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 kernel
Note1: the Features list are incomplete at this time.
Note2: This table is based on 2.6.24 kernel
Filesystem name |
Features? |
Documentation(s) |
Description |
File systems often use as linux system partition |
|||
ext2 |
RS |
Second Extended Filesystem |
|
ext3 |
RS |
Second Extended Filesystem with journaling extensions |
|
ext4dev |
R |
Fourth Extended Filesystem with extents not for production, in development |
|
jfs |
R |
The Journaled Filesystem (JFS) |
|
xfs |
R |
SGI XFS with ACLs, security attributes, realtime, large block numbers, no debug enabled |
|
reiserfs |
R |
ReiserFS journaled filesystem |
|
Other File systems |
|||
9p |
|
||
adfs |
|
||
affs |
I |
Amiga filesystem support for Linux |
|
kafs |
N |
AFS Client File System |
|
autofs4 |
|
||
autofs |
|
||
befs |
I |
BeOS File System (BeFS) driver |
|
bfs |
I |
SCO ?UnixWare BFS filesystem for Linux |
|
cifs |
N I |
VFS to access servers complying with the SNIA CIFS Specification e.g. Samba and Windows |
|
coda |
|
Coda Distributed File System VFS interface |
|
configfs |
|
Simple RAM filesystem for user driven kernel subsystem configuration. |
|
cramfs |
|
||
dlm |
|
Distributed Lock Manager |
|
ecryptfs |
|
eCryptfs |
|
efs |
|
||
fat |
I |
||
freevxfs |
|
Veritas Filesystem (VxFS) driver |
|
fuse |
Filesystem in Userspace (backend for various filesystems) |
||
gfs2 |
N |
Global File System |
|
hfs |
I |
||
hfsplus |
I |
Extended Macintosh Filesystem |
|
hpfs |
I |
||
isofs |
CD |
||
jbd2 |
|
||
jbd |
|
||
jffs2 |
|
The Journalling Flash File System, v2 |
|
minix |
|
||
msdos |
I |
MS-DOS filesystem support |
|
ncpfs |
|
||
nfs |
N |
||
I |
NTFS 1.2/3.x driver - Copyright (c) 2001-2007 Anton Altaparmakov |
||
ocfs2 |
|
OCFS2 1.3.3 |
|
qnx4 |
|
||
romfs |
|
||
sysv |
|
||
udf |
CD |
Universal Disk Format Filesystem |
|
ufs |
|
||
vfat |
I |
VFAT filesystem support |
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..
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/
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 :
FUSE filesystem for APT source repositories |
|
virtual filesystem to access archives, disk images, remote locations |
|
implements a filesystem representing a live Beagle query |
|
EncFS system tray applet for GNOME |
|
filesystem to access FTP hosts based on FUSE and cURL |
|
encrypted virtual filesystem |
|
virtual filesystem for flickr online photosharing service |
|
user-space directory concatenation |
|
filesystem to mount WebDAV shares |
|
File System in User Space - Module for ext2 |
|
File System in User Space - Module for FAT |
|
FUSE module to mount ISO filesystem images |
|
File System in User Space - Module for ISO9660 |
|
filesystem client based on the SMB file transfer protocol |
|
Use your GMail account as a filesystem |
|
filesystem to mount digital cameras |
|
PAM module that can mount volumes for a user session |
|
Fuse based remote filesystem for LTSP thin clients |
|
file system for unifying several mount points into one |
|
FUSE filesystem for Media Transfer Protocol devices |
|
userspace filesystem client for MythTV |
|
tools for doing neat things in NTFS partitions from Linux |
|
mount filesystem of ObexFTP capable devices |
|
Access EPOC device (Psion PDA) over a serial link |
|
Read-Only Filesystem for FUSE |
|
filesystem client based on SSH File Transfer Protocol |
|
Fuse implementation of unionfs |
|
View and edit Wikipedia articles as if they were real files |
See also
documents in /usr/share/doc/linux-doc-2.6.26/Documentation/filesystems/ kernel module documentation (in package linux-doc-2.6. or above)
FilesystemHierarchyStandard - The standard "Linux" Hierarchy.
?FileSystemsAndDisks with information about ext3 filesystems
?UsefulFiles
Wikipedia filesystem
ToDo: This page needs to be updated to Etch's 2.6.26
?CategoryFileSystem
FUSE doesn't provide any filesystem it-self. see 'apt-cache rdepends fuse-utils' (1)