On-disk format of UNIX filesystems (Was: Re: make DOS a filesystem?)

[Guy Harris]

Submitted-by: guy at auspex.uucp (Guy Harris)

>While I understand where the "thank goodness" comes from, I do rather
>wish that there were some standards for the on-disk format of UNIX
>filesystems.

*Which* UNIX filesystems?  V7/S5? BSD FFS?  BSD FFFS?  (Fat Fast File
System, i.e. the changes in 4.3-tahoe)  SGI extent-based file system?
IBM's journaling file system?  The Episode file system in DEcorum?
Veritas's log-based file system?  The log-based file system done at
Berkeley?  Etc., etc., etc....

And would the standards for those file systems demand that items be
written in big-endian format or little-endian format, or would they
leave it dependent on the endianness of the machine writing the file
system?

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 168