review by
Hans Forbrich, March 2004

William von Hagen demystifies Linux file systems in this book. Starting with a simple chapter on File System theory, he builds up to an explanation of Journaling filesystems such as ext3, IBM's JFS, ReiserFS and SGI's XFS. After a good discussion of Logical Volume management, he then discusses distributed file systems such as NFS and Samba.

The book includes guidelines on testing performance, backup and recovery and clearly explains fsck. As a bonus, the CD-ROM includes benchmarking utilities as well as the sources for a number of file systems, and easy to read guidelines for upgrading kernels.