Filesystems

This section highlights updates and changes that relate to filesystems, filesystem commands, and disk configuration:

• Filesystem types, including:

  • the VxFS filesystem

  • the HTFS filesystem

  • the /stand filesystem

  • the cdfs filesystem

  • the dosfs filesystem

  • the memfs filesystem, /tmp, and /var/tmp

• Filesystem encryption

• Disk configuration and filesystem commands

See also:

• ``Filesystems checklist and notes''

Filesystem types

SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 provides support for the following filesystems:

• VxFS (default root filesystem)  (new)

• HTFS   (updated)

• EAFS ( /stand filesystem)

• AFS and S51K/ES51K

• cdfs (JOLIET, RCKRDG, ISO9660, and High Sierra)  (updated)

• dosfs (DOS, VFAT, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12)  (updated)

• memfs   (new)

• NFS (updated with version 3.0)

All of the filesystem types supported on SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 offer the following enhancements:

• support for up to 15 divisions/slices per partition

• encrypted filesystems using the marry(ADM) command -- see ``Filesystem encryption''.

The VxFS filesystem

Available for the first time on SCO OpenServer, the VERITAS VxFS (vxfs) filesystem type is the default Release 6 root filesystem, offering high performance, journaling, and large file support.

Highlights of this filesystem include:

• support for greater than 64k inodes

• dynamic inode allocation

• file sizes up to 1Tb

See ``VERITAS filesystem (VxFS) documentation overview'' for more information.

Note the following about vxfs support:

• If you create files larger than 2GB in length, you should verify that any backup solution you are using is capable of archiving these files. The SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 default version of cpio(C) can archive large files, but the Release 5 version (/osr5/usr/bin/cpio) cannot. See ``The cpio(C) command'' for more details.

• When making vxfs filesystems that are larger than 128GB, specify a blocksize of ``8192'' when running mkfs(ADM). For example:
  
  # mkfs -f vxfs -o largefiles,bsize=8192 /dev/rdsk/c0b0t0d0s4

The HTFS filesystem

The HTFS driver has been ported to the SVR5 kernel for this release. It also provides support for the EAFS, AFS, S51K, and ES51K filesystem types. Note the following:

• The HTFS filesystem does not support journaling. Consequently, you should specify the -o full option to fsck. As always, you should run fsck before mounting a filesystem.

  Because journaling is disabled, it is not possible for fsck(ADM) to use a journal-based recover. When fsck(ADM) runs, it performs a full check of bitmaps, directories, and so forth.

• HTFS does not support synchronous logging of write data. However, HTFS will synchronously write data to disk if a file is opened with O_SYNC, or if the fsync() system call is issued.

• HTFS does not create filesystem versions. However, you can list and access file versions created under prior versions of SCO OpenServer.

  Because there is no versioning support, the maxvdepth and minvtime options to mount(ADM) are ignored for HTFS filesystems.

• While VxFS is the default root filesystem, you can select to use the HTFS filesystem type instead.

See ``Filesystem mount options (HTFS, EAFS, AFS, S51K)'' for more information.

The /stand filesystem

The /stand filesystem is now always mounted read/write. All of the SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 idtools expect to find /stand mounted in this manner.

The cdfs filesystem

The cdfs filesystem replaces the SCO OpenServer Release 5 High Sierra (HS) filesystem, providing the same support for the underlying ISO9660 format, plus the UNIX RockRidge (RCKRDG) extension. In addition, SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 now supports the JOLIET extension of Windows 95 (and later Microsoft Windows family operating systems).

Two new mount options have been added to the mount(ADM) command for cdfs: joliet and nojoliet. By default, mount first attempts to mount a CD-ROM with RockRidge extensions. If that fails, it attempts to mount the CD-ROM with JOLIET extensions if they exist on the CD-ROM. See the mount_cdfs(ADM) manual page for more information.

Note that all of the SCO OpenServer Release 5 CD-ROM filesystem types can still be used with SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 filesystem commands.

See ``cdfs advanced mount options'' for more information.

The dosfs filesystem

The dosfs filesystem replaces the SCO OpenServer Release 5 DOS filesystem. The existing versions of the DOS filesystem type (FAT12 and FAT16) are still supported. Additionally, there is now support for the FAT32 and VFAT (``Extended FAT'', offering support for long filenames) filesystem types.

Note the following:

• Recognized filesystem types are DOS and dosfs. Filesystem commands work with both.

• The /etc/fstyp command detects the DOS and dosfs types.

  ---

  NOTE: /etc/fstyp delays the DOS filesystem specific fstyp from running until the last filesystem type. Any FAT12, FAT16, VFAT, or FAT32 filesystems are detected by the dosfs filesystem-specific fstyp before the DOS filesystem-specific fstyp is executed.

  ---

See ``Managing the dosfs filesystem'' for more information.

The memfs filesystem, /tmp, and /var/tmp

In previous releases, /tmp and /var/tmp are regular directories, and their contents remain there until explicitly deleted (done, by default, once a week via a cron job). In this release, you can select memfs, a volatile in-memory filesystem, as the filesystem type for /tmp and /var/tmp. While memfs provides the highest possible system performance, the volatile nature of memfs may not be expected by applications, utilities, or features that depend on a non-volatile /tmp or /var/tmp.

