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Apple Businesses

Unix File System Issues on Mac OS X? 93

Posted by Cliff from the why-have-it-if-you-can't-use-it dept.
rlthomps-1 asks: "I've been thinking about reformatting my Mac's hard drive in UFS, since I've seen the option on the install screen. I was looking for advantages of the Unix file system since it sounds like it would have better performance over HFS+. After viewing this Apple kbase article I wasn't so sure. A test system at work won't install software correctly because the drive name is stuck as '/' among other problems. Why would Apple include the UFS option if it offers such reduced functionality, and is anyone out there using it for non-server applications? What for? Are there advantages to UFS on the desktop Mac OS?"
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Unix File System Issues on Mac OS X? More

Unix File System Issues on Mac OS X?

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  • To my understanding, it's for porting apps that expect UFS.

  • UFS is there for historical reasons (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Matthias Wiesmann ( 221411 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @06:46AM (#3700066) Homepage Journal
    As far as I understand, UFS support in OS X is mostly legacy: previous versions (Mac OS X server 1.0 for instance) relied more heavily on it. In Mac OS X, HFS+ has been optimised more heavily than UFS.

    Also understand that many carbon applications have trouble coping with non-HFS+ file-systems. Here in the lab, I mount my solaris home directory thru NFS, and some carbon apps cannot start from my home directory because of this. Some carbon applications even have trouble with files in this file-system (on bad days Acrobat Reader tells me the file does not exist).

    As applications and system frameworks become more file-system agnostic. I suspect Apple will probably put less emphasis on HFS+ and put more effort in other file-systems.

  • HFS+ versus UFS (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tsk ( 2863 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @06:49AM (#3700076) Homepage Journal
    First let see the state of UFS in Darwin:
    When Darwin [opendarwin.org] was built, Apple used FreeBSD 3.2 has its core BSD os, since then many changes where applied in the UFS code in FreeBSD (softupdates [cnri.dit.ie] are the ones comes to mind). Since then Apple's version of UFS has not change too much.
    HFS+ is Apple's MacOS native enhanced file system. So if you need to run Classic, if you need to run carbonised application that do have a resource fork then you need an HFS+ partition (see Mozilla's readme).
    If you're more a unix guy like and want to compile OSS, host some CVS reposiroty then you 'll need UFS.
    UFS is case sensitive. HFS+ is not (it might seems to be but is not). I'de say for all macos Apps use HFS+ an create a second UFS partition where you'd put all your unix apps and other unix related stuff (CVS etc ...).
    Other references can be found :
    1. Open Darwin's Thread UFS vs HFS+ [opendarwin.org]
    2. Brigging UFS up to date [opendarwin.org]
    3. Meta Data in Mac Filesystems [arstechnica.com]

    • Re:HFS+ versus UFS (Score:5, Informative)

      by usr122122121 ( 563560 ) <`usr122122121' `at' `braxtech.com'> on Friday June 14, 2002 @08:33AM (#3700478) Homepage
      UFS is case sensitive. HFS+ is not (it might seems to be but is not)
      Minor addition to your post: UFS is case sensitive [and as a result has to be case-retaining]. HFS+ is case-insensitive, but is still case-retaining.

    • Re:HFS+ versus UFS (Score:3, Informative)

      by stux ( 1934 )
      The simple answer is...

      Use HFS+.

      Unless you have a concrete reason to use UFS... and no, wanting to have to get the case right, or wanting "better performance" is not a reason.

      HFS+ is the native file system of Mac OS X... UFS is just a compatibility layer.

      Just like Classic is a compatibility layer...

      You don't want to use Classic do you?

      Well, then you don't want to use UFS.

      UFS does not get tested as heavily as HFS+ (hell why do you think AirPort doesn't work... because it makes case insensitive assumptions)

      Commercial software is NOT tested on UFS.

      UFS is ONLY there to allow the porting of large unix software which makes case sensitive assumption... such as having two files with the same name in the same directory, but different cases.

      Running such software is the only valid reason to install UFS, and normally you'd just fix the problem anywho, doing this (the same files in the one directory) is bad practise anywho.

