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Questions tagged [filesystems]

A file system (or filesystem) is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device(s) which contain it.

A file system (or filesystem) is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device(s) which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the specific characteristics of the device. A tight coupling usually exists between the operating system and the file system. Some file systems provide mechanisms to control access to the data and metadata. Ensuring reliability is a major responsibility of a file system. Some file systems allow multiple programs to update the same file at nearly the same time.

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ZFS Data Loss Scenarios

I'm looking toward building a largish ZFS Pool (150TB+), and I'd like to hear people experiences about data loss scenarios due to failed hardware, in particular, distinguishing between instances where just some data is lost vs. the whole filesystem…
Cyclone
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In Linux, why isn't superuser root's folder under /home?

You can create a user that has privileges like root, and it's home directory will fall under /home/username. Why does root get its own folder at the top level of the file system? Is this just convention, a security concern, or is there a…
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How to track all files a process opens in its lifetime

I am aware of using lsof for checking the files currently accessed by a process. Does there exist a way to see all files that an application opens in its lifetime?
Peter Smit
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Maximum number of files in one ext3 directory while still getting acceptable performance?

I have an application writing to an ext3 directory which over time has grown to roughly three million files. Needless to say, reading the file listing of this directory is unbearably slow. I don't blame ext3. The proper solution would have been to…
knorv
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last time a filesystem was checked?

What command can tell me the last time that a filesystem was fsck'd? A date would be nice, but I'd settle for the mount count since the last fsck. I've looked all around for this in fsck*, lsattr, and stat, and I don't see it.
Andrew Schulman
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Copy permissions to identical tree on linux / unix

i have a tree of files with correct permission. then i have a (filewise) identical tree (with different file contents tough) with wrong permissions. how can i transfer the permissions layout from one tree to another?
yawniek
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How to clean up an unprocessed orphan inode list?

I tried to mount a formerly readonly mounted filesystem read-writeable: mount -o remount,rw /mountpoint Unfortunately it did not work: mount: /mountpoint not mounted already, or bad option dmesg reports: [2570543.520449] EXT4-fs (dm-0): Couldn't…
bmk
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What is the sticky bit in UNIX file systems? When is it used?

What is the sticky bit in a UNIX file system? As an admin when and how would you use it?
Aaron K
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Doing an rm -rf on a massive directory tree takes hours

We're using rsnapshot for backups. It keeps lots of snapshots of the backuped up file, but it does delete old ones. This is good. However it's taking about 7 hours to do a rm -rf on a massive directory tree. The filesystem is XFS. I'm not sure how…
Amandasaurus
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Which filesystem for large LVM of disks (8 TB)?

I have a Linux server with many 2 TB disks, all currently in a LVM resulting in about 10 TB of space. I use all this space on an ext4 partition, and currently have about 8,8 TB of data. Problem is, I often get errors on my disks, and even if I…
alphatiger
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How to tell what computer has a file open on a network share?

Environment: Windows XP sp3, Windows 2003 server Problem: We have several dozen kiosk machines each with the same logon name who occasionally and briefly a file on a share. The rate is several locks and releases a minute. Recently, we have…
RobW
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Linux mv file with long name

In Linux I sometimes rename files like this: mv dir1/dir2/dir3/file.txt dir1/dir2/dir3/file.txt.old Note that I want to just rename the file, not move it to another directory. Is there a command that would allow me to do a shorthand version of…
santiago arizti
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Best way to prevent the root system filling up when a mount fails?

We have an internal web server (virtualized, hosting ReviewBoard, but not super relevant) and we have a relatively consistent failure mode with failed NFS mounts causing / to fill up. Distro is Ubuntu (don't ask) if a solution depends on a different…
Peter
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How long should resize2fs take on a 1TB partition?

I've got a new computer at the university and almost set up everything for myself on it when I've noticed that the previous user of the machine used a huge 1TB ext3 partition only. I usually keep /home on a separate partition and I also prefer to…
Tamás
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What is the best filesystem for insert performance on PostgreSQL?

I'm curious if anyone out there has done any experimentation or comparisons between file systems and database performance. On Linux, I'm wondering what is the optimal file system for a postgres database. Also, what settings (inode, etc) are ideal…
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