50 years in filesystems: towards 2004 – LFS
DRANK

This is part 5 of a series.“1974 ” on the traditional Unix Filesystem.“1984 ” on the BSD Fast File System.“1994 ” on SGI XFS.“Vnodes ” on how to have multiple filesystems in Unix.Progress is sometimes hard to see, especially when you have been part of it or otherwise lived through it. Often, it is easier to see by comparing modern educational material and the problems discussed with older material. Or look for the research papers and sources that fueled the change. So this is what we do.Frontiers in the NinetiesSGI’s XFS is pretty much the culmination point in filesystem technology for anything that does in-place updates. Extents, generous usage of B+-trees and lock splitting across allocation groups make it a great filesystem that is fast and scales well. The introduction of a metadata log allows it to recover quickly.The Nineties were also busy with operating systems research. Specifically, cluster operating systems were very much en vogue: Tanenbaum was in Amsterdam, busy …

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