NAME

kfs − disk file system

SYNOPSIS

­bind -b ’#Kcons’ /dev

­/dev/kfscons
­/dev/kfsctl

­bind ­’#Kfsname’ ­dir

DESCRIPTION

­Kfs implements a hierarchical Inferno file system within an existing file, including disk partitions or flash memory.  It uses the same file system format as the ­kfs command of Plan 9.  The ­kfsctl file accepts two requests:

ream fsname file
Create the file system ­fsname by writing an empty file system image to file. The amount of available space in the file system is limited by the size of file.

filsys fsname file [option ...]
Access an existing file system image residing in ­file and make its contents available as file system fsname. The valid options are: ro, which makes the file system readonly, and flash, which suppresses updates to file and directory access times to reduce the number of writes to flash. 

The file ­kfscons accepts ‘console’ commands to control kfs’s operation; see kfscmd(8).

EXAMPLES

Create an empty file system named ­fs in the file kfs.file.  Because the file system will be no larger than the existing file’s size, and the file is assumed not to be a device file, use zeros(1) to prepare a file with 2048 blocks of 1024 bytes each:

zeros 1024 2048 >kfs.file
echo ream fs kfs.file > ’#Kcons/kfsctl’

Once a file system image has been created by ream, subsequent initialisation requests should use filsys:

echo filsys fs kfs.file >’#Kcons/kfsctl’

In either case, the new filesystem can be bound into the namespace with bind(1):

bind -c ’#Kfs’ /n/local

The contents of the file system can be provided by using commands such as mkdir(1), cp(1) and rm(1) in /n/local, or built from a description using mkfs(8).

The file system must be shut down cleanly using halt:

echo cfs fs >’#Kcons/kfscons’
echo halt >’#Kcons/kfscons’

SEE ALSO

zeros(1), dd(1), kfscmd(8), mkfs(8)

BUGS

It would probably be better to implement it in Limbo. 

Plan 9  —  June 01, 2000