Hi, I have a question about the Linux File Manager. How does it stores files contiguously,noncontiguouly or indexed and how does it access files sequentialy or direct? or does it use all methods?

Thanks,

cucolin@

I think you may have file manager confused with filesystem perhaps? File manager just basically read the files from the filesystem, etc.

Also in the future, try to use better titles instead of just "F" which doesn't describe your question at all.

Regards.

There is no "Linux File Manager"
There are many file managers that run on top
of linux. File managers run in user-space and
don't involve themselves with those kinds of
details. They simply present the user with the
files within the filesystem. Although some do
create indexes of the files in a directory and
create thumbnails and other such amenities
these are just more files.

Do you mean the filesystem? File systems
run within the kernel. There are many
filesystems that operate under Linux. Most
of the file systems under linux try to store
files contiguously when they can b/c it
improves performance somtimes they can't
and the files are segmented.

O_DIRECT is the way to access files directly and
it is a hack mainly used by databases such as Oracle.

What exactly do you want to know about?

Sorry for the subject title it was not my intention. I just would like to know how is different from Windows or does Linux stores files the same way? So, for what I read Linux stores files contiguously and access them using a direct search method....Is this correct?

Thank you very much my friends,

cucolin@

Yes, all linux file-systems that are newer or
same age as ext2 try to avoid fragmentation.
(Of course, for simple reasons of file-size
and amount of free space may not always
be possible - but Linux is better at it than
Windows [but one has to say that ntfs is
much better than FAT at this, too]).

I am not sure what you mean with the
direct search method. As opposed to
FAT linux file systems don't have a central
allocation table at the beginning of the
physical drive but rather spread the information
from the center which makes faster
target hits more likely.

Cheers,
Tink

So, LogicG8 I was wondering when is that Linux can not store files contiguosly? and decides to store them in segmented mode?

Tinkster thank you for your response and I would like to take the opportunity to ask you about Slackware. Is it a good replacement now that Red Hat decided not to support users anymore? could you please suggest a version that you think is stable and reliable for beginners? Does Linux stores files noncontigously?

Thank you..

Usually it happens when the file-system gets filled
and can't find any chunks of free space large
enough to fit a new file.

I wouldn't really recommend Slack for beginners.
It's my favorite binary based distro but it expects
you to know what you are doing and set up a lot
of things by yourself.

RH isn't supporting end users directly anymore, but
Fedora will hopefully build a strong community. If you
have it and it works for you, you should probably stay
where you are.

Slackware is a little hard for newbies(Well.... not really.. thats what I started with and I did just fine ) but it is the best linux I've tried and I've tried : Mandrake,Lindows,and RedHat.
I find slackware easier to understand than windows.(I'm probably just wierd though)

If you want to try it then I recommend version 9.0.
It's the one I'm using right now.I've used 7.0,8.0,8.1,9.0

Slackware Home Page

Hope I helped ,
WindowsBurner out.

this document isn't complete (and is a bit dated), but it still has a lot of good info and links re. filesystems:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Filesystems-HOWTO.html

for true beginners leaving RH, I'd personally recommend Mandrake. JMHO.