For example: the vi program crash recovery mechanism relies on its memory files existing in /tmp. If you are editing a file when the machine suddenly reboots (e.g., panic or power failure), your edit buffer is recoverable. If /tmp is memfs, this does not work. As a workaround, individual users can set the "directory" directive in the .exrc file -- see the vi(C) manual page for details. (Note that a volatile /tmp does not affect the vi preserve mechanism, which preserves the edited version of a file when the user's shell quits unexpectedly.)

See ``Managing the memfs filesystem'' for more information.

Filesystem encryption

Filesystem encryption has been added to the marry(ADM) driver. Using the marry(ADM) command, an empty regular file is associated with a block special device name, and encryption is enabled on the file. After a filesystem is created on the block special device and mounted, all data written to the file is encrypted using the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (also known as 128-bit AES and the Rijndael block cipher); all data read from the file is decrypted.

See ``Encrypting filesystems'' and the marry(ADM) manual page for more information.

To fix this problem:

1. As root, change to the /usr/share/meta/doc/AdminHelpTopics/FShome/FSgroup directory.

2. Run the following command:
   
   # doctool --remove AdminHelpTopics/FShome/FSgroup/FS_encfs.desktop

3. Edit the FS_encfs.desktop file and locate the following line:

      DocPath=/usr/share/doc/OpenServer/en/FS_admin/fsN.encfs
   

   Add ``.html'' to the end of this line, then save and exit the file.

4. Run the following command:
   
   # doctool --add AdminHelpTopics/FShome/FSgroup/FS_encfs.desktop

The ``Encrypting filesystems'' topic is now available from the Filesystems category in the online documentation.

Disk configuration and filesystem commands

This section describes enhancements and changes that have been made to the following disk configuration and filesystem commands:

Command	Description
badblk(ADM) , badtrk(ADM)	These commands have been removed. All bad block operations are now handled transparently by the system.
crash(ADM)	This command has been updated to add more HTFS filesystem support. Specifically, a new htinode command prints the inode table for the HTFS, EAFS, AFS, and S51K filesystems. Use the -i option, together with the -e option, to print inactive inodes. The -e option alone prints only active inodes. Use -l to display the free lists. Specific inodes can be specified by the address in kernel memory, or by inode number. However, if inode number is used, then inodes might be found in more than one filesystem. In that case, all of those found are printed.   The inode command is no longer applicable on SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0.
divvy(ADM)	This command now supports up to 15 user-defined divisions on any fdisk(ADM) partition. On the active/boot partition: -- Division 0 is the /dev/stand filesystem -- Division 1 is the swap/dump area -- Division 2 is the /dev/root filesystem -- Division 7 is the whole partition -- Division 13 is used by the boot loader To ensure that the divvy table fits on the screen, unused divisions above division 8 are not displayed. The unlisted divisions are, however, available for use.
dkconfig(ADM), vdisk(HW)	The Virtual Disk Manager (VDISK) is not provided in SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0. All related commands have been removed from the system.
dparam(ADM), dkinit(ADM)	This command has been removed. All hard disk parameters in use reflect the values used by the system BIOS. In SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0, there is no way to change or override hard disk parameters.   To write to the masterboot block, run fdisk(ADM) and select Option 0, Overwrite system master boot code.
fdisk(ADM)	The -a, -c, -d, -t, and -V options are no longer necessary or supported. The -f option does not need to be specified anymore because the raw device associated with the boot hard disk is automatically specified.
fsdb_vxfs(ADM)	The -z option can only be used with /u95/bin/fsdb. /etc/fsdb does not pass the -z option through to /etc/fscmd.d/vxfs/fsdb. See the fsdb_vxfs(ADM) manual page for more information.
hwconfig(C), hw(ADM)	The hwconfig(C) command is obsolete and no longer provided in SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0. Use the hw(ADM) command instead.   A new version of the hw(ADM) command is provided. It has the same options as the hw command available in earlier releases and serves the same purpose, but produces somewhat different output in a somewhat different format. It also numbers processors from "0", rather than from "1" as in the old command.
mount(ADM)	The spongy and tcp NFS mount options are no longer supported.
p_fsck(ADM)	When the parallel fsck command, p_fsck, is run, it produces the following messages: /etc/p_fsck: don't understand extended major (50, 3) /etc/p_fsck: don't understand extended major (50, 4) /etc/p_fsck: don't understand extended major (50, 5) /etc/p_fsck: don't understand extended major (50, 2) These messages can be ignored.
/dev/string devices	The /dev/string devices are no longer part of the system. Similar system information can be viewed using the resmgr(ADM) and dcu(ADM) commands.
/etc/vfstab, /etc/default/filesys	SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 includes the /etc/vfstab file but this file is not the standard SVR5 table of filesystem defaults that you might be familiar with. Rather, it is a symlink to the standard SCO OpenServer /etc/default/filesys file.   There are still places in the online documentation and manual pages that refer to the vfstab file. In all these cases, please refer to the /etc/default/filesys file instead. The SVR5-format version of vfstab is not included in SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0.