[CVALE] How do you design a file system?

[Pete Zaitcev]

On Tue, 8 May 2007 13:40:52 -0700, "Dennis Baker" <mtbogre at gmail.com> wrote:

> Isn't there a userspace filesystem kernel module now?  I seem to recall
> reading about being able to write a file system in Python... a little crazy
> there.

Yes, there is, it's called FUSE. It's feature-complete, for example an
implementation of ZFS exists which runs through FUSE. But on Linux it's
prone to deadlocks due to VM pressure. It may be useful for prototyping,
but I would stay away from it for a deployment.

> All current Linux file systems are available as either kernel modules or can
> be compiled into the kernel.

The dichotomy of static and modular is a very minor technical detail in
Linux, except where you want unexported symbols (e.g. for clustering
or Execute-in-Place, if your filesystem supports it).

-- Pete