      So, the moral of the story is, don't use UFS on Mac OS X. (unless you have a DAMN good reason)

      (developing cross-platform UNIX software is actually a fairly good reason to have one UFS partition about)
      • One example of why cas is important. The http interface perl scripts 'HEAD', 'GET', and 'POST' get installed with a number of packages. The 'head' command is used for reading the first few lines of a file. I use 'last|head' to see who has logged in recently. After installing the perl mods, that command freaked. It took a while to realise that 'HEAD' had replaced 'head' -- forcing me to find a new 'head' from another system. I renamed 'HEAD', 'GET', and 'POST' be preceding their names with 'HTTP_'.

  • Yes advantages (Score:3, Informative)

    by Leimy ( 6717 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @06:56AM (#3700093)
    If you are running a server you most certainly want some form of security. HFS+ is not case sensitive. If you restrict certain files like "Hello" outsiders may be able to get to the same file by calling it "HeLlO" or "HELLO". UFS is case sensitive.

    OpenDarwin.org is looking into getting up-to-date UFS with FreeBSD and then maybe UFS2 from FreeBSD -current. I have been one of few people on the opendarwin.org list to respond and the exchange has been good about how to begin. Jordan Hubbard has provided good guidance.... now I just need the time and some help I am sure.

    If you are interested... please sign up.
    • This does not mean UFS is more secure. Your example doesn't work anyway; I have a "private" directory on my Mac OS X web server, and Apache won't let me access it as "Private". Even if it did, you could use one of the *Match directives instead (which would be a pain, but thankfully, it's unnecessary).
      • The reason for this is that Apple includes an Apache module to address exactly that problem. When the original OS X was shipped (10.0.0, I think), this mod was missing and there was a gaping security hole. People could work around permissions just by addressing a file/folder differently than in the access file.

        Check it out, go into /etc/httpd/httpd.conf and look in the LoadModule directives. At the very end will be something like mod_hfs. This comes from Apple. Comment it out, restart Apache and you'll see that you can now use any case you want.

    • Actually, as far as I've experienced, HFS+ IS case-sensitive, it's just that the MacOS 9 and earlier namespace isn't. It's almost like saying that HFS+ is restricted to 31 characters for file names. Mac OS X has changed a lot of my perceptions of HFS+ and made me realize that most of the limitations I previously thought it had were all due to limitations in the previous operating system.

      • Re:Yes advantages (Score:3, Informative)

        by Leimy ( 6717 )
        Actually, as far as I've experienced, HFS+ IS case-sensitive,
        You haven't done much then.

        [dave@tivo dave]$ ssh dleimbac@mac1
        dleimbac@mac1's password:
        Welcome to Darwin!
        mac1% cd /tmp
        mac1% ls
        mac1% touch Hello
        mac1% touch HeLLo
        mac1% ls -l
        total 0
        -rw-r--r-- 1 dleimbac wheel 0 Jun 14 13:14 Hello
        mac1%
        • Proves nothing except 'touch' is case insensitive.

          NTFS is another filesystem that appears to be case-insensitive - create a file called foo and try and create another called Foo from Explorer and it wll barf. Write your own version of 'touch' using the NT Native API and you can create foo, Foo, FOO and foO in the same directory - the downside is you confuse the hell out of all the Windows apps. You can also create files with reserved or 'illegal' names like '....', ' leadingSpace' and 'prn'. These tend to crash Explorer if tou try and use them!

          In summary a filesystem can be case-senstive and behave as HFS+ (or NTFS) does if the OS does not expose the case-sensitivity.
    • That's the most idiotic reason for case-sensitivity I've ever heard. If someone has enough access to your system to get a file in one case situation, they've got enough access to get to anything else in the same directory.

      The fact is, I've never heard anyone come up with a good idea for case sensitivity. The only one anyone ever comes up with is, "Well, with case sensitivity, I can have a file named 'Hello' and one named 'HELLO', etc." Hello, that's not an advantage - it's confusing as hell!

