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Ask HN: What are the good books on filesystems or storage?
Hi HN!
I've been nurturing an interest in storage and filesystems, but have been running into a real drought of high-quality books on the topic. On the database side of the world, we have things like Database Internals, Database Management Systems, or even DDIA. Filesystems, however, don't seem to get as much coverage.
So... yeah. If someone asked you what book to read to really grok filesystems, what would you suggest? Thanks!
- in9 3y agoPractical File System Design by Dominic Giampaolo File Systems: Structures and Algorithms by Harbor There is probably a relevant chapter on the The Linux Programming Interface on file systems as well.
- ksherlock 3y agoPFSD is out of print and PDF is freely available http://www.nobius.org/dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf http://www.nobius.org/dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf http://www.nobius.org/dbg/ http://www.nobius.org/dbg/
- digikata 3y agoI would recommend as a starter the Persistence section of the U Wisc Operating Systems open text book. https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/ https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/. In particular the cited papers are foundations of major file system approaches of used many (probably most) systems today. In the non-textbook sources, I would also recommend archives of the Usenix FAST conferences (File and Storage Technologies), where you often see newer and experimental approaches to file systems. e.g. F2FS, https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast15/technical-sessions/presentation/lee https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast15/technical-sessions/...
- ezedv 3y agoFor an in-depth understanding of filesystems, I highly recommend "The Design of the UNIX Operating System" by Maurice J. Bach. It might be an older book, but it covers filesystems in a comprehensive and insightful way