| Developer | Phillip Lougher, Robert Lougher |
|---|---|
| Introduced | 2009 (Linux 2.6.29) |
| Limits | |
| Max file size | 16 EiB |
| Max volume size | 16 EiB |
| Features | |
| Transparent compression | gzip |
| Supported operating systems | Linux |
SquashFS (.sfs) is a compressed read-only file system for Linux. SquashFS compresses files, inodes and directories, and supports block sizes up to 1 MB for greater compression. SquashFS is also free software (licensed under the GPL) for accessing SquashFS filesystems.
SquashFS is intended for general read-only file system use and in constrained block device/memory systems (e.g. embedded systems) where low overhead is needed. The standard version of SquashFS uses gzip compression, although there is also a project that brings LZMA compression to SquashFS.[1]
Contents |
Uses
SquashFS is used by the Live CD versions of Debian, Gentoo Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora and on embedded distributions such as the OpenWRT and DD-WRT router firmware. It is often combined with a union mount filesystem, such as UnionFS or aufs, to provide a read-write environment for live Linux distributions. This takes advantage of both the SquashFS's high speed compression abilities with the ability to alter the distribution while running it from a live CD. Distributions such as Slax, Debian Live, Mandriva One and Puppy Linux use this combination.
The on-disk format of SquashFS has stabilized enough that it has been merged into the 2.6.29 version of the Linux kernel.[2] In that process, the backward-compatibility code for older formats was removed.[3]
See also
- List of file systems
- Comparison of file systems
- Cramfs is another read-only compressed file system
- Cloop is a compressed loopback device module for the Linux kernel
- e2compr provides compression for ext2
References
- ^ Why Squashfs LZMA?
- ^ Btrfs and Squashfs merged into Linux kernel Jan 10, 2009
- ^ Re: BUG? SQUASHFS error: Major/Minor mismatch Tue, 13 Jan 2009
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
