File Systems in Solaris

Solaris supports the following types of file systems:

• Disk-based file systems

  Disk-based file systems enable you to access files stored on a locally attached media such as hard disks, CD-ROMs, or USB devices. Solaris supports different types of disk-based file systems.

  • UFS

    Legacy UNIX file system (based on the BSD Fat Fast File system).

  • ZFS

    Zettabyte file system (ZFS) is the default disk-based and root file system. The ZFS file system has some features which are not found in any other file system, such as, creating storage pools, snapshots, and using copy-on write semantics.

  • HSFS

    High Sierra File System (HSFS) is used on CD-ROMs and DVDs. An HSFS file system is read only.

  • PCFS

    PC file system (PCFS), which enables read and write access to data and programs on DOS-formatted disks that are written for DOS-based personal computers.

  • UDFS

    The Universal Disk Format (UDFS) file system which is the industry-standard format for storing information on the optical media technology called DVD.

  • SAM-QFS

    SAM-QFS is an integrated hierarchical storage manager (HSM) and storage area network (SAN) file system. SAM is a component of HSM storage and archive management. QFS is the SAN scalable high performance file system component.

• Network-based file systems

  Network-based file systems can be accessed from a network. Typically, network-based file systems reside on a server, and are accessed by other systems across the network. The different types of network-based file systems are as follows:

  • NFS

    Network File System (NFS) is a common resource sharing service in an UNIX environment. With the NFS service, you can provide distributed resources (files or directories) by sharing them from a server and mounting them on multiple clients.

  • SMB or CIFS

    Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is a resource sharing service used primarily in workgroups or domains of Microsoft Windows systems. With the Oracle SMB service, you can provide distributed resources (files or directories) to Windows and Mac OS systems by sharing them from a server and mounting them on multiple clients.

• Virtual file systems

  Virtual file systems are memory-based file systems that provide access to special kernel information and facilities. Most virtual file systems do not use file system disk space. Also, some virtual file systems, such as the temporary file system (TMPFS) use the swap space on a disk. The different types of virtual file system are as follows:

  • CTFS

    The contract file system (CTFS) is an interface for creating, controlling, and observing contracts.

  • MNTFS

    The mnttab file system (MNTFS) provides read-only access to the table of mounted file systems for the local system.

  • OBJFS

    The object file system (OBJFS) describes the state of all modules currently loaded by the kernel. This file system is used by debuggers to access information about kernel symbols without accessing the kernel directly.

  • SHAREFS

    The sharetab file system (SHAREFS) provides read-only access to the table of shared file systems for the local system.

  • PROCFS

    The process file system (PROCFS) resides in memory and contains a list of active processes, by process number, in the /proc directory. Information in the /proc directory is used by commands such as ps.

  • TMPFS

    The temporary file system (TMPFS) uses local memory for a file system to read and write. TMPFS is the default file system type for the /tmp directory in the Oracle Solaris OS.

  • LOFS

    The loopback file system (LOFS) enables you to create a new virtual file system so that you can access files by using an alternative path name.

To query the file system type of a volume, run the following command:

bash-3.2# fstyp /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0

ufs

bash-3.2#

According to the command output, the file system type of the /dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 volume is ufs.