Talk:Unix File System

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[edit] Universal File System vs. Unix File System

I'm studying up for my CompTIA A+ exam, and they had "UFS" defined as "Universal File System", not "Unix File System", likely due to the fact that it covers much more than just Unix? Or is that just errata in my study materials? —This unsigned comment was added by 67.38.227.182 (talk • contribs) 2006-04-03 21:19:18 UTC.

It's a question of context. Apparently there's a "Universal File System" in NetWare: [1].
There's also a site that claims that "UFS" in the UNIX sense stands for Universal File system - [2] - but they're wrong. Guy Harris 21:16, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soft Updates in UFS1

AFAIK softupdates have been part of freebsd since ver 3, thus long before UFS2! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.199.71.251 (talk • contribs) 11:15, 26 January 2004.

[edit] Rewrite, merge with FFS

I have largely rewritten this. Someone needs to run a spellchecker over me. --ssd 06:57, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Additions this article could now use:

  • Additions to UFS after FFS (I think they just increased field widths and added reserved fields)
  • More complete list of vendors who extended UFS
  • More complete list of proprietary features added to UFS for each vendor (as with above comment)

I'd add these, but I only have data for System V, Solaris, and Linux. SGI uses XFS instead. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ssd (talk • contribs) 06:57, 12 July 2004.

Should this and FFS just be combined? As I remember, the first "UFS" was just the SunOS 2.0 version of the 4.2BSD FFS; 2.0 was the first SunOS version with a VFS layer into which file systems could be plugged (as it was the first one with more than one file system to plug into it, becaue 2.0 introduced NFS), and Sun called it UFS at that point. (It was definitely "UFS" in 4.0; I think that went back to 2.0.) Other commercial UN*X vendors probably picked up the Sun NFS code, which included a VFS layer, and probably also picked up the UFS name if they had FFS. The split of the code into FFS and UFS layers in BSD happened later. -- Guy Harris 01:17, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree, merge. —Claunia 03:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree also, merge! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.31.88.115 (talk • contribs) 13:17, 25 January 2006.
One more for merge. The same merge just happened in the german wikipedia. -- Kvedulv 20:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Me, too: merge. (Aside: Am I right in thinking that UFS is the "native" file system of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD? If so, the article should probably mention them.) —Chris Chittleborough 09:47, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UFS still in OSX?

AFAIK support for UFS has been removed from OSX. Can someone confirm this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Oneiros (talk • contribs) 01:52, 13 February 2006.

It is still as of 10.4.4.
Please sign messages.
—Claunia 04:49, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copied from Comparison of BSD operating systems discussion

The information about the BSDs and UFS/UFS2/ffs is confusing. I know that Open doesn't yet have UFS2, but does Free really have no UFS? And is ffs really unique to Open? --Oneiros 00:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

...and, as per my comment above, it's not clear it belongs here anyway, as it's also in Comparison of operating systems.
At least some of the confusion is confusion about what FFS and UFS are. They're all descendants of Kirk McKusick's Berkeley Fast File System. Back in the early '80's, Sun developed one of the early virtual file system (VFS) implementations, so that UN*X system calls that manipulate files could, instead of going directly to the code for the one and only file system implementation, be directed to different file system implementations. This let those system calls work with both the Berkeley FFS (which was the local on-disk file system used by SunOS at the time) and NFS. Sun called the Berkeley file system "UFS", for "UNIX File System".
Later, the Berkeley FFS code was split into two parts - one that implemented lower-level inode or "container" functions, and one that implemented UN*X semantics (directories, permissions, ownership, etc.) atop that lower level, and the higher-level code was made to work atop the Berkeley LFS as well. The bottom part was called "FFS", presumably because the bulk of the changes between the old UNIX file system and the Berkeley Fast File System were at the container level (the higher-level changes were largely to implement symbolic links and large file names, although symbolic links could be trivially added to the old UNIX file system as well), and the top part was called "UFS", perhaps out of a combination of Sun's influence and the fact that most of the "UN*X" semantics were implemented at that layer.
In answer to your two questions:
  1. FFS is not unique to OpenBSD;
  2. FreeBSD does have UFS. Guy Harris 00:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
However, to my knowledge, OpenBSD is the only one on that list that still uses the old ffs as a default. Armedblowfish 01:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
The {FFS,LFS}/UFS code split occurred, as far as I know, in 4.4BSD, and, as far as I know, OpenBSD split from NetBSD after NetBSD updated to a 4.4-Lite base. OpenBSD has a sys/ufs source directory with ffs, fs, mfs (for memory-based containers), and ufs, so it has the same code structure as FreeBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFlyBSD in that regard, meaning it doesn't have the old pre-split FFS. Perhaps they call it FFS, but it's still UFS.
Are you thinking of UFS1 vs. UFS2 here? Guy Harris 01:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
OpenBSD definitely still calls it ffs. See a relevant OpenBSD FAQ. Also, they specifically state that they do not support UFS2. I have OpenBSD, and when I installed Debian, I remember having to do something special in order to mount OpenBSD's ffs partitions. Will try to look it up. Armedblowfish 02:52, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
What they call FFS in that FAQ is the OpenBSD version of UFS1 (as opposed to UFS2). Was it any different trying to mount NetBSD or FreeBSD UFS1 partitions on Debian? (If not - or if you didn't try to mount them - the fact that Debian required special action in order to mount OpenBSD UFS1 partitions doesn't necessarily mean OpenBSD is any more different from the other BSDs than they are from each other.)
Note also that according to the NetBSD fstab man page, the fstab entries for local "McKusick File System" (at this point, I'm tempted to use that term, to avoid FFS/UFS/etc. confusion) partitions have "ffs" as the file system type, just as they do in OpenBSD. Perhaps that's "ffs" as distinct from "lfs", with both of them offering "ufs" semantics - i.e., "ffs" means "UFS atop FFS", and "lfs" means "UFS atop LFS". (Amusingly enough, NetBSD and OpenBSD also implement ext2 as a container layer for UFS!) Guy Harris 03:08, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
A Linux man page specifies different "ufs types". (Search for "Mount options for ufs"). Ufstype 44bsd (4.4BSD) is apparently the one Free/Open/NetBSD use. This brings up the question of whether to call it UFS, UFS1, or FFS? Since ffs is the one that OpenBSDers and NetBSDers (and maybe FreeBSDers?) use, it would make sense to call it by what the people who use it call it, with an appropriate footnote. Armedblowfish 03:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
FreeBSD uses "UFS1" exclusively, OpenBSD uses "FFS" mostly but also "UFS" in some places (and in the code). Call it "UFS1" or "FFS" and add a footnote explaining the alternative names. All the BSDs versions of UFS1 are broadly similar and originate in the same codebase, but I believe disklabel and superblock differences now mean that FreeBSD's is not completely compatible with NetBSD/OpenBSD. I believe NetBSD and OpenBSD are compatible, and Solaris' is slightly different again. NicM 07:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC).
Thanks for the updates and clarification. Please don't forget to also update Unix File System.--Oneiros 11:39, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
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