Be File System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:05, 26 February 2013

Revision as of 14:27, 16 March 2013

Line 28:

BFS was developed by [[Dominic Giampaolo]] and [[Cyril Meurillon]] over a ten-month period, starting in September 1996,<ref name="practical-book">{{cite book | last=Giampaolo | first=Dominic | year=1999 | url=http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf | title=Practical File System Design with the Be File System | publisher=Morgan Kaufmann | isbn=1-55860-497-9 | format=PDF}}</ref> to provide [[BeOS]] with a modern [[64-bit]] capable [[journaling file system]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/29/windows_on_a_database_sliced/ | title=Windows on a database – sliced and diced by BeOS vets | author=Andrew Orlowski | date=2002-03-29 | publisher=The Register | accessdate=2006-12-09| archiveurl= http://web.archive.org/web/20061230040241/http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/29/windows_on_a_database_sliced/| archivedate= 30 December 2006 <!--DASHBot-->| deadurl= no}}</ref> It is [[case-sensitive]] and capable of being used on [[floppy]], [[hard disk]]s and read-only media such as [[CD-ROM]]s. However, its use on small removable media is not advised, as the file-system headers consume from 600 KB to 2 MB, rendering floppy disks virtually useless.

Like its predecessor, OFS (Old Be File System, written by [[Benoit Schillings]], was- also calledformerly BFS when current),<ref name="bortmaninterview">{{cite web | url=http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/bible/bos/int_schillings.html | title=Benoît Schillings, Software Engineer | author=Henry Bortman | work=The BeOS Bible | accessdate=2006-09-10| archiveurl= http://web.archive.org/web/20060927061917/http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/bible/bos/int_schillings.html| archivedate= 27 September 2006 <!--DASHBot-->| deadurl= no}}</ref> it includes support for extended file attributes ([[Metadata (computing)|metadata]]), with indexing and querying characteristics to provide functionality similar to that of a [[relational database]].

Whilst intended as a 64-bit-capable file system, the size of some on-disk structures mean that the practical size limit is approximately 2 [[exabytes]]. Similarly the extent-based file allocation reduces the maximum practical file size to approximately 260 gigabytes at best and as little as a few blocks in a pathological worst case, depending on the degree of [[file system fragmentation|fragmentation]].