Differences between version 5 and predecessor to the previous major change of FileSystem.
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| Newer page: | version 5 | Last edited on Saturday, August 16, 2003 12:11:06 pm | by AristotlePagaltzis | Revert |
| Older page: | version 4 | Last edited on Friday, August 1, 2003 6:43:14 am | by AristotlePagaltzis | Revert |
@@ -1,6 +1,12 @@
-AddToMe: explain what a filesystem
is, mention ext2/ext3 etc
, and how the Windows analog
is "FAT" or "NTFS"
.
+A FileSystem
is basically a file format for a disk. In order to use the diskspace
, you need a way to determine which parts are in use
, and where files are located,
how they're called and so on. This
is what a FileSystem provides. FileSystems lists the many different kinds of [FileSystem]s currently in use
.
-You may want to look at how the FileSystemHierarchy is usually organized on a Linux machine.
+If part of a FileSystem has been corrupted you need to be able to repair it. Under MicrosoftWindows the stock tool is called !ScanDisk. Unix systems call their corresponding tool fsck(8). fsck is automatically run if the FileSystem wasn't properly unmounted or hasn't been checked in a long time (the SuperUser can specify what constitutes a long time).
+
+On a [MicrosoftWindows] system, partitions are formatted with the old and aging [FAT] of the much more modern [NTFS] FileSystem. In contrast, the traditional FileSystem of choice on Linux is [Ext2]. It is very trusty and rock solid - losing much data from an [Ext2] partition is nearly impossible short of a hardware failure. The only problem is that an fsck takes a very long time. On servers that don't get rebooted in months, this is not much of a headache, but Linux is making its way to the desktop, where machines get rebooted frequently. Therefor, a variant that supports journalling was created: [Ext3].
+
+JournaledFileSystems keep a log of changes pending completion, so in the event of a crash, they can quickly finish up or undo changes as required to bring the FileSystem back to a consistent state. A full consistency check with fsck crawling the entire disk is then unnecessary. Nevertheless, you should fsck partitions at least every once in a blue moon to ensure that no inconsistencies creep in. The likelihood is low, but better to be safe than sorry.
+
+
You may also
want to look at how the FileSystemHierarchy is usually organized on a Linux machine.
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CategoryBeginners
