Filesystem writable on both FreeBSD and Linux

marie@dk · 05-12-2008, 06:22 AM

This thread is similar to my question, but it's old and I don't see a conclusion.

I just bought an external USB harddrive, and it comes with NTFS, which isn't an option for me. I am looking for a filesystem which is writable on both FreeBSD and Linux (I am using Fedora 8).

Is it true, that Linux has UFS2 support (read/write) since kernel 2.6.21? I saw it in a blog, but I don't know where to go for confirmation?

Emerson · 05-12-2008, 09:31 AM

EXT2 is your best bet.

marie@dk · 05-12-2008, 12:04 PM

I don't think EXT3 is writable by FreeBSD.

I will be using the disk for backup for both my FreeBSD server and my Linux laptop. But instead of figuring out a file system that both of them will read/write, I'll make the laptop do uploads to the server instead.

After a great deal of reading, I think this is the safest solution.

Emerson · 05-12-2008, 12:29 PM

EXT2 - yes,
EXT3 - no
You can write to an EXT3 partition but journal will be ignored. With EXT2 recovery time is much longer in case of corruption, that's the whole difference.