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Kragen's Amazing List of Filesystems

May 02, 1999, 23:53 (9 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Kragen Sitaker)

By Kragen Sitaker

Just a collection of interesting filesystem links. Most are for Linux.

I'll maintain this and organize it better if there's demand. :)

Overlay filesystem, like union mounts:
http://home.att.net/~artnaseef/ovlfs/ovlfs.html

Working Version Filesystem, storing everything in CVS (IIRC) over the network, compatible with NFS:
http://www.wv.com/
ftp://ftp.pn.com/pub/bb/wvfs
(Previously known as Pgfs, built on top of 'ofs' -- open filesystem.)

audiofs for Linux, like on SGIs, lets you access an audio CD as a filesystem containing audio files:
http://www.lwn.net/1999/0429/a/audiofs.html
http://fly.cc.fer.hr/~ptolomei/audiofs/

'wrapfs' is a flexible fs, ported to Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, by amd's author:
My research Web page is: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~ezk/research/

wofs, a WORM filesystem for SunOS (in German):
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/
http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/wofs.ps.gz

PerlFS, which lets you write filesystem drivers in Perl and run them in userspace:
http://dd-sh.assurdo.com/perlfs/
. . . and stewart@neuron.com is writing a Java backend so you can write Java fslets.

userfs, similar to PerlFS, but with backends in C++:
ftp://summersoft.fay.ar.us/pub/linux/RPMS (0.9.6.2-2)
(previous versions, like 0.9.4.2, didn't work with libc6/glibc)
mailing list at linux-userfs-request@vger.rutgers.edu
Originally by jeremy@sw.oz.au, Jeremy Fitzhardinge, who abandoned it in 1997
More info (working version for Linux 2.2.6) at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mccormack/userfs.html

Lots of nice information at http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/linuxkernel.html on filesystems and other kernel things.

e2compr -- transparent compression for ext2fs -- is at
http://www.netspace.net.au/~reiter/e2compr/ or
http://debs.fuller.edu/e2compr/

Of course, there's Coda, which is similar to AFS, but supports disconnected operation:
http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/

"Arla", a free implementation of AFS (working client, experimental kernel):
http://www.stacken.kth.se/projekt/arla/
arla-{announce,drinkers}@stacken.kth.se

"Podfuk" (Czech for fiddle), another userfs/PerlFS/ofs equiv -- but this time using Coda. Includes fs-based decompression and untarring as applications:
http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/podfuk/podfuk.html

"AVFS" -- "A virtual filesystem" -- allows transparent tar, gzip, zip, bzip2, and rar reading. In C library, not kernel:
http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mszeredi/avfs/

"docfs" -- "unified documentation sotrage and retrieval for Linux systems" -- generates documentation on the fly. Sort of like an automounter for document formats. Appears to have been conceived in mid-1997, but not implemented:
http://www.on-line.de/~lutz.behnke/docfs/index.html

"devfs" -- like Plan9's filesystem. Basically an alternative to "special files":
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/kernel-patches.html
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/devfs.txt

The standard for large file access in Unix:
http://www.sas.com/standards/large.file/

The famed reiserfs, based on balanced trees, intended to allow storage of many small files:
http://idiom.com/~beverly/reiserfs.html
http://devlinux.com/namesys/

Log-structured filesystem projects:
http://collective.cpoint.net/prof/lfs/ -- abandoned since 1998-10-02 at least
linux-ljfs-request@majordomo.ibasys.net -- central discussion point
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/czezatke/lfs.html -- appears to be viable, but not yet in beta (by Christian Czezatke, originally by Adam of Yggdrasil?)

UDF, the DVD-ROM and packet-written CD filesystem:
http://ca.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/10/19/908852708.html
http://trylinux.com/projects/udf/

Global File System, a 64-bit filesystem for shared disks:
http://ma.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/01/28/917557638.html
http://gfs.lcse.umn.edu/
majordomo@lcse.umn.edu">majordomo@lcse.umn.edu, body "subscribe gfs-announce" or "subscribe gfs-devel"

Time Capsule Filesystem: intended to be decipherable without a specification, useful for long-term archival:
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~boogles/papers/tcfs-thesis/thesis.html

TCFS, the transparent cryptographic filesystem (it talks NFS):
http://www.globenet.it/~ermmau/tcfs/
http://mikonos.dia.unisa.it/tcfs/
http://tcfs.dia.unisa.it/
http://wwwbs.informatik.htw-dresden.de/svortrag/ai94/Thieme/mytcfs.html (paper in German)
majordomo@edu-gw.dia.unisa.it ("subscribe tcfslist" in body)

vs3fs: experimental steganographic filesystem:
http://ca.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/10/10/908004177.html apparently has become "sfspatch" and "sfstools":
http://ca.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/03/10/921049985.html
http://www.linux-security.org/sfs/
http://www.leg.uct.ac.za/~carl/vs3fs/
http://www.leg.uct.ac.za/~carl/vs3fs/report.html

cfs: cryptographic filesystem: similar to tcfs. Originally by Matt Blaze; available from cfs@research.att.com for USians.
http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/otherosfs/cfs.html
ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/misc/
ftp://research.att.com/dist/mab/ has information about it.

AtFS, "The Attributed File System" -- versioning, application-defined arbitrary key=value metadata, C-library-based. Part of "ShapeTools", a software configuration management system.
http://www.debian.org.au/Packages/stable/libs/atfs.html

Undelete for ext2fs:
http://amadeus.upr.clu.edu/~undelete/
undelete@amadeus.upr.clu.edu
http://ca.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/10/14/908382417.html

Various foreign filesystems for Linux: