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Comment: some special file systems use cases
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Comment: cat /proc/filesystems
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 To list the FS supported by your running kernel
 {{{
cat /proc/filesystems
}}}

Translation(s): English - 简体中文

(!) ?Discussion

Filesystems are a collection of files that are stored in the system in some way. There are numerous ways of storing files and therefore, there are many types of filesystems.

Every filesystem type describes a uniform method of storing files onto a storage medium(eg. a partition on a hard disk). Without these descriptions, it would be very difficult to share files with other people. One would have to give a description of the way that they stored a file on a floppy disk as well as the actual floppy disk they give to someone.

Filesystems available in Debian Linux kernel

Note0: Debian HURD and Debian kFreeBSD have other file systems.

Note1: the Features list are incomplete at this time.

Note2: This table is uptodate as of 2.6.28 kernel

Filesystem name

Features?

Documentation(s)

Description

Distributions

File systems often use as linux system partition

All?

ext2

RS

kDoc, WPedia

Second Extended Filesystem

All?

ext3

RS

kDoc, WPedia

Second Extended Filesystem with journaling extensions

All?

ext4dev

R

kDoc

Fourth Extended Filesystem with extents
not for production, in development

Etch-n-Half ~ Lenny

ext4

R

kDoc

Fourth Extended Filesystem with extents.

>= Squeeze

jfs

R

kDoc

The Journaled Filesystem (JFS)

All?

xfs

R

kDoc

SGI XFS Filesystem

All?

reiserfs

R

kDoc

ReiserFS journaled filesystem

All?

Other File systems

All?

9p

kDoc

Plan 9 9p remote filesystem protocol

All?

adfs

kDoc

 Acorn (and Risc OS) Advanced Disc Filing System

All?

affs

I

kDoc

Amiga filesystem support for Linux

All?

kafs

N

kDoc

AFS Client File System

All?

autofs4

old HowTo

Auto-mount filesystems. See autofs

All?

autofs

old HowTo

Auto-mount filesystems. See autofs

All?

befs

I

kDoc

BeOS File System (BeFS) driver

All?

bfs

I

kDoc

SCO UnixWare BFS filesystem for Linux

All?

cifs

N I

kDoc

VFS to access servers complying with the SNIA CIFS Specification e.g. Samba and Windows

All?

coda

kDoc

Coda Distributed File System VFS interface

All?

configfs

kDoc

Simple RAM filesystem for user driven kernel subsystem configuration.

All?

cramfs

kDoc

 cram a filesystem onto a small ROM

All?

dlm

kDoc

Distributed Lock Manager

All?

ecryptfs

kDoc

eCryptfs

All?

efs

upstream doc FS HowTo

SGI EFS, Extent File System (Irix <0.6)

All?

fat

I

kDoc

MS & DR DOS FAT filesystem

All?

freevxfs

kDoc

Veritas Filesystem (VxFS) driver

All?

fuse

1

kDoc

Filesystem in Userspace (backend for various filesystems)

All?

gfs2

N

kDoc

Global File System

All?

hfs

I

kDoc

 Macintosh HFS Filesystem

All?

hfsplus

I

kDoc

HFSPlus / Extended Macintosh Filesystem

All?

hpfs

I

kDoc

High Performance Filesys (OS/2's HPFS)

All?

isofs

CD

kDoc

CD/DVD filesystem (ISO-9660 / ECMA-119)

All?

jbd2

Generic filesystem journal-writing code (for ext4)

Squeeze

jbd

Generic filesystem journal-writing code (for ext2/ext3)

All?

jffs2

MTD

kDoc

The Journalling Flash File System, v2

All?

minix

Minix native filesystem. (was used in Linux before ExtFS!)

All?

msdos

I

kDoc

MS-DOS filesystem support

All?

ncpfs

Netware NCP network protocol

All?

nfs

N

Networks Filesystem

All?

ntfs

I

kDoc

NTFS 1.2/3.x driver - Copyright (c) 2001-2007 Anton Altaparmakov

All?

ocfs2

kDoc

OCFS2 1.3.3

All?

omfs

kDoc

OMFS (ReplayTV/Karma) Optimized MPEG Filesystem

>= Squeeze

qnx4

WPedia

QNX (OS) Filesystem

All?

romfs

kDoc

ROM filesystem. See genromfs

<= Etch

sysv

FTP

System V, V7 and Coherent and Xenix filesystems

All?

ubifs

MTD

kDoc

UBIFS - UBI File System

=> Squeeze

udf

CD

kDoc

Universal Disk Format Filesystem

All?

ufs

kDoc

Unix filesystem, used in BSDs, SunOS, Nextstep, Openstep...

All?

vfat

I

kDoc

VFAT filesystem support

All?

Features Legend :

  • Root: Suitable for system file system (like root and /usr...).

  • Interoperability: The filesystem is mostly implemented for Interoperability.

  • Distributed: file system.

  • Network Filesystem.

  • Sparsefile support

  • CD: Suitable for CD and/or DVD, etc..

  • MTD: Suitable for MTD devices.

Hints :

  • To list supported fs types by your kernel, read it's config file, run :

    awk '/# File systems/,/# Partition Types/' /boot/config-$(uname -r)* | pager

  • To list the FS modules available in your kernel :
    find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/fs/
    To list the FS supported by your running kernel
    cat /proc/filesystems

FUSE Filesystem

You can get the list of FS supported by through FUSE, by looking at the reverse dependencies on the package fuse-utils. at the time of writing :

aptfs

FUSE filesystem for APT source repositories

avfs

virtual filesystem to access archives, disk images, remote locations

beaglefs

implements a filesystem representing a live Beagle query

cryptkeeper

EncFS system tray applet for GNOME

curlftpfs

filesystem to access FTP hosts based on FUSE and cURL

davfs2

mount a WebDAV resource as a regular file system

encfs

encrypted virtual filesystem

flickrfs

virtual filesystem for flickr online photosharing service

funionfs

user-space directory concatenation

fusedav

filesystem to mount WebDAV shares

fuseext2

File System in User Space - Module for ext2

fusefat

File System in User Space - Module for FAT

fuseiso

FUSE module to mount ISO filesystem images

fuseiso9660

File System in User Space - Module for ISO9660

fusesmb

filesystem client based on the SMB file transfer protocol

glusterfs-client

clustered file-system

gmailfs

Use your GMail account as a filesystem

gphotofs

filesystem to mount digital cameras

libpam-encfs

PAM module to automatically mount encfs filesystems on login

libpam-mount

PAM module that can mount volumes for a user session

ltspfs

Fuse based remote filesystem for LTSP thin clients

mhddfs

file system for unifying several mount points into one

mtpfs

FUSE filesystem for Media Transfer Protocol devices

mythtvfs

userspace filesystem client for MythTV

ntfsprogs

tools for doing neat things in NTFS partitions from Linux

obexfs

mount filesystem of ObexFTP capable devices

plptools

Access EPOC device (Psion PDA) over a serial link

pytagsfs

maps media files to an arbitrary directory structure

rofs

Read-Only Filesystem for FUSE

sshfs

filesystem client based on SSH File Transfer Protocol

umview-mod-umfuseext2

View-OS in user space - ext2 module for UMFUSE

umview-mod-umfusefat

View-OS in user space - FAT module for UMFUSE

umview-mod-umfuseiso9660

View-OS in user space - ISO9660 module for UMFUSE

unionfs-fuse

Fuse implementation of unionfs

wikipediafs

View and edit Wikipedia articles as if they were real files

Special file systems

Some sample use cases for special file systems:

aufs, unionfs
can be used to mount two filesystems, the one one on top of the other. This is typically to mount a ramdisk on top of a (read-only!) cdrom... so it's virtually possible to "write" and modify the files. (of course, in this situation the data is lost on reboot)
xmount

allows mounting .vmdk (VMware) and .vdi(VirtualBox) image.

See also

ToDo: Some modules provides 2 filesystems (for mount -t). e.g loading sysv provides sysv and v7 in /proc/filesystems.

  1. FUSE doesn't provide any filesystem it-self. see 'apt-cache rdepends fuse-utils' (1)