aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) (10/01/90)
Submitted-by: aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) >..> Discussions of using the System V filesystem switch to mount DOS directories > >I'm not sure what all this has to do with UNIX standards, though, as >none of the existing UNIX standards specify the on-disk format of UNIX >file systems (thank goodness!), they just specify the interface to >functions that manipulate files. While I understand where the "thank goodness" comes from, I do rather wish that there were some standards for the on-disk format of UNIX filesystems. Or am I the only person that has ever tried to transfer UNIX filesystems on floppies between different systems? Or (soon) transfer UNIX filesystems on floptical disks? Most of the filesystems standards work seems to be technology specific - such as, the soon-to-become-official standard for CD-ROM filesystems and other optical disks. However, what I've seen of the CD-ROM standard suggests that I am unlikely ever to be able to mount a CD-ROM as the boot partition of my workstation... Q: what is the UNIX community's particpation in various technology-oriented filesystems standardization efforts? Does everyone feel confident that present and future UNIX filesystem semantics will be completely supported by these standards? -- Andy Glew, a-glew@uiuc.edu [get ph nameserver from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:net/qi] Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 155
andrew@alice.att.com (Andrew Hume) (10/02/90)
Submitted-by: andrew@alice.att.com (Andrew Hume) In article <563@usenix.ORG>, aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) writes: > ... I do rather > wish that there were some standards for the on-disk format of UNIX > filesystems. Or am I the only person that has ever tried to transfer > UNIX filesystems on floppies between different systems? Or (soon) > transfer UNIX filesystems on floptical disks? > > Most of the filesystems standards work seems to be technology specific > - such as, the soon-to-become-official standard for CD-ROM filesystems > and other optical disks. However, what I've seen of the CD-ROM > standard suggests that I am unlikely ever to be able to mount a CD-ROM > as the boot partition of my workstation... > Q: what is the UNIX community's particpation in various > technology-oriented filesystems standardization efforts? Does everyone > feel confident that present and future UNIX filesystem semantics will be > completely supported by these standards? > > -- > Andy Glew, a-glew@uiuc.edu [get ph nameserver from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:net/qi] the x3b11.1 work that i snitch on is aimed precisely at this. the current work is aimed at WORM technology but the next standard is for re-writable optical media - which is isomorphic to regular magnetic disks. however, it is important to note this is an interchange standard. for various (read performance and economic advantages) reasons, vendors may always choose a different format for internal use but at least you should be able to convert this to the interchange format for carrying the data around. and in x3b11.1's case, we are tryingvery hard to make the format a plausible one for use as a regular filesystem. i agree the CD-ROM standard does not sit comfortably with Unix but what can you expect when the primary vendors represented on the high sierra committee were MS-DOS and VMS? x3b11.1 has active participation from bell labs research (me) and Sun (tom wong) and HP (ed beshore) to name prominent Unix representatives; in addition, many of the other members are acutely aware of the importance of the Unix market. as for support of present and future unix filesystems, we are deliberately adding support for arbitrary additional fields per file-like thing (as extended attributes) so as far as it is possible, we should be able handle most future extensions. as for present systems, it is up to the unix community to comment NOW on what fields are necessary. standard things like BSD/SysV inode fields can be taken for granted but perhaps you know of others (file effective date? file expiry date? automatic logging on write access). please mail such suggestions to andrew@research.att.com. the ball is in the unix community's court. andrew Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 164
guy@auspex.uucp (Guy Harris) (10/03/90)
Submitted-by: guy@auspex.uucp (Guy Harris) >While I understand where the "thank goodness" comes from, I do rather >wish that there were some standards for the on-disk format of UNIX >filesystems. *Which* UNIX filesystems? V7/S5? BSD FFS? BSD FFFS? (Fat Fast File System, i.e. the changes in 4.3-tahoe) SGI extent-based file system? IBM's journaling file system? The Episode file system in DEcorum? Veritas's log-based file system? The log-based file system done at Berkeley? Etc., etc., etc.... And would the standards for those file systems demand that items be written in big-endian format or little-endian format, or would they leave it dependent on the endianness of the machine writing the file system? Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 168