Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Added links to similar projects
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
 * The reason I started developing DedupFS was because I was trying and
   failing to get lessfs working and decided that it would be more
   educational and less frustrating to try to write my own file system
   using the Python FUSE binding (I was right ;-)

 * I only learned about ArchiveFS a week ago so haven't had the time to
   make a proper assessment, but it seems to me the projects share very
   similar goals yet quite different approaches.
  • Loading branch information
xolox committed Jun 24, 2010
1 parent efd663a commit b3d0569
Showing 1 changed file with 2 additions and 6 deletions.
8 changes: 2 additions & 6 deletions README.md
@@ -1,12 +1,8 @@
# DedupFS: A deduplicating FUSE file system written in Python

The Python script [dedupfs.py](http://github.com/xolox/dedupfs/blob/master/dedupfs.py) implements a file system in user-space using [FUSE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace). It's called DedupFS because the file system's primary feature is [deduplication](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication), which enables it to store virtually unlimited copies of files because data is only stored once.
The Python script [dedupfs.py](http://github.com/xolox/dedupfs/blob/master/dedupfs.py) implements a file system in user-space using [FUSE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace). It's called DedupFS because the file system's primary feature is [data deduplication](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication), which enables it to store virtually unlimited copies of files because unchanged data is only stored once. In addition to deduplication the file system also supports transparent compression using the compression methods [lzo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZO), [zlib](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/zlib) and [bz2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bz2). These properties make the file system ideal for backups: I'm currently storing 250 GB worth of backups using only 8 GB of disk space.

In addition to deduplication the file system also supports transparent compression using any of the compression methods [lzo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZO), [zlib](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/zlib) and [bz2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bz2).

These two properties make the file system ideal for backups: I'm currently storing 250 GB worth of backups using only 8 GB of disk space.

Several aspects of the design of DedupFS were inspired by [Venti](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venti) and [ZFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS) (though I've never personally used either).
Several aspects of the design of DedupFS were inspired by [Venti](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venti) (ignoring the distributed aspect, for now…) and [ZFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS), though I've never personally used either. The [ArchiveFS](http://code.google.com/p/archivefs/) and [lessfs](http://www.lessfs.com/) projects share similar goals but have very different implementations.

## Usage

Expand Down

0 comments on commit b3d0569

Please sign in to comment.