Re: A Newbie Question On Filesystems
From: Simon Marchese (sjm_news_at_yahoo.co.uk)
Date: 01/25/05
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Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 18:05:05 +0000 (UTC)
aleatory wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm a UNIX newbie and have a simple question on
> filesystems.
>
> I understand that in the MS Windows world people
> use fdisk to create multiple partitions for OSes,
> applications, and user data. Within each partition
> people create folders to manage files as long as
> you have a relatively big hard drive.
>
> It seems to me that UNIX people tend to create
> lots of filesystems. I personally don't understand
> why people don't just use 3 filesystems: The first
> one for the OS, the second one for applications,
> and the last one for user data?
>
> Any enlightment is highly appreciated.
>
> alea
A couple of answers:
Firstly, in the MS Windows world you are limited on a regular PC to four
partitions per disk, which is why you don't often see more than that.
You sometimes see a one primary (C) and one extended partition with
others (D, E, F ...) but for most users that is over-complex - imagine
explaining it to a barmaid.
("A physicist's theories are worthless unless he can explain them to the
barmaid at the local pub.")
Now, another answer is that a long time ago in Unix, having more than
one disk was a *real* luxury, but the system still needed to be able to
deal with it. But they wanted to keep the simplicity of the tree
structured file system. (If you want to know who "they" were, check the
web.) To do so, they allowed each disk to be a filesystem which fitted
right in to to the tree structure. Note that Billionaire Bill's DOS
hackers decided not to keep the tree simple when they designed the disk
part of the OS, if "Operating System" is not too grand a term here.
Hence seperate drive names.
However, I have a motto which says "what one bunch of hackers have
joined together, another bunch of hackers will want to take apart", so
having allowed a single UNIX system to use multiple disks, other guys
wanted to split up a single disk for the good reasons mentioned in
replies on this thread. And the good news that UNIX allows this to
happen without breaking the simplicity of the tree structured file system.
So however many filesystems I have in a UNIX system, I have one tree
structured filesystem. Of course, having let the cat out of the bag,
some folk have rather taken it to extremes, but this scheme still allows
a nice big /usr for the OS, a fast RAM fs for /tmp, a /home that can't
stop my system running when my lusers fill it up and a vast /data for
something like Oracle on an external SAN infrastructure, all within that
simple tree-structured filesystem.
That's my two-penneth worth.
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