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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!xlink.net!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!informatik.uni-koblenz.de!ralf From: ralf@informatik.uni-koblenz.de (Ralf Baechle) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: Re: NetBSD Filesystems Date: 29 Jul 1995 21:35:48 GMT Organization: Uni Koblenz, Germany. Lines: 50 Distribution: world Message-ID: <3ve9jk$11b8@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> References: <1995Jul26.123455.28242@lssec.bt.co.uk> <MICHAELV.95Jul29005359@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> Reply-To: ralf@waldorf-gmbh.de NNTP-Posting-Host: ozzy.uni-koblenz.de In article <MICHAELV.95Jul29005359@MindBender.HeadCandy.com>, michaelv@MindBender.HeadCandy.com (Michael L. VanLoon) writes: |> In article <1995Jul26.123455.28242@lssec.bt.co.uk> bwheeler@lssec.bt.co.uk (Ben/Jammin Wheeler) writes: |> |> Here are my questions: |> Does NetBSD only have its own ``proprietary'' filesystem? |> [...] |> Is there any support for other filesystems, specifically MS-DOG FAT, Minix, Linux |> Ext2, Linux Xiafs? You don't really want XiaFS? I don't see any real argument for it except really paranoid compatibility. |> NetBSD will let you mount a DOS partition read/write for import/export |> purposes, but I don't believe you can actually run the system off a |> DOS partition. It does not understand Linux "proprietary" |> filesystems. Though someone some day may get the urge to write the |> code to make that possible. Most likely it would be for compatibility |> import/export purposes also, since there is nothing inherently better |> about the Linux filesystems vs. BSD 4.4 FFS (nor inherently worse). |> Some say the Linux filesystem isn't quite as robust or well-tested as |> FFS, but the Linux people deny that vehemently. Personal experience about FFS reliability: never more than just minor damage even on heavily loaded machines. The same applies to Linux' ext2fs though it is in theory a bit more vulnerable to corruption as long as not mounted with -o sync. The performance specially for handling lots of small files is everything else but not comparable. I found ext2fs MUCH faster due to it's asynchronous updates of the fs meta information for that case. |> NetBSD only "supports its own little filesystem" in the same way Linux |> only "supports its own little filesystem". The difference being that |> the NetBSD "proprietary" fs is a derivative of one of the most |> standard filesystems in unix. The Linux folks, on the other hand, |> have taken a religious position that FFS is not good enough for them, |> written their own proprietary fs, and refuse to write a true FFS for |> Linux, last I heard. For all intents and purposes, both filesystems |> are pretty much functionally equivalent. There is a Linux kernel patch to add a FFS filesystem to the kernel. Since however since quite some time no new version of this patch is available I'm not shure if development still goes on. Since I didn't try the patch myself I can't say very much else about except that it only supports read access. To sad - even if FFS shouldn't be the best fs for a UNIX system it is definately the best native UNIX fs that is spread across lots of kernel variants. Ralf