      Case insensitivity with case-retention is the ideal - and that's what HFS+ has. If Apple would just fix their slow-ass hardware, I'd change over in a heartbeat (assuming I had the $).
      • Case-sensitivity is easy, as it's just comparing bytes. Case-insensitivity is hard for non-English (and the more non-English, the harder it gets) languages, because you have to search through a table of equivalent glyphs. It's a lot more overhead. Also, the Unix core of OSX doesn't use Unicode natively, which adds a layer of complexity.
        • Okay, that's a reason. Not a great one, but it's a reason.

          Things that are complex and take time to do correctly are the reason computers were made in the first place. Shying away from such situations with computers is not the brightest thing I could think of. Doing so when there are benefits is REALLY not smart.

  • ufs not for desktop usage (Score:4, Interesting)

    by d0n quix0te ( 304783 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @07:24AM (#3700188)
    it is primarily to be used if you are running a web server. Apache is better tuned for UFS than HFS+.

    Use HFS+ if you are going to use it as a desktop. Many apps including Office will have problems because they expect a HFS+ system supporting Type/Creator info.
    • UFS under Mac OS X does have type/creator info. It uses the AppleDouble hack that uses hidden files to store the mac resource fork.

      The main problem that desktop apps will have with UFS is its case sensitivity. Many apps expect to be able to ask for a file in any case and get a like-named but differently cased file.

      Personally, I would be surprised if any program as robust as Office had this problem.
    • Support for Meta data isn't the issue here - it's the fact that UFS doesn't support resource forks, which Carbon apps still contain. If you install a Carbon app on a UFS drive, your resource fork disappears.
  • I remember back in the day when HFS+ was first introduced... People were wondering if it was worth it. Of course, back then, HFS+'s attraction wasn't speed at all, it was space, since it uses smaller allocation blocks than HFS... Which is almost a non-problem these days with such large harddrives available so cheap. In fact, I question the original HFS, who would design a file system that required a new incompatible file system just to have a different size of allocation blocks? Regards, Adam.
    • In fact, I question the original HFS, who would design a file system that required a new incompatible file system just to have a different size of allocation blocks?

      Microsoft?

    • Heh, not a non-problem. On an 80-Gig HD formatted with HFS, you're minimum file size is 2.5mb. That's pretty lame.

      What I want to know is why it took so long to introduce file names longer than 31 chars to the MacOS. Back when Win95 came out, Apple had a ridiculous ad campaign making fun of it, congratulating MS for putting out a system that supports more than 8 char filenames. Except that Windows 95 leapfrogged the Mac's 31-char file limit. Really, is it so hard to have data structures for file io that have more than 31 places for filenames?
      • Really, is it so hard to have data structures for file io that have more than 31 places for filenames?

        With 15 years of code under their belt that relied on just that fact, well, yes.

      • It's similarly easy to create the possessive form of the second-person pronoun, which is 'your.' I'm sure you've had at least twelve years of education. It probably came up at some point in there.

  • I use both at home (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SandSpider ( 60727 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @08:10AM (#3700369) Homepage Journal
    I have UFS for my User partition, and all of the rest of my partitions are HFS+. The reason for this is that, if you boot in OS 9, all of your permissions are ignored, and anyone can waltz into your hard drive and play around. UFS isn't readable by OS 9, so no worries there.

    I haven't really had any problems with my setup. Maybe there are some things I'll find the more I use it, but I've had this setup for months, and I haven't really noticed anything. But I certainly wouldn't format my system partition UFS. I tried that once, and it didn't work for non-server use at all. Mostly because, if something went wrong with the hard drive, I didn't have a boot disc that could do anything about it. That probably isn't a problem with things like the new HD tool from Micromat, but at the time it was a pain.

    =Brian
    • The reason for this is that, if you boot in OS 9, all of your permissions are ignored, and anyone can waltz into your hard drive and play around.

      anyone can waltz into your home? where do you live? instead of dual boot worries, i lock my door.
      • Anyone who has keys. Such as roommates. Not that they necessarily will, but why should I have to worry about it? Besides, at least half of it is an intellectual exercies.

