Tru64
AdvFS Technology
What's AdvFS?
AdvFS is a file system that was developed by Digital Equipment Corp and
continues to be part of HP's
Tru64 operating system. If you're not familiar with the Tru64
Advanced File System, you can check out
the product
documentation on HP's web site.
What's cool about
AdvFS?
AdvFS has a number of interesting features:
- Simplified file system and storage management
- Flexible multi-device storage pools shared by multiple file systems,
with or without a volume manager
- Exceptional file system availability
- No need to take file systems off-line to expand, shrink or
reconfigure
- Snapshots for consistent backups while applications are
on-line
- Ability to recover deleted files
- Wide range of performance management tools
- Fine grain control over file system and file placement
within the storage pool
- On-line rebalancing of files and free space across the
storage pool
- On-demand or background file and file system defragmentation
- Transaction log management
- Choices for logging metadata and data (selectable at the
file system or file level) asynchronously or synchronously
What's available from
this project?
This project is making available two generations of AdvFS source code,
licensed under GPLv2 to be compatible with the Linux kernel.
The first generation is the version that is currently shipping on Tru64
which represents a well tested enterprise quality file system that has
been deployed worldwide for many years. The second generation
is a port that was completed a few years ago but never
productized. It includes major improvements
to portions of the file system and is functionally complete
but never went through extensive field or system testing.
The source code is available from the download page.
We're also including design documentation for both code bases.
The documentions includes the "Hitchhikers Guide to AdvFS",
which describes the design of the Tru64 implemention of AdvFS, as well
as training materials that go along with the Hitchhikers
Guide. The design of the second generation is a set of
component design specifications that describe changes and enhancements
that we made as part of the port. The documentation is
available from the download page.
We will also soon be making a set of test cases available so check
back here again.
Our objective is to make the code available so that Linux developers
can pick and choose pieces that make sense for existing and new linux
file systems. Its also a good reference for anyone interested
in file
systems. However, we discourage Tru64 users from trying to
build and use the code as it won't be supported by HP on Tru64.
How is the code
licensed?
The code on this site is licensed under the GPLv2 to be compatible with
the Linux kernel.
Questions?
If you have questions, please use the developers forum or send a note to the linux file system developers mailing list.