deep-roots learning program · module 14
Module 14 — File systems & storage
Every chapter: first principles, What insiders know, a See it yourself lab, connections, and a quiz with worked answers.
01
Storage hardware from first principles
HDD geometry, NAND pages, the FTL as a garbage collector, NVMe queues — the medium's rules.
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02
VFS: files, inodes, and the page cache
fd → file → inode, the page cache as the heap in front of the disk, fsync decoded.
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03
ext4 and the journaling lineage
Block groups, extents, the JBD2 journal — the WAL idea at file-system scale.
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04
The copy-on-write lineage: Btrfs, ZFS, APFS
Never overwrite a live block: snapshots for free, checksums, and the write-amplification price.
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05
Special file systems and the unified picture
procfs, tmpfs, overlayfs, FUSE — and the fd-to-block path drawn end to end.
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the exam