        =Brian
    • I did this for a while, the problem that you run into is that certain programs (always carbon apps) will not work if your system drive is UFS. They just can't read the drive to do any thing.
      • That's the thing; my system drive isn't UFS. I have 5 partitions: 1) OS9 - HFS+; 2) OSX - HFS+; 3) User - UFS; 4) Swap 1 - HFS+; 5) Swap 2 - HFS+.

        This way, the user data is protected, and all the apps work properly. Swap 1 is a system swap, and Swap 2 is for applications like Photoshop that have their own swap files.

        =Brian
    • Interesting, but couldn't someone still just boot into single user mode and get into all of your files? (I'm a unix geek and new mac owner. Is it even possible to do this? I thought I remembered doing it with some magic key combo, but can't remember if I was prompted for a password).
      • This is very true. Single User Mode grants root privileges without requiring a password. Being able to reset the password with the OS X CD is also an issue, though one that can be worked around with the new Open Firmware password, I believe.

        Personally, I think there should be a secure option in OS X, that allows you to disable the various methods of password resetting. Of course, the clever and knowledgeable user will be able to bypass any of those, since there's always a way around security if you have physical access to the computer itself.

        Fortunately, my roommates are very rarely that knowledgeable about macs and unix. Also, I don't really have anything of import on my computer. I just never liked pretending to have security that could be defeated by booting into OS 9. It was the same in the pre-X days, where most of the security programs relied on people not having a standard boot floppy. It's just wasteful to have to be bothered typing in a password if the security is too easy to crack.

        =Brian

  • Do NOT install UFS (Score:5, Informative)

    by nachoman ( 87476 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @08:44AM (#3700538)
    I thought along the same lines... It is Unix, so UFS should be better... So, I formatted my iBook and went with UFS.

    I was wrong. All of the mac applications run much better under HFS. Things like Appleworks need an HFS partition so they work with OS 9 as well as X. And mozilla still won't run in a UFS partition. As of version 10.1.3 (not exactly sure which one I tried) there were still a LOT of problems with UFS. I got a lot of data corruption on my UFS partition. Also, disk IO seemed a lot slower than with an HFS partition. The system kept getting slower and slower.

    Finally, I reinstalled again with HFS. All of my troubles went away. In my opinion, don't use UFS unless you have a really important reason to do so.
    • AFAIK, UFS doesn't allow files to have resource forks, therefore programs that rely on the ability to manipulate resource forks are messed up by being on UFS. Two words: CARBON APPLICATIONS.

      In addition, if you're moving from a HFS+ drive to a UFS, and you just simply copy all your stuff over, all your invisible "Icon " files will no longer be invisible on folders that have custom icons. this is a PAIN.

  • OS 9 & Classic (Score:4, Informative)

    by CokeBear ( 16811 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @08:45AM (#3700544) Journal
    The most important reason to stick with HFS+ is that a UFS drive cannot boot back into OS 9, and does not support Classic. (Also, HFS+ is faster)

  • This is qualitative, not quantitative, unfortunately, but I installed OS X on my powerbook G4 with ufs once. The install alone took over an hour. Booting OS X took forever, things started up slowly, I thought OS X was a dog.

    Later I was reinstalling OS X (repartitioning the disk a bit) and decided to go to HFS+ because a friend said OS X on his powerbook with the same hardware wasn't nearly as slow as I was describing. I re-installed onto HFS+ and the install only took 20 minutes this time and things ran noticably faster.

    Next time, I'll run bonnie++ on both and find out for sure how much slower ufs is than HFS+. Regardless, my qualitative feeling is that OS X's UFS sucks performance wise.

  • in term of performances HFS+ is better than UFS. In fact, from the quick benches I've done with my FreeBSD's, HFS+ is faster than UFS, and slower than UFS+softupdates (witch is approximatively equivalent to ext2 FS in term of read-write perf.).

    Ones should definitively choose HFS+ for OSX, a secondary partition using UFS can be a good idea for UN*X addict, but is absolutely useless for everyday desktop use.

