Caching is a concept used through computing. CPUs have several levels of cache; disk drives have cache; and the list goes on. Adding a small amount of high-speed data storage relative to a large amount of slower-speed storage can make huge improvements to performance. Enter two new kernel patches -- bcache and flashcache -- that leverage the power of SSDs.
Have you ever wanted to look inside a tar.gz file but without expanding it? Have you ever wanted to just dump files in a .tar.gz file without having to organize it and periodically tar and gzip this data? This article presents another REALLY useful user-space file system, archivemount. It allows you to mount archives such as .tar.gz files as a file system and interact with it using normal file/directory tools.
We have to face it. Linux isn't going to win the desktop war any time soon, but perhaps we don't need to. With products like MeeGo and Android, Linux is going to complete its domination of the embedded space, and find itself in every single home.
It's common knowledge that Linux has a fair number of file systems. Some of these are unappreciated and can be very useful outside their "comfort zone". OCFS2 is a clustered file system initially contributed by Oracle and can be a great back-end file system for general, shared storage needs.
Having file systems in the kernel has its pros and cons. Being able to write file systems in user-space also has some pros and cons, but FUSE (File System in Userspace) allows you to create some pretty amazing results. This article takes a very brief look at user-space file systems and FUSE.
Userspace file systems are one of the coolest storage options in Linux. They allow really creative file systems to be developed without having to go through the kernel gauntlet. This article presents one of them, SSHFS, that allows you to remotely mount a file system using ssh (sftp).
Have you been looking for open-source storage management tools that are easy to use and provide a graphical representation of your storage. Alas, there are no comprehensive tools but there are graphical tools that you can pair with command-line wizardry, particularly LVM.
Disk space is always at a premium but how do you handle it when you have a disk or filesystem that's full? After today, you'll know how to boldly go into that dark realm.
Flock has undergone a major evolution in the last year. From the Swiss-Army knife of social media to a slimmed down browser that tackles Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube only. Even more shocking, the project has dumped Firefox for Chromium. Was the switch worth it?