On Thu, 8 Jan 2009, Christopher Howard wrote:
> Could someone help me clear up some terminology issues in my mind? It
> would help me with some research I'm doing for this app I'm coding.
>
> Let me know if I have this correct (in a *nix context): the term 'file
> system' refers to the format of a partition (ext2, ext3, ntfs, et cetera).
> And file systems must be mounted on a 'virtual file system' in order to be
> accessible to the system. And each computer system has only one virtual
> file system.
Not quite. The term filesystem is a very general term that refers to any
structure storage system. In order for any given filesystem to be used,
though, it does need to be of a format that we support. Format and
filesystem, however, are not synonymous.
Filesystems are normally mounted to be used, but they have no reliance upon
virtual filesystems. Virtual filesystems, in fact, are any filesystem that
is not backed by an actual persistent storage media. Your current Linux
desktop probably has at least three right now, but probably more. /proc,
/sys, /dev/pts are the most common, with more modern distros also using
/dev, /dev/shm, /proc/bus/usb, and so on. It can get ridiculous quite
quickly. Those filesystems are not intended for actual storage, but to make
internal kernel parameters, hardware details, and other similar things
accessible to the standard UNIX userspace tools.
> And a 'directory tree' can refer to the entire structure of the virtual
> file system, right? Or does a 'directory tree' only refer to the
> file-list of one directory file?
A directory tree covers any traversable filesystem structure, in which you
can have any number of filesystems, virtual or otherwise, mounted. And you
can start enumerating that tree from any point in the filesystem, you don't
have to start from root.
--Arthur Corliss
Live Free or Die
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Received on Thu Jan 8 14:12:03 2009
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Jan 08 2009 - 14:12:03 AKST