What is linux file type

Beginner’s Guide on Linux File System Types [Detailed Explanation]

Many operating systems run in the digital ecosystem instead of the generic Windows OS and macOS. Linux is a competitive operating system that has gained exceptional popularity among developers. With such extensive use in the market, understanding the OS is necessary. Thus, we have set up an article based on providing an overview of the Linux file system types. With knowledge of these file systems, you can dissect the key to data management. Let’s start with the definition of the Linux file system.

What Is Linux File System?

We shall be first moving into the discussion of the Linux file system. This will help the readers figure out the definition and essential elements of the file system.

The file system holds the collection of data or files stored within the computer’s hard disk or storage device. These systems define the location and positioning of the files within the storage device, which explains quite much about the importance of the file systems. Linux provides a dedicated set of file systems that stores every bit of data required for booting up the Linux systems.

The Linux file systems operate in the background and work continually to maintain the data within a system. They are pretty similar to a general file system, where they are available as a built-in layer of the Linux OS. Along with the major crediting and management of data, it also provides services in maintaining information such as file name, size, creation date, and other details.

Besides, there are some links for you if you meet problems in Linux, such as:

With an understanding of the Linux file system, do you wish to know what type of file systems it uses and what nature they have?

What Are the Linux File System Types?

In this part, let’s find out the major Linux file system format types and learn more about them. We have outlined all important file system types and their description to help you understand them better:

The first file system type developed for supporting the Linux kernel, EXT, was implemented in 1992. Being the first of the Extended File System, it lengths to 255 characters and supports up to 2GB of partitions in the file system. Unfortunately, there was a significant problem with timestamping in the EXT file system reported in Linux.

In 1993, all Linux users were shifted from the EXT to the EXT2 file system. It retained the internal structure, which allowed it to enhance and increase the system’s functionalities. With a maximum file size support of 2TiB, no journaling was available for EXT2. Along with that, file corruption and performance loss were the major problems.

By the 2000s, the EXT3 file system type was introduced in the Extended File System family. With this file system still in use, it features the same characteristic functionality; however, it provides journaling to users. Along with that, this file system was designed to prevent corruption and performance loss at all costs.

Being the default file system type for Linux, EXT4 outsmarts the file systems for their performance and operability. Its reliability and stability make it one of the most commendable systems. You can also find it compatible with SSD, which shows it to be a diverse file system in the market.

There is a link to help you figure out the difference between EXT/EXT2/EXT3/EXT4:

Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, which file system to use? This question confuses many people about which file system they can use. This article will explain the Ext2, Ext3, and Ext4 file systems

A competition of the EXT2 file system, the Xiafs format was not as powerful and functional as the former system. With a maximum file size of 64MiB, Xiafs is obsolete in Linux OS and is not currently used anywhere.

Created by IBM, this file system came up as an open-source option in the 90s. While it is known to cover multiple loads, which shows enhanced functionality, this file system has been replaced by more robust and better options in the current era.

This file system was presented as an alternative to the EXT3 file system type. This turned out to be a better file system for its enhanced performance. Although it was not up to the mark, it supported file extension, a prominent feature.

XFS was discovered as one of the best file systems introduced for Linux OS. With support for extremely large file systems, XFS made a mark in the 90s among the top-range file system. It was clear that XFS operates in a better environment and provides high-performance results, which is why it is still supported in the Linux distributions.

SquashFS was introduced as a read-only file system in 2000. This was found to be accessible in embedded systems, which makes it quite restrictive to a specific application. There was not much that could be found in this particular file system type.

Known for its efficient disk space usage, Reiser4 succeeded the ReiserFS file system. It provided support for large system files and optimized the disk space by managing the small files. You can find added encryptions and enhanced performance for this file system.

You can find this file system type for a very restrictive function. With options for snapshotting, drive pooling, and online defragmentation, this file system was not better for the production system.

It is the latest file system type introduced for Linux systems. With a copy-on-write functionality, it was destined to perform better than EXT4. There were multiple advanced features included in the file system, which included filesystem encryption, etc.

With a tentative knowledge of each Linux file system type, it is time to determine the best file system type available for Linux users.

What Is the Best Linux File System Type?

Do you wish to understand which Linux file system types hold the best structure? We have set up a table with some extensive features that help you figure out the file system that is appropriate for you.

