Questions tagged [filesystems]

A filesystem is a way to organize and store computer files with their data.

A file system (or filesystem) is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device(s) which contain it.

A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the specific characteristics of the device. There is usually a tight coupling between the operating system and the file system. Some filesystems provide mechanisms to control access to the data and metadata.

Ensuring reliability is a major responsibility of a filesystem. Some filesystems provide a means for multiple programs to update data in the same file at nearly the same time.

Further reading

4079 questions
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How do I find on which physical device a folder is located?

Specifically: I did sudo mkdir /work, and would like to verify it indeed sits on my harddrive and not mapped to some other drive. How do I check where this folder is physically located?
ripper234
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How to determine the filesystem of an unmounted device?

Possible Duplicate: Find filesystem of a partition from a script How to show the filesystem type via the terminal? I'm looking for a command that yields the filesystem type as mount would use/detect it, without actually mounting it. It should…
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Where are filenames stored on a filesystem?

Where are filenames stored on a filesystem? It's not in inode or with the actual file content since we have hard link that two filenames can point to the same inode.
yegle
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Purpose of /dev/zero?

I tried to cat /dev/zero, and it didn't seem to do anything. I googled /dev/zero, and it says it's basically a blank file with infinite size. Is cat printing an infinite number of non-existent characters? How does this work? How does it provide…
tkbx
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To what extent does Linux support file names longer than 255 bytes?

I asked about Linux's 255-byte file name limitation yesterday, and the answer was that it is a limitation that cannot/will not be easily changed. But I remembered that most Linux supports NTFS, whose maximum file name length is 255 UTF-16…
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EXT4 FS needs journal recovery. What does this mean?

$ sudo file -s /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb1: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data (needs journal recovery) (extents) (large files) (huge files) What does "needs journal recovery" mean? Do I need to do something? What more can I check?
Anders Lind
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What is the relationship of inodes, LBA, Logical Volumes, blocks, and sectors?

I'm a bit embarrassed to ask this question but I'd like to see a diagram that shows how the following things are related. It would be nice if the diagram also included any transforms required to map between the various layers as well. As I…
slm
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Is it bad to have filesystems nearly full?

Example I have large/small sized filesystems JFS2/EXT3, whatever (and various OS, Linux, AIX), but some of them are on ex.: 90%, 95%, 98% usage. Questions: Having filesystems nearly full does something bad? Performance problems or FS corruption or…
gasko peter
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What does it mean to "quiesce" a filesystem?

Actually, I don't care whether you talk about filesystems or any other thing that might be Quiesce'd in a software setting. I'm just looking for some more clarification about what this bit of technical jargon actually means.
chad
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What is the space overhead of different filesystems?

I backed up/restored a filesystem from a Ubuntu system to a Fedora 17 one. I noticed that according to df output the used space increased by 30 %. What could be the reasons for this? At the Fedora system df displays: 78 GB used At the Ubuntu system…
maxschlepzig
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How can I find out a file's range of LBA's using its inode?

While answering this U&L question titled: What command do I use to see the start and end block of a file in the file system?, I tried to figure out if it was possible to determine a file's LBA using it's inode. My answer determined that I could use…
slm
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Is there a way to prevent the creation of a given file?

When ever I use a browser reading PDF the acrobat plugin is used producing a file called C:\nppdf32Log\debuglog.txt in my home. Is there any way to prevent that this given file can be created? I mean I could create it with root permissions so that…
math
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What filesystems preferentially reuse blocks from deleted files?

Related to this earlier question I asked, I'd like to know what filesystems will preferentially reuse blocks that are freed when files are deleted (if any exist)? I am only interested in stable, well-established filesystems and would prefer those…
user12810
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Cannot erase file in $HOME

I have to Backup my whole System, because my HDD is dying. In $HOME there is a file .rsync.log which I cannot erase as my user or as root. LANG=C rm -f /media/alex/3c68c336-bf8d-46f8-bc04-58d3e160f2b1/alex/.rsync.log rm: cannot remove…
user192526
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What is metadata, and how does it aid in the "fsck" process?

If I understand it correctly, "fsck" is used in UNIX systems to check for internal consistency within disks after there has been a crash. I was wondering, then, how it uses "metadata" to make sure that everything in the filesystem is consistent, for…
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