Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 03:06:41 +0100 (CET) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Filesystem ?s Message-ID: <199912170206.DAA16209@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de>
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Alexey N. Dokuchaev wrote in list.freebsd-questions:
> 1). What is this all about: ufs, mfs, ffs? What so many names? Do they
> relay to the same fs-type? What are abbreviations stand for?
UFS == UNIX File System. This describes this whole family of
file systems. Solaris, DEC UNIX (Tru64) and others use UFS-
type file systems, too.
FFS == Berkeley Fast File System, a member of the UFS family.
This is FreeBSD's native file system format.
MFS == Memory File System. This is basically the same as FFS,
but it is used in a VM-based process instead of on disk.
People often call this a "RAM disk", which is not correct,
because its data does not necessarily reside in physical RAM,
but also in swap space.
> 2). Ext2fs vs. FreeBSD filesystem: when I mount ext2fs partition, do I
> get write/read access?
Yes, but the write access is somewhat alpha-quality, and it
_can_ break things. If you need to move ext2fs partitions to
FreeBSD, it is better to mount them read-only, then make a
backup, fdisk the media to make it FFS, then restore from the
backup.
> Will all uids/gids will still be actual (I mean,
> when resolving name for id, my /etc/passwd & group files will be used).
Yes.
> 4). Maybe more -hackers or -fs related questions, but, still, I am kinda
> interested in FSes, so: how does FreeBSD FS compete with ext2fs?
I'm slightly biased, obviously :), but I believe that FreeBSD's
FFS is much better. It has less limitations (for example, a
single FFS can be up to 8 Tbyte in size, that's 8000 Gbyte),
and using FreeBSD's soft-updates it is faster _and_ more secure
than ext2fs.
> Which
> one shows better performance (of course, in different cases it would be
> different, such as: low disk usage, intensive disk usage, caching
> strategy/algorithms, when disk is almost full (NTFS would be totaly f%cked
> up here) and so on....). Any information would be appreciated.
Much of what you say is not directly related to the filesystem
format, but it is highly influenced by the implementation and
the drivers. You can have a very slow FFS (IDE without UDMA,
no soft-updates), and you can have a very fast one.
> 5). What is 'soft-update' (sorry, no mans to read, since my fBSD box is
> staying down: no monitor :-(
Then I'd suggest you look at the mailing list archives. Sorry,
but I'm not going to waste time repeating what has been said
over and over again.
BTW, most of my FreeBSD boxes don't have a monitor connected,
and they are up and running happily. :)
Regards
Oliver
--
Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18/61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany
(Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de)
"In jedem Stück Kohle wartet ein Diamant auf seine Geburt"
(Terry Pratchett)
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