The many filesystems available can be categorized into the
following classes:
- Image
- A special filesystem that presents the modules in the
image and is always present. Note that the
procnto process automatically provides an image
filesystem and a RAM filesystem.
- Block
- Traditional filesystems that operate on block devices
like hard disks and DVD drives.
This includes the
Power-Safe filesystem,
DOS,
and Universal Disk Format filesystems.
- Flash
- Nonblock-oriented filesystems designed explicitly for
the characteristics of flash memory devices. For NOR
devices, use the FFS3 filesystem; for NAND, use ETFS.
- Network
- Filesystems that provide network file access to the filesystems on remote host computers.
This includes the NFS
and CIFS (SMB)
filesystems.
- Pass-through
- Filesystems that sit in front of another filesystem and manipulate files
that are in the underlying filesystem.
This includes the
Inflator filesystem,
which uncompresses files that were previously compressed (using the
deflate
utility).
Note:
Running more than one pass-through filesystem or resource manager on overlapping pathname spaces
might cause deadlocks.
- Virtual
- Filesystems in which the files or directories aren't necessarily tied directly
to the underlying media, perhaps being manufactured on-demand.
This includes the /proc filesystem; see
“Controlling processes via the /proc filesystem”
in the Processes chapter of the QNX Neutrino Programmer's Guide.