by Rosemarie Makhmaltchi

Created on: January 13, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

A file system is the way data is stored and organized on a storage medium, such as a hard drive or compact disk. There are dozens of different file systems available for use, and the Fedora Core 4 Linux distribution supports several of them. This paper briefly describes some of the disk file system available through this operating system.

You may need to know the definitions of the following terms in order to fully understand the make up and features of each file system discussed:

The Linux kernel manages the system. It is the center of every Linux distribution. Distributions consist of the kernel and add-on software that let the user interact with the kernel.

Inodes contain important information on each file, such as the type of file; who has permission to access the file; the file's owners; time stamps (when it was created, last modified, etc.); file size; and pointers to where the file is physically located on the storage medium. Inodes also hold file attributes, which include its access permissions.

Permissions indicate who is able to view, change, and execute a file or directory. Every file on a Linux system has its own set of permissions.

A Journaling file system creates a hidden file (a journal) on the hard disk. This technique protects against data loss by informally writing data to the disk while the Linux kernel is processing it and deciding where to formally place it. In the event of a system failure, the data would not be lost, because the journal has placed a record of it on disk.

Metadata includes information about the files on a system, such as access permissions and ownership, among other attributes.

The Root Partition the section of a hard drive on which the computer's operating system resides. The computer boots to this partition on startup.

Now that you know the terminology associated with file systems supported by Fedora Core 4, we can discuss them. The following section contains a brief history and description of many disk file systems that are supported by Fedora Core 4.

Fedora's Virtual File Allocation Table (VFAT) supports the FAT32 file system. FAT32 is a file system used in Microsoft Windows computers. The number "32" indicates the size of space allocated for naming address pointers on a hard disk. The larger the space, the more pointers are available. Having more pointers allows larger portions of the disk to be searched at a time. Fedora Core 4's VFAT module allows the kernel to read and write to FAT32 partitions, including floppy and compact

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