Re: NTFS-like streams?

From: Michael Rothwell (rothwell@flyingbuttmonkeys.com)
Date: Mon Aug 14 2000 - 07:14:10 EST


Rogier Wolff wrote:

> Linus' suggestion of having a mix between a file and a dir is
> interesting, but is not representable by a normal ext2fs

filesystems that support streams/forks/EAs are _not_
like ext2, and it seems wrong to make them try to
squeeze into ext2's shoes.

, or
> TAR. Having to extend the TAR format is a pain in the ass. Losing info
> when you untar onto an ext2fs is also annoying.

So there will be a "star" utility for streams filesystems,
which one day will get merged into regular tar. Or "spax"
or whatever.

> A friend of mine has a
> Linux fileserver that is used to share files between his apple and his
> windows machine. The current way that atalkd stores files is the same
> as that HFS exports stuff. This means that everything is
> interoperable.

HFS and netatalk were written specifically to agree
with each other on that hack. Netatalk also supports
other local FS representations. I think HFS does as
well ("-o netatalk" or whatever the option is makes
HFS output its forks in netatalk-compatible format).

It would be nice to have a universal representation
of streams/EAs/forks for FSes that support them, without
using ".LinuxDouble" chicanery. If all EAs are stored
in a separate directory, I imagine they will be orphaned
all the time. I know this happens in HFS. I usually walked
over to a Mac (when I had Macs) to manipulate files, rather
than do it from the linux box, because I would break the
filesystem doing it frm Linux. With the HFS hack, I can only
move/rename/delete whole directories at a time to avoid
filesystem corruption. Or tediously go into each
.AppleWhatever directory, find all the orphaned resources,
and move those as well.

-Michael

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