Everything about Unix File System

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

1. Read the overview: Unix File SystemA 5-minute orientation
2. Pick up a classic book: The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinThe most-reprinted book on the subject
3. Read the landmark paper: A fast file system for UNIXCited 366 times
4. Go sideways: Log-structured File System (BSD)A closely related topic
5. Go sideways: Marshall Kirk McKusickA closely related topic

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

• A fast file system for UNIX

  Marshall K. McKusick, William N. Joy, Samuel J. Leffler · 1984 · ACM Transactions on Computer Systems · 366 citations

• A trace-driven analysis of the UNIX 4.2 BSD file system

  John K. Ousterhout, Hervé Da Costa, David Harrison · 1985 · ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review · 49 citations

• File size distribution on UNIX systems

  Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Jorrit N. Herder, Herbert Bos · 2006 · ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review · 28 citations

• A new dimension for the Unix® file system

  David G. Korn, Eduardo Krell · 1990 · Software: Practice and Experience · 23 citations

• TheUNIXSystem: File Security and theUNIXSystem Crypt Command

  J. A. Reeds, P. J. Weinberger · 1984 · AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal · 7 citations

• A replicated Unix file system (extended abstract)

  Barbara Liskov, Robert Gruber, Paul Johnson · 1991 · ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review · 5 citations

• Modeling and preventing TOCTTOU vulnerabilities in Unix-style file systems

  Jinpeng Wei, Calton Pu · 2010 · Computers & Security · 4 citations

• An Installable Version Control File System for Unix

  CHYE-LIN CHEE, SEVKI S. ERDOGAN · 1997 · Software: Practice and Experience · 2 citations

📚 Books worth reading

• The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin · 1791
• Learning the UNIX Operating SystemJerry Peek, Grace Todino-Gonguet · 1985
• UNIX in a NutshellArnold Robbins · 1999
• Essential System AdministrationÆleen Frisch · 1991
• lex & yaccDoug Brown Doug, John R. Levine · 1990
• Linux network administrator's guideOlaf Kirch, Tony Bautts · 1994
• sed & awkDale Dougherty, Arnold Robbins · 1990
• Mastering Unix shell scriptingRandal K. Michael · 2003

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics

• Log-structured File System (BSD) The Log-Structured File System (or LFS) is an implementation of a log-structured file system (a concept originally proposed and implemented by John Ousterhout)…
• Marshall Kirk McKusick Marshall Kirk McKusick (born January 19, 1954) is an American computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD UNIX, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in…
• Soft updates Soft updates is an approach to maintaining file system metadata integrity in the event of a crash or power outage. Soft updates work by tracking and enforcing…
• Tmpfs tmpfs (short for temporary file system) is a temporary file storage paradigm implemented in many Unix-like operating systems. It is intended to appear…
• Ext2 ext2, or second extended file system, is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement…
• Unix filesystem In Unix and operating systems inspired by it, the file system is considered a central component of the operating system. It was also one of the first parts…
• Comparison of file systems The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of computer file systems. All widely used file systems record a last modified…
• List of file systems The following lists identify, characterize, and link to more thorough information on file systems. Many older operating systems support only their one…