  • Beware of UFS (Score:2, Informative)

    by siliconwafer ( 446697 )
    My advice: Do *NOT* use UFS on Mac OS X unless you are running a server. If you plan on using applications besides Apache or database software, use HFS+. I bought a new Powerbook several months ago and went with UFS, assuming it would be faster, superior, etc. I found that many programs (even Mozilla!) would not run on UFS. They'd simply crash or spit out strange error messages. After getting frustrated, I reinstalled using HFS+. I was *AMAZED* at the speed difference. It really is a lot faster: Apps load faster, file copying is faster, everything just seems more responsive. And, I no longer have trouble with software such as Mozilla, Toast Titanium, Dreamweaver, etc.

    The bottom line: Stick with HFS.
  • Why isn't there an effort underway to port XFS to OS X (and NT)?

    This would afford one common file system across all modern operating systems. Regardless of architecture, this permits transfer of data from machine to another machine by simply connecting the hard drive (particularly useful for Firewire drives). For common architecture machines, this permits dual booting or simplified data migration. And, it leverages across all operating systems improvements to the XFS file system and file system utilities.

    Given Mac OS X's Unix underpinnings, it would seem relatively trivial to port XFS to the OS. The technology is fully journaled, and proven for many years in Apple's target media market.

    • Re:Why Not Port XFS (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tsk ( 2863 )
      it would seem relatively trivial to port XFS to the OS.
      There's a icensing issue Here. SGI'sxfs [sgi.com] is GPLed, apple does not endorse GPL or LPGLed software. They removed wget because it was gpled, gnutar has also been removed. Apple want to use BSD like licence exclusively, so one day if they want to they can make a closed source OS again .....
      If you'de want xfs on OS X it should come from The GNU-Darwin [sf.net] project or from Fink [sf.net]. Both project are leading software port (one bringing support for AMD powered ia32 machines).

      • Re:Why Not Port XFS (Score:3, Informative)

        by 1010011010 ( 53039 )
        They still use GCC... but then, there are no BSD-licensed compilers.
        • Right, but gcc isn't integral to the OS; it's only installed if you install the developer tools (the same is true for gnutar, the base install has only the BSD tar). AFAIK there is no GPL software on a stock install of OS X, which is probably justifiable paranoia by Apple's lawyers.
  • Here is the issue as I understand it. If you use UFS, you are limited, because UFS doesn't recognize resource forks, therefore you can't use Cocoa or Classic apps. For those of you who don't know, previous to Cocoa, all mac applications (and lots of other files - anything with an icon or that stores a PICT or AIFF for example) had separate resource and data forks. If you put one of these files onto a FAT volume, you will see a hidden folder for resource forks. Since UFS doesn't recognize resource forks, you can't use Classic at all, and can't use Carbon apps. You can use Cocoa everything. The only advantage that I know of for UFS is that it doesn't get fragmented, where HFS+ does. However, this does make it slower in my experience, and you're still stuck using either Cocoa apps, or Darwin, which means that you can say goodbye to most users favorite apps. No Photoshop, no MS Office, no iTunes (The last time I checked, not only was iTunes Carbon, it still had some Pascal code in it). So I guess it could reduce your downtime for maintenance in a server situation, but it's totally impractical for most users.

  • UFS breaks Retrospect (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Retrospect (the backup tool) doesn't support UFS. It silently omits files from the backup if either the source or destination partition are UFS. No warnings, no errors, just a backup disk missing random files.

  • UFS can be used, in its place (Score:4, Informative)

    by depeche ( 109781 ) on Friday June 14, 2002 @12:20PM (#3702379) Homepage
    Apple includes UFS becuase all Cocoa applications will run correctly with UFS, and Carbon applications (if written correctly) will also run correctly. Apple uses its previously published standards (see Netatalk list archive for a discussion) to seperate the data and resource forks. The problem is that many MacOS applications--and the entire classic environment--require HFS compatibility. Many applications will not even install onto a UFS drive. If your environment is mostly Unix, and you are a developer or a web designer, having the same case-preserving, case-sensitive file system symantics that other Unix implementations may be a benifit. Otherwise, stick to HFS+. I, for one, have signed and recommend that other sign the Metadata petition which calls for Apple to move towarsd a modern file system which has multiple streams (as apposed to two fixed streams) and a generalized metadata implementation a la BeFS or Attributed FS to provide the core HFS compatible metadata with the ability to extend the metadata use into new areas. A journaled file system would also be a plus. HFS+ is a reasonably efficient and Unix like file system. The only difference is the case-preserving, case-insensitive file symantics, which is arguably (many discussions abound) is preferable for a GUI, and human UI in general.

