MINIX file system

MINIX file system
Developer(s) Open Source Community
Full name MINIX file system version 3
Introduced 1987 with MINIX 1.0
Partition identifier 0x81 (MBR)
Features
Dates recorded last metadata change, last file change, last file access
Date resolution 1s
File system permissions POSIX
Transparent compression No
Transparent encryption No (provided at the block device level)
Other
Supported operating systems MINIX 3, Linux and HelenOS

The MINIX file system is the native file system of the MINIX operating system.

History

MINIX was written from scratch by Andrew S. Tanenbaum in the 1980s, as a Unix-like operating system whose source code could be used freely in education. The MINIX file system was designed for use with MINIX; it copies the basic structure of the Unix File System but avoids any complex features in the interest of keeping the source code clean, clear and simple, to meet the overall goal of MINIX to be a useful teaching aid.[1]

When Linus Torvalds first started writing his Linux operating system kernel (1991), he was working on a machine running MINIX, and adopted its file system layout. This soon proved problematic, since MINIX restricted filename lengths to fourteen characters (thirty in later versions), it limited partitions to 64 megabytes,[2] and the file system was designed for teaching purposes, not performance.[3] The Extended file system (ext; April 1992) was developed to replace MINIX's, but it was only with the second version of this, ext2, that Linux obtained a commercial-grade file system.[3] As of 1994, the MINIX file system was "scarcely in use" among Linux users.[2]

Design and implementation

A MINIX file system has six components:[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Tanenbaum, Andrew S; Albert S. Woodhull (14 January 2006). Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-142938-8.
  2. 1 2 Strobel, Stefan; Uhl, Thomas (1994). Linux—Unleashing the Workstation in Your PC. Springer-Verlag. p. 54.
  3. 1 2 Mauerer, Wolfgang (2010). Professional Linux Kernel Architecture. John Wiley & Sons.

See also

External links

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