Archive Manager

JFS – Journaled File System

The Journaled File System (JFS) is a journaling file system that was open-sourced by IBM in 1999. Most Linux distributions support JFS. It is low on resource usage and comparatively fast doing all kinds of filesystem operations.

JFS journals metadata only, which means that metadata will remain consistent but user files may be corrupted after a crash or power loss.

Support for which has been available in the Linux kernel since 2002.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

  • Fully 64-bit.
  • Uses a B+ tree to accelerate lookups in directories. JFS can store 8 entries of a directory in the directory’s inode before moving the entries to a B+ tree. JFS also indexes extents in a B+ tree.
  • Dynamically allocates space for disk inodes as necessary.
  • Directory structures designed for speed and efficiency:
  • Directories with eight or fewer entries have their contents storied inline within that directory’s i-node.
  • Directories with more than eight entries have their contents stored in a B+ tree keyed on name.
  • JFS uses extents for allocating blocks for large files.
  • Support for extended attributes in addition to standard Unix-style permissions.
  • Support for both internal and external logs (see below).
  • Extremely Scalable; Consistent performance from minimum file size up to 4 petabytes.
  • Algorithms designed for high performance on very large systems.
  • Performance tuned for Linux.
  • Designed from the ground up to provide Transaction/Log (not an add-on).
  • Restarts after a system failure < 1 sec.
  • Proven Journaling FS technology (10+ years in AIX).
  • Original design goals: Performance, Robustness, SMP.
  • Designed to operate on SMP hardware, with code optimized for at least a 4-way SMP machine.
  • TRIM support.

Website:
Support:
Developer: IBM
License: GNU General Public License v2.0


Related Software

Journaling File Systems
ext4Evolved from ext3 adding many notable features including extents
XFSDesigned to maintain high performance with large files and file systems
BtrfsChecksumming Copy on Write File system
F2FSFlash file system initially developed by Samsung Electronics
OpenZFSAdvanced file system and volume manager originally developed for Solaris
GFS2Shared disk file system for Linux computer clusters
ext3Default file system for many popular Linux distributions
JFSJournaled File System
UBIFSFile system for raw flash memory used through UBI volumes
OCFS2Extent-based cluster file system
BcachefsAdvanced file system ejected from the mainline kernel

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