    A big bonus would be implementing posix compliant multiple stream bsd userland commands like cp so that you don't axe your resource fork when you cp a file from the command line, etc.
    • Regarding your last, OS X dev toosl [ /Developer/Tools ] include things like CpMac, MvMac which are command line versions of cp and mv that do handle resource forks. There are also tools for splitting/joining the resource fork.

  • formatting as UFS (Score:2, Informative)

    by pretentiousb ( 585511 )
    When Mozilla 1.0 became available, I formatted my HD as UFS...I had been waiting and waiting to do this just to play around with it. Anyway, it turned out to be a BIG mistake. The first thing I installed was Mozilla. It installed fine, but when I tried to run it, it would quit before the launch was finished. The same happened with Netscape...I thought maybe it was just a "Mozilla-type" thing...I was wrong...I then tried installing MS Office (sorry I turned to Microsoft...I need the compatibility for school)...that installer wouldn't even run...it wouldn't give me permission to install on UFS formatted "/" So then, I reformatted back to HFS+. I reinstalled everything, and since, everything has worked fine...I have even installed mySQL and PHP, and both of them seem to work wonderfully as well. I'm not sure if this will help or not, but when I reformatted as HFS+, I named my HD "/" just like it would have been if I had formatted it as UFS. You may also want to check out the postings by SandSpider and Nachoman...they seem like they ran into problems similar to mine...one of them suggested (along with some others) that you partition the HD so you can have both a UFS partition and a HFS+ partition. Anyway, good luck!

  • You want UFS? Here's a trick: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14, 2002 @01:21PM (#3702914)
    I was trying to get UMN Gopherd running on my OS X box awhile back, and one neat trick that was suggested to me by the maintainer of the package that helped was to use the Disk Copy application to create a virtual UFS device. I dragged the files I wanted to compile into my virtual drive, cd'ed into it, did the make thing, and presto: it compiled beautifully. Even neater is that I could still install it into the standard hierarchy, which was hfs+ formatted, and it still ran just smooth.

    So my advice is this: format your drive hfs, and when you need to do a project that requires UFS, simplly create a big enough blank UFS drive using Disk Copy, and do your work in it. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

    ...mmmm... cake.....

  • The problems of UFS and HFS+ and different types of software stem from the way they deliniate directories. HFS has always deliniated directories with a colon. Your Applications folder is SystemDisk:Applications and home is SystemDisk:Documents or whatever arrangement you have. UFS deliniates directories with a slash. Apple is working towards ditching HFS entirely so they can switch to a more Unix friendly file system when they finally drop support for Classic applications in OSX.

    In many cases Darwin project Ports and Fink packages work much better with a UFS partition than they do with an HFS+ partition because they contain absolute paths using slashes for directories rather than colons. Classic and some Carbon applications do the opposite, they use absolute paths with colons. Your best bet is to make an HFS+ partition for your Mac software and then a smaller separate UFS partition to mount as /opt or something. The default BSD tools work fine with HFS+ but third party stuff might not work as well so putting them on a separate partition you know they will work on might be your best bet.
    • Don't matter on OS X.
      If a carbon app uses a hard-coded path with :'s it will work.
      If i make a folder on an HFS+ volume called, say, "Documents 15/06/02" it will be saved with the /'s in it's name. If i go to a bash prompt and perform a ls, Darwin knows that the shell can't handle /'s in a pathname and automagically displays them as :'s.
      Basically, it all just works.
      Mac apps will see /'s and unix apps will see :'s in directory/file names and it doesn't matter what type of file system they live on.
      The only difference you will notice is that files with resource forks can't be stored on UFS volumes and some other apps (ported from unix) prefer to be on UFS volumes so they can play with inodes and other UFS features.
      • Maybe I am wrong about the colon/slash problem, when working on stuff that always seemed like the issue at hand. OSX is actually trying to get away from resource forks in the file system you'll notice too. Instead of the resource fork for a directory that information is being stored in a .PStores file in that directory. It stores pretty much the same information as a resource fork but can be used just fine on a non-HFS partition. The insitance that Finder write a .PStores file as well as a couple other files can be annoying when using NFS or SMB mounts on non-Unix systems.
      • Not quite right.

