Linux FS
Mount & Root File System
Linux support multi-filesystem which means different FS (ext4, NFS, FAT32 etc.) can be used at the same time. The trick to achieve that is by using VFS and the concept of mount.
Every FS being used by the kernal must have a mount point in the root file system (rootfs). Then, the kernal can manipulate data between different FS leveraging virtual file system described below.
Linux VFS
Virtual File System is a part of the system kernal and it works as an abstraction layer between the user and actual implementation of FS.
VFS is more like an interface and all the actual FS such as ext4, NFS, FAT32 must implement the declared system function read()
, write()
, and open()
.
The proc file system is widely used in linux. It’s a VFS used for dealing with the kernel functionalities. We can use command like cat /proc/cpuinfo
to check cpu status. Reach to the tutorial for more detail about proc FS.
Linux NFS
What is NFS
Linux Network File System (NFS) is the most widely used network-based file system. The AWS EFS is similar to NFS by using the client-server design.