AXFS (Advanced XIP Filesystem) is a
compressed read-only file system
In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one lar ...
for
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
, initially developed at
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...
, and now maintained at
Numonyx. It was designed to use
execute in place (XIP) alongside compression aiming to reduce
boot and program load times, while retaining a small
memory footprint for
embedded devices. This is achieved by mixing compressed and uncompressed
pages in the same executable file. AXFS is
free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...
(licensed under the
GPL).
Cramfs is another read-only
compressed file system that supports XIP (with patches); however, it uses a strategy of decompressing entire files, whereas AXFS supports XIP with page granularity.
[Justin Treon, (2008-05-09) ', ]LinuxDevices.com
Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, and ...
, "There are two XIP-enabled Linux filing systems that can be used for a Balanced XIP implementation: Linear XIP CRAMFS and AXFS. The Linear XIP CRAMFS decompresses files on a file-by-file basis, whereas AXFS decompresses files on a page-by-page basis offering more optimal Flash usage."
See also
*
Squashfs is another read-only compressed file system
*
Cloop
The compressed loop device (cloop) is a module for the Linux kernel. It adds support for transparently decompressed, read-only block devices. It is not a compressed file system: cloop is mostly used as a convenient way to compress conventional fi ...
is a compressed
loopback device module for the
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...
*
e2compr provides compression for
ext2
*
List of file systems
The following lists identify, characterize, and link to more thorough information on Computer file systems.
Many older operating systems support only their one "native" file system, which does not bear any name apart from the name of the operating ...
*
Comparison of file systems
References
Further reading
* Tony Benavides, Justin Treon, Jared Hulbert and Weide Chang,
The Enabling of an Execute-In-Place Architecture to Reduce the Embedded System Memory Footprint and Boot Time', Journal of Computers, Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan 2008, pp. 79–89
* Jared Hulbert,
Introducing the Advanced XIP File System',
talk Proceedings of the 2008
Linux Symposium
External links
AXFS website* Justin Treon (February 14, 2008
Side by side comparison of launching applications stored in the AXFS, SquashFS, CRAMFS and JFFS2 read-only filing systems.(video)
"Application eXecute-In-Place (XIP) with Linux and AXFS"
Free special-purpose file systems
Compression file systems
Read-only file systems supported by the Linux kernel
{{Storage-software-stub