        At the API to the system level, the seperator is slash. At some point after you typed in the 15/06/02 filename, some library or app replaced all the slashes with colons. This is the filename that was passed to the system through the Unix API.

        Later on the shell used the Unix API to get the filename, and retrived the filename with the colons. The changes were made when the file was created, not when the shell listed it.

        You may be confused because the HFS probably (I don't know for sure) translates colons in the names back to slashes so that the disk image can be read by OS9, and translated them back when read. However you could make a filesystem that rot13 or otherwise mangled the filenames when storing, but that fact is totally invisible to a program that does not examine the actual disk blocks, so that fact can be ignored.

        I am disappointed to see Apple favoring slashes in names over colons. The OSX finder will translate slashes to colons and back again, while translating colons the user types into into dashes and not back again. I would prefer if they turned slashes into dashes and left colons alone. This current scheme messes up two letters instead of one, also allowing people to think they can put slashes into their filenames is going to mess them up when they try to make web pages (which Apple seems to be pushing...)

  • I'd just point out that many of the "gotchas" referred to in that article refer specifically to problems in 10.0 that have been fixed in 10.1.
  • OSX's HFS+ and UFS seem a bit antiquated, and they are a pain to read from other machines as well. It would be great if OSX could support ReiserFS. Ext3 would also be a reasonable choice.
    • Apple's going to support UFS and HFS+ for years to come, obviously, but by the same token, it should be obvious that apple would be working on a replacement (they hired that beos filesystem guy a few months back, iirc).

      Now apple's not going to support a multiplicity of file systems, so they're only going to work on one system; i doubt they'd write their own filesystem, so i'd say that will integrate XFS.
  • while trying to install OS 10.1 on my ibook, i ran into a peculiar problem. i had a UFS partition for the OS X system, and an HFS+ partition which would later become linux. after installing OS X, the machine refused to boot off the UFS partition.

    looking back, i'm glad i tried HFS+.

    --Muncus.

  • Myths and Facts, plus a suggestion (Score:5, Informative)

    by gseidman ( 97 ) <gss+sdot@nOSPaM.anthropohedron.net> on Friday June 14, 2002 @11:34PM (#3706234)
    First off, I see a lot of people posting about how UFS does not support resource forks. This is technically true, but false in practice. Any non-Classic application which reads or writes resource forks will work just fine on files stored on a UFS partition. Same with metadata (type/creator). While HFS and HFS+ associate the data fork with the hidden resource fork and metadata one way, UFS does it another. The resource fork and metadata are hidden and associated with the data fork by a naming convention rather than by an intrinsic aspect of the filesystem.

    Second, I cannot recommend UFS for a root partition. Too many installers rely on the root partition being HFS+. They give errors about not being able to install on a "network file system" (which should be possible regardless). I had my system set up with several UFS partitions and no HFS+ partition at all, and ran into problems trying to install a bunch of stuff I genuinely wanted. So I gave up and made my root partition HFS+.

    What I recommend, however, is that only the root be HFS+. My /Users partition is UFS. A couple of other partitions are UFS. I ordered an external FireWire drive and the several partitions I will be putting on it (including /Library, /Applications, and /Developer) will all be UFS.

    (For those who are worried about /Library being externally mounted -- I haven't figured out what difference Apple intends there to be between /System/Library and /Library since both seem to be used identically, but I have chosen to treat /System/Library as containing things central to the running system such as StartupItems and Extensions, and /Library to be things related to applications, such as Application Support and Fonts.)

