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Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

yulian.kuncheff.com

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Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#71

Post by keeperofdakeys »

mithrilskeleton wrote: post #44

UDF is pretty cool. It is an open standard supported by Windows and Mac OS X, but for some reason linux doesn't support versions higher than 2.01 Maybe somebody here has the skill and time to fix this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format

So I actually have a 16GB usb formatted as UDF. It seems to work perfectly in Linux, Windows vista+, and read only support in XP. I need to explicitly unmount it in Windows though, otherwise it becomes read-only the next time I plug it in to a Windows machine (mounting it on linux fixes this).

Now I've never gotten it to work on OSX though, which is by trying my friends machines. I've always used the linux udf utility to format it, and have tried both with and without a partition table. It seems OSX, unlike Windows and Linux, actually respects the partition id.

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#72

Post by iso-8859-1 »

chao- wrote: post #59

I ran into yet another consequence of this situation today: In a Linux/Windows setup, I lost two hours of minor Photoshop work (i.e. stuff that was simple but annoying to recreate). I have generally found it safe to read from my NTFS drives in Linux (I avoid writing if at all possible). This time, however, when I went to load the result of my work back in Linux, it could not read the folder (Thunar reported some gene…

Linux (ntfs-3g actually) won't mount your NTFS drive if it is hibernated. So I'd really avoid booting the other OS after hibernating one.

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#73

Post by iso-8859-1 »

glabifrons wrote: post #52
Camillo wrote: post #39

A friend of mine uses ZFS on OS X. Apparently it works quite well. I imagine Linux support is good too, but I'm not sure about Windows. At any rate, I'm surprised the author didn't mention it.

I thought ZFS on OS X was read-only. Linux ZFS is still quite young, only supports a very early version of the fs, and can't be updated to the newest without serious reverse-engineering. As for ZFS on windows, I definitely would not hold my breath. I ran into the same frustration as the author and gave up. My notebook triple-boots Linux, Solaris 11, and OS X (I have no use for windows) and would be beyond thrilled to…

> Linux ZFS is still quite young, only supports a very early version of the fs

Which implementation are you talking about? See https://launchpad.net/~zfs-native/+archive/stable . Zpool version 28 is old now? The only implementation of 31-33 is in Solaris! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Comparisons

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#74

Post by blablabla123 »

saulrh wrote: post #35
seldo wrote: post #6

I think the real, but unhelpful answer is "supply and demand". Most filesystems are used by only one operating system at a time. If two operating systems need to share files, they're usually on different machines, so it's simpler to copy the files or provide a network interface to them, rather than share disk-level access. Getting different OS makers to standardize (and therefore slow innovation) on something as perf…

provide a network interface to them If you're trying to use partitions off a single disk, implement this using minimal virtual machines. OSX in single-user mode and only the necessary kernel modules loaded, windows server core, suitably tiny linux. Not as good as native fs drivers (in particular, VMs are memory hogs), but cheaper than hardware and a lot faster than going through a cable.

This makes you happy until it fails. Windows, Mac OS X and even real-world Linux write state information onto the FS. (Hibernate etc.) If stuff fails, you may not be able to boot into your "native Installation" anymore.

Another thing is evolving features, Windows is particularly good at this: more and more features are added to the FS, if you don't keep mini VM and native Installation in sync, weird stuff could happen.

I use dual boot since many years, but I have stopped sharing partitions completely. If I need interoperability I use the Cloud, USB sticks and "normal VMs". It's fool-proof, safe and low maintenance.

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#75

Post by regularfry »

thristian wrote: post #57
mithrilskeleton wrote: post #44

UDF is pretty cool. It is an open standard supported by Windows and Mac OS X, but for some reason linux doesn't support versions higher than 2.01 Maybe somebody here has the skill and time to fix this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format

To be fair, the only versions higher than 2.01 listed on that page are 2.50 (which adds the ability to store all metadata on a separate partition... not that useful) and 2.60 (which adds support for "partial overwrites" on sequentially-recorded media). Neither of those seem terribly useful for the "UDF filesystem on a shared hard-disk partition" use-case we're talking about, so I don't think Linux's limit of UDF 2.01…

It's important if it will refuse to mount a later version. I don't know if that's the case, just guessing here.

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#77

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

shurcooL wrote: post #21

I'm more upset there are no filesystems where I can organize files by applying labels to them, similar to how one can apply labels to email in Gmail.

Google Docs used to do that (maybe it still does). It was absolute chaos and very confusing.

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#78

Post by nitrogen »

I triple-boot my desktop and laptop (Linux, W7, XP), and have a pair of large NTFS partitions to share data (including my Steam library using symlink trickery) between all three operating systems. The downside is that the open source version of ntfs-3g is slow (still faster than using a VM), and its allocation strategy seems to cause extensive fragmentation.

To those wondering why VMs are insufficient, if you have work (or gaming) to be done that requires maximum performance in multiple operating systems, a VM is not fast enough. I develop software for my startup in Linux, write client software in XP, and do video work and game in all three.

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#79

Post by NelsonMinar »

My use case is external USB drives. A lot of comments in this discussion have said "use a network drive!". Which works in some scenarios, but brings a lot of complication.= over a USB drive.

A $85 USB 2.5" drive carries a terabyte of data, fits in your pocket, needs only a single cable to use (and no external power), and transfers data faster than 100MBps ethernet. Or if you really care about speed, $40 gets you a 64GB USB3 flash drive that's faster than gigabit ethernet. The problem is there's no filesystem you can write on these drives that every machine can read.

Re: Why are there no true cross-platform filesystems?

#80

Post by jrockway »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #79

My use case is external USB drives. A lot of comments in this discussion have said "use a network drive!". Which works in some scenarios, but brings a lot of complication.= over a USB drive. A $85 USB 2.5" drive carries a terabyte of data, fits in your pocket, needs only a single cable to use (and no external power), and transfers data faster than 100MBps ethernet. Or if you really care about speed, $40 gets you a 64…

Link to the $4 64GB USB3 drive?
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