Practical File System Design

By Dominic Giampaolo

This is the new guide to the design and implementation of file systems in general, and the Be File System (BFS) in particular. This book covers all topics related to file systems, going into considerable depth where traditional operating systems books often stop. Advanced topics are covered in detail such as journaling, attributes, indexing and query processing. Built from scratch as a modern 64 bit, journaled file system, BFS is the primary file system for the Be Operating System (BeOS), which was designed for high performance multimedia applications. You do not have to be a kernel architect or file system engineer to use Practical File System Design. Neither do you have to be a BeOS developer or user. Only basic knowledge of C is required. If you have ever wondered about how file systems work, how to implement one, or want to learn more about the Be File System, this book is all you will need.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558604979
• ISBN13: 9781558604971
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Good, especially for the price, but not the last word

I'll keep this short and sweet - the 3-stars reviews (go read them) are correct about scope, but slightly off target. The subtitle of the book is "... with the Be File System." That subtitle more than explains the limited scope of the book. If you're not familiar with the internals of a filesystem, this is an excellent way to learn. The Be file system is advanced enough to be useful in the real world (better than many in use today), but simple enough to be understood by the average programmer or the well-educated layman. It's not the be-all of filesystems (pun intended), but it's damned good and quite comprehensible. Recommended if you want to see a good example of a file system. If you want cutting edge, you need to start reading the journals and looking over the zfs, next-gen Linux filesystems, lustre, etc. Finally, you can't beat the price for this book, as it's free at the authors home page. That's now at [...], where you can find both the free pdf version of the book and the File System construction toolkit mentioned in the appendix.

Online Copy Available

Great book for those who want to get into file system design, but don't know where to start. It's been out of print for a little while, but I contacted the author and he was happy to release a pdf of it on his website: http://nobius.org/. I would highly recommend it!

the Big Picture and the specifics

If you are worried that this will only talk about Be file system design, worry no more. It has overviews of several other major file systems and their pros and cons before wading into the Be decisions for a file system and how they are implimented. So, I thought it was nicely organized and broadly applicable.

I wish every technical writer were this good.

I had wanted to buy this book for some time, butas a Unix Admin, I couldn't justify the money nor thestudy time. Well, now that I've bought it, I'mkicking myself for not doing so earlier. I havegained a much greater understanding of hashes, trees,filesystems, and databases. The book is an epitomeof clarity of thought and presentation. It's not often(never?) that I find a technical book that I wantto read cover to cover in one sitting! I only wishthat the author had more time to revisit the BeFSshort-comings that he mentions, and then GPL the endresult.

Excellent coverage of advanced file system topics.

I found this book a useful insight into the mechanisms at work in modern file systems. I especially found the performance comparisons of popular file systems useful, giving the reader the ability to analyze the trade-offs of the differing implementations, and how those design decisions are based on the requirements of the file-system.