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Linux file systems

Statement

  1. Discuss the week’s activities and your observations.
    • Describe what you learned.
    • Did anything surprise you?
    • Did you face any challenges in this Unit? If so, how did you overcome them?
    • How were your peers’ assessments and feedback received?
  2. Describe at least two types of file systems used in the Linux operating system.
    • Include the advantages and disadvantages of each
    • What is your preference and why?

Submission

Answer 1

  • I started this week on Sunday as usual checking the self-quiz.
  • The week was about files and directories, file systems, and the fast file system.
  • Unfortunately, I had some leftovers from the reading assignment of the last week that I had to finish before I could start this week’s reading assignment; thus, I was not able to read the whole reading assignment.
  • The topic was interesting and full of information that we face in everyday life.
  • The discussion assignment asked about mentioning some advancements in file systems; I chose to talk about the Object Storage Device (OSD).
  • The written assignment has various questions about file systems that I had to search a lot to find answers to, but it was helpful.
  • I was surprised with how disks work, and how each RAID is almost an entire computer; along with the idea of mirroring and striping.

Answer 2

  • I will speak about EXT4 and BTRFS file systems.

EXT4

  • The original EXT filesystem (Extended) was written by Rémy Card and released with Linux in 1992 (Both, 2016).
  • EXT4 is the fourth revision of the EXT filesystem. It improved the performance, reliability, and security of the file system (Both, 2016).
  • EXT4 replaced blocks with extents, which are a collection of contiguous blocks (Both, 2016).
  • EXT4 reduced disk fragmentation by using these extents that allow for better usage of contiguous space on the disk.
  • EXT4 is the default file system for most Linux distributions (Both, 2016).

BTRFS

  • BTRFS is a binary-tree-based file system that aims for scalability and performance.
  • BTRFS is built-in with good system rollback functionality that restores the system to a good state in case of a crash (RedHat, n.d.)
  • BTRFS has compression built-in.
  • BTRFS has better error detection.
  • BTRFS is compatible with RAID hardware and software (RedHat, n.d.)
  • First introduced in 2007 (Birthny, 2022).

Comparison

  • BTRFS is a stable system that can support larger disk sizes and larger files, but fragmentation is still a problem (Birthny, 2022).
  • EXT4 is a mature file system, with good backward compatibility, and is beginner-friendly, but recovery is not as good as BTRFS (Birthny, 2022).
  • My personal choice is EXT4; since it is more mature and beginner-friendly which suits my level of knowledge and needs.

References