Olaf Barthel on the Amiga file system

[zee4]

Club Amiga: FFS
 
OSNews is reporting that CAM has released another article, this one by Olaf Barthel on the Amiga file system(s). It covers the history of it from the Amiga Inc. days though Commodore and to what's been done with it for OS 4.

(CAM members also know there's a follow-up of sorts in this month's issue.)

[JetRacer]

After reading this I think the only sane thing to do is to trash dos.library + FFS and use emulation for legacy filesystems. I can't come up with a single reason for sticking with FFS or the weird DOS in the future.

I'm using SFS (SmartFileSystem) now and I've never looked back. If dos.library is everything that stands between the users and even better filesystems, then there's not much choice as far as I'm concerned.

To hell with FFS and re-implement dos.library instead. Let's migrate people. Backwards compatibility at any cost is not a virtue.

[zee4]

I agree, while I don't remember it being really bad compared to other computers I was using back then (note it's been probably about 7-8 years since I last used an Amiga, so I'm comparing to 486s, P1s and such.)  These days it wouldn't stack up so well  IMHO.

I think the plug-in idea is good and I think they know what they are doing. The job now is to figure out what needs to be done and then do it right- that's the whole point of the "AG2 review" Fleecy was talking about. I'm looking forward to it.

[KennyR]

Agreed, SFS is my choice also.

[Roj]

Is there any advantage to SFS over PFS? I haven't tried SFS, but I'm curious if it would be an improvement over PFS since PFS hasn't seen an update in quite a while.

[Rodney]

With my last interview with Olaf he talked a little bit about the file systems of AmigaOS. He also talked about (i think) his own experiment he was doing in his own time. Im not talking about FFS->PPC im talking about a new file system he was working on. As i remember it was in the early stages (only papper) but hopfuly, if i get around to doing another interivew with him when OS4 is released, i'll talk to him a little about this.

Did the article mention his filesystem project or did he just talk about general Amiga Filesystem issues?

Oops, dotn worry, found out i could read it for myself :}

[Rodney]

When he says New Amiga File Syste - he's mentioning the implementation that OS4 will use right?

Edit: Ill answere my own question here... yes i believe he is talking about the reimplimentation of FSS (known as FFS2)

the following is a part of my interview with olaf barthel that can be found here

Olaf
Talk about busy You'll know that you are too busy if you can't afford a hobby. I'm reading books a hobby, and I'm a certified movie enthusiast.

Right now there's nothing concrete in the pipeline. I've got plans to rework the SMB file system and someday get a stripped-down SMB server running on the Amiga. Then there's the file system issue (designing and implementing the next Amiga file system).

POds
Is the next Amiga File system an OS4 project, or one you happily do in your spare time?

Olaf
This ought to become an OS4 project. But I'm happy to tinker with it until I've got something to show.

POds
How would this differ from FFS2 (which is feature as part of OS4)?

Olaf
A new Amiga file system would have to be more reliable, faster, be able to support larger media and be able to handle the large files today's multimedia applications are expected to deal with. In a nutshell, we'd need a very different file system architecture.

POds
Or are you in fact talking about FFS2?

Olaf
No, the FFS re-implementation is pretty much feature-complete. The overall design has many shortcomings, but you can't really address them without sacrificing backwards compatibility or restarting the testing cycle.

POds
Would you ever suggest Hyperion should implement it, when the time is right? What’s the likely hood of this becoming a part of AmigaOS eventually?

Olaf
Designing and implementing a file system is no small task, and it's no fun if you're going to market and sell it yourself. It ought to become part of the operating system.


POds
So, what parts of the filesystem have you got done? Or if you haven’t got anything done yet, I.e., not started yet... What have you though about implementing..?

Olaf
I'm still in the "let's see what could be useful" stage, trying to put together a list of features and things to avoid. For example, the new file system should use journaling, allow for file names to be longer than 107 characters, permit file names chosen from character sets other than ISO 8859 latin 1 and seek performance should be better. On top of that, it wouldn't hurt if had a plugin system for extending file system functionality (such as for caching and encryption).

Note: im planning on a second interview with olaf. But i want to postpone it till the OS4 release, when olaf should be a little less busy, and he'll prolly have a lot more to talk about .

[iamaboringperson]

a VERY interesting article(althogh i knew most of that already)!

i cant wait for AOS4(IF it comes out)

it should be exciting to see how the new FS turns out :-)

[Ohno]

a VERY interesting article(althogh i knew most of that already)!

And to think that was only one page out of last months CAM!
There's a lot of interesting stuff in this months CAM as well  :-D

[Darth_X]

Is Olaf working for FREE on FFS?

[JetRacer]

SFS can be found here:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~hjohn/SFS

SFS is extremely fast. When I changed from FFS to SFS I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like getting a serius hardware upgrade(!). It's half the reason I still use my good old A1200 frequently, even though I got a top notch x86.

It's extremely safe too. Havn't even had the slightest problem with it since I started using it. Unlike FFS, which had a good chance of messing things up. And the notorius crashing of FFS while validating partitions residing beyond the 2GB limit almost drove me nuts. Thank god for SFS!

[Kent]

JetRacer wrote:
Snip!

I'm curious about PFS vs SFS as well.  So far all that I've seen of SFS is the same as PFS but PFS offers a few features not found in SFS.  Anyone out there ever used both?

:pint:

[scholle]

I'd say: Thank John Hendrikx for SFS. It's
really great!

[scholle]

I ask myself wether it could be possible to
integrate SFS into OS4.0, as a real part of
the system. There would be less work of re-
implementing a new FS. It should be given a
chance since it's much better than FFS. I never
had any big problems with SFS within years now.
Wasn't it already part of the OS3.5 or 3.9 Contribution files?

Maybe the procedure of integrating top quality
Freeware/Shareware into the OS should even become a standard method? Maybe on a user survey basis?