystem has decent design documentation on the internet
thankx in advance
bye
attic claw
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#1 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines · atticclaw

I am a beginner to filesystem and linux kernel coding in general
. I found a number of file system in linux kernel . I would like to know which is the easiest one to understand (It should be non journalled and non distributed ) and pref should have a write support . Also I would be thankfull if the filesystem has decent design documentation on the internet

The easiest fs is ramfs. The easiest on disk is probably minix and msdos.

Regards, Olaf.

#2 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Olaf Dietsche
Quoted 6 lines · atticclaw

I am a beginner to filesystem and linux kernel coding in general
. I found a number of file system in linux kernel . I would like to know which is the easiest one to understand (It should be non journalled and non distributed ) and pref should have a write support . Also I would be thankfull if the filesystem has decent design documentation on the internet

The easiest fs is ramfs. The easiest on disk is probably minix and msdos.

I recently (in the last two years) wrote a file system called YAFFS. This is a special file system for NAND.

I did a bit of a tour of the various file systems to figure out what to do in the file system interfacing stuff (ie. hooking up to the Linux VFS).

I must disagree with Olaf. The ramfs is a simple file system, but is its not at all typical in the way it uses the vfs and so I think it serves as a very bad example for file system writers.

I would suggest you look at ext2, jffs2 and YAFFS to get an understanding of how to hook up a file system to VFS.

In many ways it depends on what you want to learn.

-- Charles

#3 lore raw
In reply to atticclaw

hello there ;)

i went through the same ordeal some time ago, and cant say i know all the ins and outs at the vfs layer, but the best documentations i found were in boos, books, some more books, the vfs code and ext2's code...

some books of interest:
Moshe Bar, Linux File Systems, McGraw-Hill, New Jersey, 2002

Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati
Understanding the Linux Kernel, 2nd Edition Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati 2nd Edition December 2002

(this one is good for beginer kernel programmers..) Alessandro Rubini , Jonathan Corbet
Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition June 2001

Michael Beck, Harald Bohme, Mirko Dziadzka, Robert Magnus, et al.
Linux Kernel Programing, 3rd edition, Addison-Wesley, August 2002

several more are out there...

byebye

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