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FFS(7)		   FreeBSD Miscellaneous Information Manual		FFS(7)

NAME
     ffs -- Berkeley fast file system

SYNOPSIS
     In	the kernel configuration file:
     options FFS
     options QUOTA
     options SOFTUPDATES
     options SUIDDIR
     options UFS_ACL
     options UFS_DIRHASH
     options UFS_EXTATTR
     options UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART
     options UFS_GJOURNAL

     In	fstab(5):
     /dev/disk0a     /mnt ufs rw 1 1

DESCRIPTION
     The Berkeley fast file system provides facilities to store	file system
     data onto a disk device.  ffs has been optimized over the years for speed
     and reliability and is the	default	FreeBSD	file system.

   Quotas
     options QUOTA
	 This option allows system administrators to set limits	on disk	usage
	 on a per-user basis.  Quotas can be used only on file systems mounted
	 with the quota	option;	see quota(1) and edquota(8).

   Soft	Updates
     options SOFTUPDATES
	 The soft updates feature tracks writes	to the disk and	enforces meta-
	 data update dependencies (e.g., updating free block maps) to ensure
	 that the file system remains consistent.

	 To create a new file system with the soft updates enabled, use
	 newfs(8) command:

	       newfs -U	fs

	 fs can	be either a mount point	listed in fstab(5) (e.g., /usr), or a
	 disk device (e.g., /dev/da0a).

	 It is possible	to enable soft updates on an unmounted file system by
	 using tunefs(8) command:

	       tunefs -n enable	fs

	 Soft updates can also add journaling that reduces the time spent by
	 fsck_ffs(8) cleaning up a filesystem after a crash from several min-
	 utes to a few seconds.	 The journal is	placed in an inode named
	 .sujournal, and is kept as a circular log of segments containing
	 records that describe metadata	operations.

	 To create a new file system with both the soft	updates	and soft up-
	 dates journaling enabled, use the following command:

	       newfs -j	fs

	 This runs tunefs(8) command after newfs(8) command with -U flag en-
	 abled.	 It is possible	to enable soft updates journaling on an
	 unmounted file	system by using	tunefs(8) command:

	       tunefs -j enable	fs

	 This flag automatically enables the soft updates feature when it is
	 not enabled.  Note that this tunefs(8)	command	will fail if a file
	 .sujournal already exists before enabling the soft updates journal-
	 ing.

   File	Ownership Inheritance
     options SUIDDIR
	 For use in file sharing environments on networks including Microsoft
	 Windows and Apple Macintosh computers,	this option allows files on
	 file systems mounted with the suiddir option to inherit the ownership
	 of its	directory, i.e., "if it's my directory,	it must	be my file."

   Access Control Lists
     options UFS_ACL
	 Access	control	lists allow the	association of fine-grained discre-
	 tionary access	control	information with files and directories.	 This
	 option	requires the presence of the UFS_EXTATTR option, and it	is
	 recommended that UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART	is included as well, so	that
	 ACLs are enabled atomically upon mounting the file system.

     In	order to enable	support	for ACLs, two extended attributes must be
     available in the EXTATTR_NAMESPACE_SYSTEM namespace: posix1e.acl_access,
     which holds the access ACL, and posix1e.acl_default, which	holds the de-
     fault ACL for directories.	 If you	are using file system extended at-
     tributes, the following commands may be used to allocate space for	and
     create the	necessary EA backing files for ACLs in the root	of each	file
     system.  In these examples, the root file system is used; see Extended
     Attributes	for more details.

	   mkdir -p /.attribute/system
	   cd /.attribute/system
	   extattrctl initattr -p / 388	posix1e.acl_access
	   extattrctl initattr -p / 388	posix1e.acl_default

     On	the next mount of the root file	system,	the attributes will be auto-
     matically started if UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART	is included in the kernel con-
     figuration, and ACLs will be enabled.

   Directory Hashing
     options UFS_DIRHASH
	 Implements a hash-based lookup	scheme for directories in order	to
	 speed up accesses to very large directories.

   Extended Attributes
     options UFS_EXTATTR
	 Extended attributes allow the association of additional arbitrary
	 metadata with files and directories, which can	be assigned and	re-
	 trieved from userland as well as from within the kernel; see
	 extattrctl(8).

     options UFS_EXTATTR_AUTOSTART
	 If this option	is defined, ffs	will search for	a .attribute subdirec-
	 tory of the file system root during the mount operation.  If found,
	 extended attribute support will be automatically started for that
	 file system.

   GEOM-based Journaling
     options UFS_GJOURNAL
	 Implements a block level journaling of	a UFS file system, which is
	 for both data and metadata.  To enable	this, create a gjournal(8)
	 GEOM provider for a block device by using the following command:

	       gjournal	label da0

	 In this example, /dev/da0 is used as the target block device, and
	 /dev/da0.journal is created.  Then create a new file system by	using
	 newfs(8) with the block level journaling flag and mount it:

	       newfs -J	/dev/da0.journal
	       mount -o	async /dev/da0.journal /mnt

	 async option is not mandatory but recommended for better performance
	 because the journaling	guarantees the consistency of an async mount.

	 It is also possible to	enable the block level journaling on an	exist-
	 ing file system.  To do so, use gjournal(8) utility to	label the un-
	 derlying block	device and tunefs(8) utility to	enable the block level
	 journaling flag:

	       gjournal	label da0
	       tunefs -J enable	/dev/da0.journal
	       mount -o	async /dev/da0.journal /mnt

   sysctl(8) MIBs
     The following sysctl(8) MIBs are defined for use with ffs:

     vfs.ffs.doasyncfree   Asynchronously write	out modified i-node and	indi-
			   rect	blocks upon reallocating file system blocks to
			   be contiguous.  (Default: 1).

     vfs.ffs.doreallocblks Enable support for the rearrangement	of blocks to
			   be contiguous.  (Default: 1).

HISTORY
     The ffs manual page first appeared	in FreeBSD 4.5.

SEE ALSO
     quota(1), acl(3), extattr(3), edquota(8), extattrctl(8), fsck_ffs(8),
     sysctl(8),	tunefs(8)

     M.	McKusick, W. Joy, S. Leffler, and R. Fabry, "A Fast File System	for
     UNIX", ACM	Transactions on	Computer Systems, 2, 3,	181-197, August	1984.

     M.	McKusick, "Soft	Updates: A Technique for Eliminating Most Synchronous
     Writes in the Fast	Filesystem", Proceedings of the	Freenix	Track at the
     1999 Usenix Annual	Technical Conference, 71-84, June 2000.

     M.	McKusick and J.	Roberson, "Journaled Soft-updates", BSD	Canada
     Conference	2010 (BSDCan), May 2010.

FreeBSD	13.0			  May 3, 2020			  FreeBSD 13.0

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | HISTORY | SEE ALSO

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