    To maintain my various UFS partitions, I have an /etc/fstab and run fsck -p in the Disks StartupItem. I've been doing things this ways for months and it seems to work quite nicely. I will mention that I do not use any Classic applications, so having partitions (such as my home directory) visible from Classic is not a concern. YMMV.

    • For those who are worried about /Library being externally mounted -- I haven't figured out what difference Apple intends there to be between /System/Library and /Library since both seem to be used identically
      /System is reserved for Apple and may be completely replaced after a system update (wiping all your changes away).

  • HFS+ was designed for performance (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Sunday June 16, 2002 @09:49AM (#3710807)
    I think one problem people are having with the HFS+ vs UFS issue is they think "Well, I haven't seen this UFS thing before, and HFS+ has been around for a long time, so UFS must be newer, and therefore it must be better!" All this without understanding one thing about how either file system works.

    UFS was included for those few people who needed a real, genuine, Unix file system. It has the "real inodes" and the case sensitivity that Unix apps expect. But (as far as I know), directories are stored as files with a special attribute, all over the disk, just like the MS-DOS FAT file system does. It does things this way after all this time because that's the way Unix has always done things.

    HFS+, however, is an extension to HFS to give it a few extra things that it needed to become a serious file system. Stuff like support for volumes larger than 2G, really long file names, Unix file attributes, etc. HFS stores directories in a B-tree file. In other words, it uses a database. This is much more efficient than a bunch of scattered files and inodes holding directory information.

    Basically, if you don't know a specific reason why you need UFS, don't use it.

    • Actually, the support for "really long" file names is provided by OS X. HFS+ has been around since OS 8 --I think, maybe 9-- and like HFS, is only good for 31 characters. (Those who have come across strangely named items on their drives can attest to this.) It's mainly the support for larger drives as well as the smaller block size that distinguish HFS from HFS+.

  • My experience: don't do it (Score:2, Informative)

    by Euro ( 40585 )
    Wow. I just finished my reinstallation of OS X and this pops up on Slashdot. Anyway...

    I got myself a G4 as a workstation about six months back. Being new to both OS X and the Mac world, I chose to format my partitions as UFS. BAD move. A lot of software simply refused to work (Mozilla being an example) if started from an UFS partition. Others (like the Harpoon 3 [harpoon3.com] Demo) worked if I did some tweaking. Since OS9 doesn't know anything about UFS volumes, I was deprived of Classic apps as well (not that I have really needed any, but anyway). All this was a pain in the ass, though. For a long time I thought the software I tried was badly coded, but soon realized that it was due to my partitions being UFS only.

    Today I finally found the time to repartition as HFS+ and everything works like a charm. Finally I have a decent browser instead of that Microsoft crap. :-)

    To summarize: don't do it, unless you really, REALLY, REALLY know what you are doing.

    Just my .02 €

  • From the 1.1a release notes:

    Mac OS X: Mozilla will not run when the application is installed on a UFS partition. The workaround is to move the application folder to an HFS+ partition and it will run correctly.

    So you could just make a HFS+ Disk Image, but that's just a pain. And what about mounting your hard disk in OS 9? No dice. I say keep the HFS+ scheme.

    Orange
  • I've read all the usual arguments to use either UFS or HFS+, but the main reason I use HFS+ is it supports FileIDs. Thus Aliases don't break when you move or rename the original file. This is a huge human interface advantage.

    I also suspect iterating directories is faster with HFS+.

    I'm hopeful somebody will develop a better filesystem which also supports FileIDs. HFS+ has a couple problems like fragmentation and corruption when interrupted. However Disk Warrior and Plus Optimizer fix those problems.
  • Just a warning, if you do want to use UFS there is a bug [mozilla.org] in the mozilla code base that will prevent mozilla and netscape 6 from running on a UFS partition. Also various apps have little problems i have run into, for instance the quicken installer doesnt work, but the app does. Chimera and omniweb work tho, so at least you wouldnt be stuck with ie!

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