File systems

Question 1

What is journaling?

Answer 1

Designed to prevent data corruption/loss from power loss

Question 2

How does journaling work?

Answer 2

Notes files written to disk in journal, removes job when completed. At boot partially completed jobs are resumed

Question 3

What is the ext file system?

Answer 3

Extended file system

Question 4

What features did Ext2 bring?

Answer 4

Supported extended attributes (x-attrs), 2TB+ drives

Question 5

What features did Ext3 bring?

Answer 5

Journaling

Question 6

What features did Ext4 bring?

Answer 6

Reduced file fragmentation, Larger volumes and files, Delayed allocation to improve flash memory life

Question 7

What is BtrFS?

Answer 7

B-Tree File System

Drive pooling, snapshots, compression, online defragmentation

Question 8

What is ZFS?

Answer 8

Zeta File Syste,
Designed by Sun Microsystems aquired by oracle
Open sourced under CDDL license

Question 9

What is XFS?

Answer 9

Can be enlarged but not shrunk on the fly

Good with large not small files

Question 10

What is JFS?

Answer 10

Journaled File System developed by IBM for AIX

Partitions can be enlarged not shrunk

Question 11

What is Swap?

Answer 11

Partition reserved as virtual memory that won’t fit in RAM
Not mountable
Used for hibernating

Question 12

What is FAT?

Answer 12

File Allocation Table by Microsoft
FAT32
exFAT supports files over 4GB partitions over 8TB
Not journaled