Features	EXT	EXT2	EXT3	EXT4	JFS	ReiserFS	SquashFS	Xiaf
Max File Size	2GB	2TB	2TB	16TB	4PB	8TB	16EB	64MB
Max Volume Size	2GB	32TB	32TB	1EB	32PB	16TB	16EB	2GB
Compression	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Encryption	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Checksum	No	No	No	Partial	No	No	No	No
Metadata Only Journaling	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Block Sub-allocation	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	No

The details provided in the table show that EXT4 and EXT3 are nice file system-type structures that hold and manage the data perfectly. These systems’ reliability and stability are exceptional, making them the best. After knowing the file system format, you can format your device to these formats and there is a link to help you:

Conclusion

This article has provided a detailed overview of the Linux file system types and has helped you analyze which file system suits the most in the current systems. The overview of the features was quite comprehensive to help you define the parameters of setting and deciding the system of your choice. If you have other questions about today’s topic «Linux file system types», just continue to read the next part.

FAQs About Linux File System Types

With such an in-depth overview of the Linux file system types, we will now look into some questions you might have related to these system types:

1. How many types of file systems are in Linux?

You can find the support of almost 100 file systems in the Linux operating system. And EXT4 is the most popular one these days.

2. What are the 3 types of files in Linux?

Linux recognizes «regular,» «directory,» and «special» as the three file types in Linux systems.

3. What does XFS stand for?

XFS stands for Extents File System for Linux systems.

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Introduction

When navigating the Linux file system you are sure to encounter different file types. The most used and obvious file types are regular files and directories. However, the Linux operating system has more to offer in terms of file types as it also includes another 5 file types. This short article will help you to recognize all the 7 different file types within the Linux operating system.

Identifying Linux File types

There is only 1 command you need to know, which will help you to identify and categorize all the seven different file types found on the Linux system.

Here is an example output of the above command.

$ ls -ld /etc/services 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 19281 Feb 14 2012 /etc/services

ls command will show the file type as an encoded symbol found as the first character of the file permission part. In this case it is “-“, which means “regular file”. It is important to point out that Linux file types are not to be mistaken with file extensions. Let us have a look at a short summary of all the seven different types of Linux file types and ls command identifiers:

Regular file

The regular file is a most common file type found on the Linux system. It governs all different files such us text files, images, binary files, shared libraries, etc. You can create a regular file with the touch command:

$ touch linuxcareer.com
$ ls -ld linuxcareer.com 
-rw-rw-r-- 1 lubos lubos 0 Jan 10 12:52 linuxcareer.com

The first character of the ls command, in this case “-“, denotes the identification code for the regular file. To remove a regular file you can use the rm command:

Directory

Directory is second most common file type found in Linux. Directory can be created with the mkdir command:

$ mkdir FileTypes
$ ls -ld FileTypes/
drwxrwxr-x 2 lubos lubos 4096 Jan 10 13:14 FileTypes/

As explained earlier, directory can be identified by “d” symbol from the ls command output. To remove empty directory use the rmdir command.

When trying to remove directory with the rmdir command, which contains additional files you will get an error message:

rmdir: failed to remove `FileTypes/': Directory not empty

In this case you need to use a command:

Character device

Character and block device files allow users and programs to communicate with hardware peripheral devices. For example:

$ ls -ld /dev/vmmon 
crw------- 1 root root 10, 165 Jan 4 10:13 /dev/vmmon

In this case the character device is the vmware module device.

Block Device

Block devices are similar to character devices. They mostly govern hardware as hard drives, memory, etc.

$ ls -ld /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 Jan 4 10:12 /dev/sda

Local domain sockets

Local domain sockets are used for communication between processes. Generally, they are used by services such as X windows, syslog and etc.

$ ls -ld /dev/log
srw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 Jan 4 10:13 /dev/log

Sockets can be created by socket system call and removed by the unlink or rm commands.

Named Pipes

Similarly as Local sockets, named pipes allow communication between two local processes. They can be created by the mknod command and removed with the rm command.

Symbolic Links

With symbolic links an administrator can assign a file or directory multiple identities. Symbolic link can be though of as a pointer to an original file. There are two types of symbolic links:

The difference between hard and soft links is that soft links use file name as reference and hard links use direct reference to the original file. Furthermore, hard links cannot cross file systems and partitions. To create symbolic soft link we can use ln -s command:

$ echo file1 > file1
$ ln -s file1 file2
$ cat file2 
file1
$ ls -ld file2 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 lubos lubos 5 Jan 10 14:42 file2 -> file1

To remove symbolic link we can use unlink or rm command.

Conclusion

As a system administrator you will mostly work with regular files, directories block and character devices. As a software developer you will also work with local sockets and named pipes.

Related Linux Tutorials:

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