Tips for managing Linux filesystems

SSHFS for Remote Filesystems

Mounting a filesystem locally via SSH is not rocket science with sshfs. You don't even need root privileges, after all sshfs is a FUSE:

$ sshfs tktest@192.168.56.105:/home/tktest ./sshdir/
tktest@192.168.56.105's password:
$ cat /proc/mounts | grep ssh
tktest@192.168.56.105:/home/tktest /home/user/tmp/sshdir \
  fuse.sshfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000 0 0

In the preceding commands, an sshfs call is sufficient to mount the /home/tktest directory locally on the server 192.168.56.105. You can work with the target directory as with any other normal directory; the difference is that it is actually on the remote server.

As an alternative to the featured simple block devices, you can also created stackable block devices with Linux that offer additional features, such as the Logical Volume Manager (LVM), software RAID (md-raid), the Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD), or Device-Mapper targets.

Table 2

Filesystems Differences

 

Ext3

Ext4

XFS

Btrfs

Production Ready?

Y

Y

Y

Partially

Filesystem Tools

2fsprogs

e2fsprogs

xfsprogs

btrfs-progs
 

mke2fs, resize2fs, e2fsck, tune2fs

mkfs.xfs, xfs_growfs, xfs_repair, xfs_admin

mkfs.btrfs, btrfs resize, btrfsck, btrfs filesystem

Maximum Filesystem Size

16 TiB

1 EiB

16 EiB

16 EiB

Maximum File Size

2 TiB

1 EiB

8 EiB

8 EiB

Expanding on the Fly?

Y

Y

Y

Y

Shrinking on the Fly?

N

N

N

Y

Expanding Offline?

Y

Y

N

N

Shrinking Offline?

Y

Y

N

N

Discard (ATA trim)

Y

Y

Y

Y

Metadata CRC

Y

Y

Y

Y

Data CRC

N

N

N

Y

Snapshots/clones/internal RAID/compression

N

N

N

Y

Infos

  1. Understanding EXT4 extents: http://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2010/12/20/digital-forensics-understanding-ext4-part-1-extents/
  2. Ext4 kernel documentation https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/ext4.txt
  3. Ext4 data loss: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781/comments/45/

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