Hacker News with Generative AI: File Systems

Anylinuxfs – macOS mount any Linux filesystem read/write using NFS and a microVM (github.com/nohajc)
macOS: mount any linux-supported filesystem read/write using NFS and a microVM
Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS and XFS File-System Performance on Linux 6.15 (phoronix.com)
With the copy-on-write Bcachefs file-system considering its on-disk format now "soft frozen" and nearing the point of potentially removing the "EXPERIMENTAL" flag on it, a number of Phoronix readers have been requesting some fresh benchmarks of this open-source file-system. For your viewing pleasure today are some fresh benchmarks of Bcachefs and other file-systems atop the Linux 6.15 kernel being released as stable later this month. On the benchmarking block today are Bcachefs, Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, and XFS in-tree file-systems.
Show HN: VectorVFS, your filesystem as a vector database (readthedocs.io)
VectorVFS is a lightweight Python package that transforms your Linux filesystem into a vector database by leveraging the native VFS (Virtual File System) extended attributes.
Revisiting ZFS for Mac (mjtsai.com)
Hacker News is highlighting Adam Leventhal’s 2016 post (2016 comments) about Apple’s Leopard-era support for ZFS:
ZFS: Apple's new filesystem that wasn't (2016) (dtrace.org)
This week Apple announced their new filesystem, APFS, after 2 years in development.
Linus Torvalds Expresses His Hatred for Case-Insensitive File-Systems (phoronix.com)
Linus Torvalds is sharing some of his classic and straight-to-the-point wisdom today over file-systems with case-folding / case-insensitive file and folder support.
Linus Torvalds Expresses His Hatred for Case-Insensitive File-Systems (phoronix.com)
Linus Torvalds is sharing some of his classic and straight-to-the-point wisdom today over file-systems with case-folding / case-insensitive file and folder support.
We Are Doing Files Wrong (2021) (simonsafar.com)
It is a historical accident that files can't have sub-files.
Linus Torvalds Expresses His Hatred for Case-Insensitive File-Systems (phoronix.com)
Linus Torvalds is sharing some of his classic and straight-to-the-point wisdom today over file-systems with case-folding / case-insensitive file and folder support.
Linus Torvalds Expresses His Hatred for Case-Insensitive File-Systems (phoronix.com)
Linus Torvalds is sharing some of his classic and straight-to-the-point wisdom today over file-systems with case-folding / case-insensitive file and folder support.
Linux Might Drop the Apple HFS / HFS+ File-System Kernel Driver Support (phoronix.com)
There's the possibility raised that the mainline Linux kernel might remove its file-system kernel drivers for Apple HFS and HFS+ this year.
Linux Might Drop the Apple HFS / HFS+ File-System Kernel Driver Support (phoronix.com)
There's the possibility raised that the mainline Linux kernel might remove its file-system kernel drivers for Apple HFS and HFS+ this year.
A brief history of Mac native file systems (eclecticlight.co)
The first file system for Macintosh computers wasn’t HFS+ or even its predecessor HFS, but Macintosh File System, MFS.
The order of files in your ext4 filesystem does not matter (thewisenerd.com)
The FAT12 File Truncation Bug (brutman.com)
A few weeks ago I was doing some research on the FAT12 and FAT16 filesystems in an attempt to improve my NetDrive code, and I found a bug that can lead to a perfectly valid file being truncated when you move from DOS 2.x to later versions of DOS.
Microsoft is testing ReFS for new Windows 11 installs (xda-developers.com)
FUSE File-Systems to Support Much Longer Filenames with Linux 6.15 (phoronix.com)
FSKit: Implement a file system that runs in user space (apple.com)
Escape Sequences in File Names (sigwait.org)
How to annoy folks who use busybox:
EXT4 Better Hardened Against Maliciously-Fuzzed File-Systems (phoronix.com)
Btrfs Adding Fast/Realtime ZSTD Compression and Other Performance Optimizations (phoronix.com)
David Sterba of SUSE sent in all of the Btrfs file-system updates today for the now-open Linux 6.15 kernel merge window.
Understanding the FAT File System (8dcc.github.io)
The FAT file system was originally developed by Microsoft for the MS-DOS operating system. I have been working on a FAT parsing tool for some days, and I wanted to explain some of the things I have learned.
Fsync() after open() is an elaborate no-op (despairlabs.com)
I have spent the last couple of years of my life trying to make sense of fsync() and bringing OpenZFS up to code. I’ve read a lot of horror stories about this apparently-simple syscall in that time, usually written by people who tried very hard to get it right but ended up losing data in different ways. I hesitate to say I enjoy reading these things, because they usually start with some catastrophic data loss situation and that’s just miserably unfair.
Time Trouble (os2museum.com)
Last Friday I had a moment of panic. While investigating why different run-time libraries might interpret file timestamps differently, I noticed that even Windows doesn’t always agree with itself. When was dos4gw.exe last modified, at 10:14 PM or 9:14 PM?
50 years in filesystems: 1974 – Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp (koehntopp.info)
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 if you compare modern educational material, and the problems discussed with older material. And then look for the research papers and sources that fueled the change.
How fast can you open 1000 files? (lemire.me)
Jarred Sumner, the main author of the Bun JavaScript engine, commented a few days ago on X that opening many files on macOS could be slow due to thread contention: “your $5,000 computer is only capable of opening 1 file at a time”.
3FS – a parallel file system from DeepSeek (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
Hyperspace (hypercritical.co)
My interest in file systems started when I discovered how type and creator codes1 and resource forks contributed to the fantastic user interface on my original Macintosh in 1984.
Understanding Surrogate Pairs: Why Some Windows Filenames Can't Be Read (zaferbalkan.com)
This time I am going to write about some odd behavior by Windows. The behavior is by design and there is no obvious security impact. Therefore, this article is written just for the sake of sharing some geeky content.
SystemV filesystem being removed from the Linux kernel (phoronix.com)
The SystemV file-system that implements Xenix FS, SystemV/386 FS, and Coherent FS is set to be removed from the Linux kernel.