linux-imx/fs/sysv/INTRO
Linus Torvalds 1da177e4c3 Linux-2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.

Let it rip!
2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00

7.0 KiB

This is the implementation of the SystemV/Coherent filesystem for Linux. It grew out of separate filesystem implementations

Xenix FS      Doug Evans <dje@cygnus.com>  June 1992
SystemV FS    Paul B. Monday <pmonday@eecs.wsu.edu> March-June 1993
Coherent FS   B. Haible <haible@ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de> June 1993

and was merged together in July 1993.

These filesystems are rather similar. Here is a comparison with Minix FS:

  • Linux fdisk reports on partitions

    • Minix FS 0x81 Linux/Minix
    • Xenix FS ??
    • SystemV FS ??
    • Coherent FS 0x08 AIX bootable
  • Size of a block or zone (data allocation unit on disk)

    • Minix FS 1024
    • Xenix FS 1024 (also 512 ??)
    • SystemV FS 1024 (also 512 and 2048)
    • Coherent FS 512
  • General layout: all have one boot block, one super block and separate areas for inodes and for directories/data. On SystemV Release 2 FS (e.g. Microport) the first track is reserved and all the block numbers (including the super block) are offset by one track.

  • Byte ordering of "short" (16 bit entities) on disk:

    • Minix FS little endian 0 1
    • Xenix FS little endian 0 1
    • SystemV FS little endian 0 1
    • Coherent FS little endian 0 1 Of course, this affects only the file system, not the data of files on it!
  • Byte ordering of "long" (32 bit entities) on disk:

    • Minix FS little endian 0 1 2 3
    • Xenix FS little endian 0 1 2 3
    • SystemV FS little endian 0 1 2 3
    • Coherent FS PDP-11 2 3 0 1 Of course, this affects only the file system, not the data of files on it!
  • Inode on disk: "short", 0 means non-existent, the root dir ino is:

    • Minix FS 1
    • Xenix FS, SystemV FS, Coherent FS 2
  • Maximum number of hard links to a file:

    • Minix FS 250
    • Xenix FS ??
    • SystemV FS ??
    • Coherent FS >=10000
  • Free inode management:

    • Minix FS a bitmap
    • Xenix FS, SystemV FS, Coherent FS There is a cache of a certain number of free inodes in the super-block. When it is exhausted, new free inodes are found using a linear search.
  • Free block management:

    • Minix FS a bitmap
    • Xenix FS, SystemV FS, Coherent FS Free blocks are organized in a "free list". Maybe a misleading term, since it is not true that every free block contains a pointer to the next free block. Rather, the free blocks are organized in chunks of limited size, and every now and then a free block contains pointers to the free blocks pertaining to the next chunk; the first of these contains pointers and so on. The list terminates with a "block number" 0 on Xenix FS and SystemV FS, with a block zeroed out on Coherent FS.
  • Super-block location:

    • Minix FS block 1 = bytes 1024..2047
    • Xenix FS block 1 = bytes 1024..2047
    • SystemV FS bytes 512..1023
    • Coherent FS block 1 = bytes 512..1023
  • Super-block layout:

    • Minix FS unsigned short s_ninodes; unsigned short s_nzones; unsigned short s_imap_blocks; unsigned short s_zmap_blocks; unsigned short s_firstdatazone; unsigned short s_log_zone_size; unsigned long s_max_size; unsigned short s_magic;
    • Xenix FS, SystemV FS, Coherent FS unsigned short s_firstdatazone; unsigned long s_nzones; unsigned short s_fzone_count; unsigned long s_fzones[NICFREE]; unsigned short s_finode_count; unsigned short s_finodes[NICINOD]; char s_flock; char s_ilock; char s_modified; char s_rdonly; unsigned long s_time; short s_dinfo[4]; -- SystemV FS only unsigned long s_free_zones; unsigned short s_free_inodes; short s_dinfo[4]; -- Xenix FS only unsigned short s_interleave_m,s_interleave_n; -- Coherent FS only char s_fname[6]; char s_fpack[6]; then they differ considerably: Xenix FS char s_clean; char s_fill[371]; long s_magic; long s_type; SystemV FS long s_fill[12 or 14]; long s_state; long s_magic; long s_type; Coherent FS unsigned long s_unique; Note that Coherent FS has no magic.
  • Inode layout:

    • Minix FS unsigned short i_mode; unsigned short i_uid; unsigned long i_size; unsigned long i_time; unsigned char i_gid; unsigned char i_nlinks; unsigned short i_zone[7+1+1];
    • Xenix FS, SystemV FS, Coherent FS unsigned short i_mode; unsigned short i_nlink; unsigned short i_uid; unsigned short i_gid; unsigned long i_size; unsigned char i_zone[3*(10+1+1+1)]; unsigned long i_atime; unsigned long i_mtime; unsigned long i_ctime;
  • Regular file data blocks are organized as

    • Minix FS 7 direct blocks 1 indirect block (pointers to blocks) 1 double-indirect block (pointer to pointers to blocks)
    • Xenix FS, SystemV FS, Coherent FS 10 direct blocks 1 indirect block (pointers to blocks) 1 double-indirect block (pointer to pointers to blocks) 1 triple-indirect block (pointer to pointers to pointers to blocks)
  • Inode size, inodes per block

    • Minix FS 32 32
    • Xenix FS 64 16
    • SystemV FS 64 16
    • Coherent FS 64 8
  • Directory entry on disk

    • Minix FS unsigned short inode; char name[14/30];
    • Xenix FS, SystemV FS, Coherent FS unsigned short inode; char name[14];
  • Dir entry size, dir entries per block

    • Minix FS 16/32 64/32
    • Xenix FS 16 64
    • SystemV FS 16 64
    • Coherent FS 16 32
  • How to implement symbolic links such that the host fsck doesn't scream:

    • Minix FS normal
    • Xenix FS kludge: as regular files with chmod 1000
    • SystemV FS ??
    • Coherent FS kludge: as regular files with chmod 1000

Notation: We often speak of a "block" but mean a zone (the allocation unit) and not the disk driver's notion of "block".

Bruno Haible haible@ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de