A Newly Proposed Linux Filesystem Can Fix Corrupted Data
BeamFS creator Aurelien Desbrieres is not calling for a merge, but is requesting feedback on an 18-patch proposal that takes the place of FTRFS, an earlier filesystem he proposed in April. The Linux/Open Source blog It's FOSS reports: Filesystems that can repair damage, like Btrfs and ZFS, usually do it by falling back on a spare copy of the data. BeamFS skips that and stores Reed-Solomon…
A newly proposed Linux filesystem called BeamFS aims to fix corrupted data, according to a technical proposal by its creator Aurelien Desbresieres. Unlike existing file systems like Btrfs and ZFS, which rely on spare copies of data to repair damage, BeamFS uses Reed-Solomon error-correcting codes stored within each block. This allows BeamFS to check every read against those codes, correcting small amounts of damage before the data reaches the application.
If the filesystem determines the damage is unrecoverable, the read will fail with an error rather than returning incorrect bytes.
In his technical report, BeamFS was compared to ext4 and ext3 file systems, which reportedly returned wrong data without generating any error. In contrast, Btrfs refused to read the file altogether. BeamFS, on the other hand, returned the correct file every time, with only one exception. That one time, a flip in the filesystem hit a pointer to the file's data, causing BeamFS to fail the read operation.
Desbresieres claims he utilized Anthropic's Claude AI tool to write the code, along with the patch-checking tool. The proposal seeks feedback from the Linux community, rather than a direct merge request, as it replaces an earlier filesystem called FTRFS that Desbresieres proposed in April.
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